Can you swap from a foreign domestic helper visa to a dependant visa whilst in Hong Kong?
QUESTION
My domestic helper, from the Philippines, is married to a Hong Kong Permanent Resident.
Her contract with me expires in April and they want to apply for a dependent visa for her.
Is this possible, what are the criteria and what would be the time line?
Can I extend her domestic helper visa whilst her dependent visa application is being processed, so she is still able to work?
Many thanks
ANSWER
It is entirely possible to convert from foreign domestic helper status through to dependent visa status, and the timeline is typically six to eight weeks for the finalisation of the dependent visa application. So given that your foreign domestic helper contract with you expires in April, and that her working visa, her foreign domestic helper visa is going to expire two weeks after that date, then effectively you’ve got enough time (or she’s got enough time) to make an application for a dependent visa.
And the details are contained in the Hong Kong Visa handbook, under legal dependent visa, you just follow that entire process irrespective of what your current immigration status is, and then when the Immigration Department have finalised the dependent visa application and approved it, a label will be issued to her that says that she now has a dependent visa and she’s going to have to relinquish her foreign domestic helper visa status and activate her dependent visa status.
And the way that this happens is that typically during the time that she’s holding her foreign domestic helper visa, she makes an exit from Hong Kong and relinquishes her foreign domestic helper visa status at the point of exit. And then when she re-enters Hong Kong, she places the new dependent visa label on a clean page in her passport and she enters as a dependent at that time.
So given that, we do have her contract expiring in a few weeks and it’s going to take six to eight weeks for the Immigration Department to finalise her her dependent visa application, it just seems to me that she can carry on working for you through to the April termination of contract date, and have her dependent visa application pending throughout all of that time, anticipate that it’s going to get approved prior to April and then, as I say, relinquish her foreign domestic helper visa at the time that it expires, naturally, and take her dependent visa out off to Macau and come back and activate her dependent visa status upon re-entry in the way that I described a little bit earlier.
So it seems to me that you’ve got all the necessary dynamics in place to make that conversion happen. And it seems to me that you’ve got more than sufficient time for all of that to play itself out until her current contract expires. And naturally enough, even though she has a dependent visa application in the pipeline that’s not yet approved until it does get approved.
So until such a time as it gets approved, her foreign domestic helper visa status will prevail nonetheless. And, of course, she’s here in Hong Kong under that status, to provide services to you. So she will certainly be able to work for you during all of that time.
I hope you found that useful.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
One of the more frustrating aspects of dealing with the Hong Kong Immigration Department is the almost total lack of visibility on why applications get refused. No more so when it relates to a ‘limited purpose’ application for a visa to visit Hong Kong.
QUESTION
Hi
I applied for my customer a visitor visa who is a Pakistani passport holder, which has been refused. How do I obtain information or minutes, reason etc from Hong Kong Immigration. I understand there is a way we can ask them, if it could be advised.
Thanks with appreciation.
ANSWER
When it comes to appealing the decision of the Immigration Department to refuse an application for a visitor visa, your options are extremely limited. There’s certainly no formal avenue of appeal. Effectively, what you need to do is to try to ascertain, as best you can the reason for the Immigration Department’s refusal and then submit a second application that squarely addresses the shortcomings that you believe have led to the department’s refusal in the first place.
The problem is that, of course, the Immigration Department is a division of the security branch, so they exercise their responsibilities in light of the security of Hong Kong; and for the last several years, Pakistani nationals have routinely struggled to secure immigration status in Hong Kong, not least the visitor visas, because there has been many, many instances previously of Afghan nationals traveling internationally on fake Pakistani passports.
And, for all practical purposes, Immigration Department don’t have the ability to assess the quality of the travel documents at the point of the issue of the visit visa; so in the main, they tend to err on the side of caution and unless the applicant has got a significant track record of prior visits to Hong Kong on a trouble free basis, or he, through the provision of documentation in the application, can manifestly demonstrate that there is a significant applicant in question, a wealthy applicant, very successful businessperson or something that, on the face of the application, allows the Immigration Department to conclude that there would be no risk of overstay or no risk of security concerns during the time that applicant was in Hong Kong. Then you can expect Immigration epartment to say no rather than yes. So I wouldn’t be too surprised by the fact of the refusal. It does happen and I’ve certainly seen it.
Now, turning to the issue of being able to secure the necessary information to have another run – the first point of call is to call the Immigration officer who’s responsible for notifying you of the refusal and quietly sort of, you know, ask him as to what problems they had with the application to see if there’s any shortcomings that the applicant and with your support can address so that the second application might meet with a different outcome.
Failing that, or indeed supporting that, you’ve got the opportunity to request information under personal data privacy ordinanceand also under the government code of access to information, the links to which I’ve set out in the post, there are specific preclusions as to what the immigration department will release under the code.
Whatever papers that you get from them, you can expect to be significantly redacted, so as to protect the Immigration Department’s internal policy and deliberations over the application so you can get a sense for what might be wrong with it. Will it tell you definitively in terms of, yes, the reason we refuse is this, no, you’re not going to get that information. At best, it’s going to allow you to make an informed decision about whether you genuinely feel that there’s a chance of getting this refusal effectively overturned on the subsequent application. But again, because we’re talking about a visitor to Hong Kong, this person has no rights, absolutely no rights whatsoever.
The Immigration Department will exercise their discretion, as they see fit to best protect the interests of Hong Kong as a whole, and their sense is that, well, occasionally, if the interests of an individual applicant or their supporter or sponsor in Hong Kong are not being fully reflected or represented in the decision that they make, then actually it’s just a case from their perspective of it just being a casualty of the implementation of a policy that, as I said, is designed to protect Hong Kong.
So it’s unfortunate but you do have the opportunity to have another go at it. The door isn’t closed, as I say. The two pieces of law that I’ve detailed in the post that answers this question, will give you the next steps, approach to what’s going on. But in my experience, I wouldn’t be too excited about the possibility of getting the refusal all the time. It’s just unfortunate that Pakistan is where Pakistan is now geopolitically and with the security concerns. The Immigration Department has been indeed very tough about these nationals.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Could a prolonged visitor hope to get Permanent Residency in Hong Kong?
Short and sweet question today, but an important answer so worthy of a PodCast answer (I get loads of questions each day and I answer all of those capable of an answer (many are not – eg “I want to work in HK can you get me a job and help with the visa”?) . The really simple ones get 2 or 3 sentence email responses, often containing links to previously answered questions).
Where an issue has not been addressed previously, its added to the PodCast immigration knowledge base which is slowly building over time. In any event, we’ll answer every question we receive so long as it falls within our remit to do so.
QUESTION
My female life partner has been staying in Hong Kong under a “de facto wife” visa of 6 months which has been renewed already for several years.
Would she be entitled to ask for permanent residency if she continues to get this kind of visa for a total of 7 years ?
ANSWER
When a foreign national secures a prolonged visitor visa in Hong Kong, effectively, the Immigration Department have done an assessment of the life circumstances of the applicant, together with their sponsoring partner in Hong Kong, and have determined that for the purposes of family reunion, they should effect a positive act of discretion and allow that person to remain in Hong Kong on an extended and a prolonged basis, subject to all the conditions of stay that apply to visitor visa holders.
Consequently, all time spent in Hong Kong as a visitor visa holder, irrespective of the rationale for the Immigration Department enabling the grant of the visitor visa to the foreign national, that time does not count towards permanent residency in the HKSAR because by definition it’s a visitor visa, it isn’t a residence visa and therefore it doesn’t qualify.
Consequently, this is one of the great downsides of having a prolonged visitor visa – it works in the short term to allow non traditional families to remain together, but, effectively it sets the couple on a dual track strategy. The partner who is sponsoring the visitor visa holder effectively is marching towards the potential for the Right of Abode after seven years whilst the prolong visa visa holding partner, unfortunately, he’s not.
So the answer to the question is in the negative, I’m afraid.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Is it possible to stop working in Hong Kong under an employment visa, move to another country to work yet leave your family behind to continue their lives in here without you day to day?
QUESTION
Hi,I have got valid Hong Kong employment visa and i am living in Hong Kong since last 4 years with my family.
Now for work I might have to shift to Malaysia.
But as my daughter has recently started school, I want my family to stay in Hong Kong.
So what are my options here?
Can I ask my company to apply for extension even though I will be mainly based in Malaysia?
Worst case scenario my family moves with me to Malaysia but I want to avoid as it will disturb my whole family.
ANSWER
As a temporary resident holding an employment visa here, your family will be entitled to secure dependent visas and that will avail them of the ability to live in Hong Kong whilst you carry on your employment duties. However, if your employment visa is unable to be extended for any reason, in this instance because you’re going to be relocating to Malaysia, but unfortunately, the dependent visas which, accompany your employment visa enabling your family to live with you, they will be, effectively cancelled.
At the same time as your employment visa is unable to be renewed because you will no longer have accounting rationale as an employee in Hong Kong because you are not going to be working here, you are going to be working in Malaysia. So for all practical purposes, if your employment contract in Hong Kong comes to an end, thereby disabusing you or disavowing you of the ability to have an employment visa, then unfortunately your family’s dependent visas are not going to continue.
However, if you can enter into an arrangement with your employer such that your employment in Hong Kong will continue, that your deployment to Malaysia will be for just a temporary deployment, and that it’s always going to be the intention of your employer to have you back in Hong Kong and therefore they’re prepared to continue your Hong Kong employment irrespective of the time that you’re going to be spending in Malaysia, then in those circumstances, you will be able to get an extension to your employment visa.
And of course, your family’s dependent visas will also be extendable. And, at that point, effectively your family can live in Hong Kong, you can go to Malaysia, be based in Malaysia on a temporary basis or at least for the life of the assignment there maintaining your Hong Kong employment throughout all this time, and at the end of that temporary, albeit, potentially lengthy stay in Malaysia, you will be returning back to Hong Kong to carry on the employment that you’ve always been doing in Hong Kong. And as I say, your family will have been, able to reside in Hong Kong at all times. So effectively that’s your most realistic option.
Just turning now to the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme (QMAS), the reality is that unless you are something akin to a Nobel Prize winner or you’ve won a gold medal in the Olympics, or you happen to be Chinese because 77% of all approvals go to mainland Chinese, and the fact that the QMAS is a complete black box that you don’t have any visibility over as to how you might potentially be able to stay in Hong Kong or have your family stay in Hong Kong under that programme, I think it’s a very, very long shot to anticipate that the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme is going to address the solution to your particular quandary here.
Now, as regards any other particular immigration status, I mean, the only thing that springs to mind that might help you is if you’ve got HKD$10 million that you’re prepared to invest into Hong Kong under the capital investment entrance scheme. And as long as you’ve owned those HKD$10 million in assets for two years immediately prior to submitting your application, and you have the ability to hang out in Hong Kong for six to eight months for the time that it takes Immigration Department to complete that type of application.
If you’ve got those resources and you’ve got that time at your disposal, then you could be eligible for a capital investment entrance scheme visa. So for all practical purposes, that’s really about the shape of it. Your wife herself could get a student visa availing your child to get a dependent visa, and that would keep your family as an independent unit in Hong Kong, irrespective of where you are. So you might want to think about that.
But beyond that, I suspect all the other options are exhausted. Unless, of course, your wife is an entrepreneur and she wants to go on to secure a business investment visa in her own right, which would then effectively mean her dependent visa, which is reliant upon your continuing employment in Hong Kong, that dependent visa would end and she would be able to secure a business investment visa independently of you, and thereby go on to be able to sponsor your child for a dependent visa, and then your child will be able to remain in Hong Kong, too.
So, in terms of the visa options on the back of you, I think we’ve discussed all of those. But if there is, an opportunity for your wife to independently secure immigration status, potentially getting a job because she is deemed to be a professional under the General Employment Policy, she could take that route as well.
So I would say that those are probably the options that are available to you as two discrete parties, to your immigration and your residence in Hong Kong. I hope this helps.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Sometimes, people find themselves in a state of ‘administrative flux’ as one employment visa ends and the circumstances for a new employment visa have not yet, for one reason or another, materialised. The question is, however, can you easily return to / be in Hong Kong as a visitor whilst these wrinkles get ironed out over time?
First Published September 3, 2013 – Still of Interest Today
QUESTION
I have been living and working in Hong Kong for the past three years on a valid employment visa which has expired yesterday (2/9/2013).
I finished my employment earlier in the month (I am not continuing with them) and went to Canada for a holiday.
I returned to Hong Kong last night (2nd), hoping to enter on a visitor visa, however I arrived in HK at 10:00 pm they said I could only enter under my employment visa (as it was still valid for another 2 hours).
Therefore this morning, at Immigration Tower I was told I was a technical overstayer (by one day) and they have gave me another 2 days to exit Hong Kong which I plan to do tomorrow via Macau and stay for one night.
On my return on Friday I hope to be given a 3 month visitor visa.
My questions to you are:
(1) Do you think they will allow me to come back in once I have left?
(2) Do you have any advice on what I should say to the admissions officer?
ANSWER
Yes. So, in this instance, I think you’ll find that when you make your reentry back into Hong Kong, the officer at the Macau ferry terminal will assess your bona fide as a visitor on the strength of the fact that you have just had an employment visa expire.
And it’s manifestly clear from the fact of your recent expiry and the trip in and out of Macau and what has happened down immigration tower that you’re just in the process of trying to regularize your immigration status whilst you find yourself in a state of administrative flux between employment positions.
And so you’ll find that the immigration officer won’t really question you too hard as to what your intentions are. And I think the risk of being refused entry is very low indeed. Now, in terms of what you tell the officer, you simply tell him the truth – what brings you back to Hong Kong at this time, what your intentions are, and allow him to assess your bona fide on the strength of your representations. And you’ll find that, ou know, in 99 times out of 100, he’ll just stamp you for 90 days and then you come. I don’t think you’ll have any problems.
Hope this helps.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Is it possible to lose your job (your Hong Kong Employment Visa), cruise through 12 months without working here, spend three months away in China studying then make an application for the right of abode with no questions asked?
First Published October 6, 2013 – still of interest today
QUESTION
Hello, I have lived and worked continuously in Hong Kong for the past 6 years, and less than 1 year away from applying for my PR (right to abode application).
I am currently unemployed, but have an active work visa from my previous employer which doesn’t expire until November 2014. I intend to submit my HK PR application in August 2014.
I am keen to study mandarin in China for a short duration of time (less than 3 months), but will be required to apply for an F visa to study there (due to my nationality).
As that time away from Hong Kong is less than six months and I intend to keep my rental flat in Hong Kong, will the application for stay in China for my studies in any way affect my status for the HK PR application next year?
I don’t want in any way to risk jeopardizing being turned down for my right of abode.
ANSWER
The key issue here is that during the time when you have an employment visa, but you don’t hold a job, what has your efforts been during that time to show that you have maintained continuing intent to be settled? So there’s a kind of an expectation that if you stop working, then you’ll be engaging in activities that would allow you to restart work again as soon as the right moment came along, and that you weren’t just sort of cruising your time all the way through to the seven year mark.
So you do have a burden of proving your continuing intent to settle during the time just prior to making your application for the Right of Abode if you don’t have an employment at that time. So if you then factor into that challenge, desire to go and spend three months away in China studying that’s not excellent evidence in of itself, as to your intention when you are leaving Hong Kong because it depends on what you did before you went off to study and what you do immediately upon your return from studying.
So you need to think about that particular challenge and what this next phase of your life represents, how you can articulate that to the Immigration Department, come the time that you have to pass the approvability test for the Right of Abode.
Okay, I hope you found that useful.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Documenting proof of the genuine nature of your relationship is a condition precedent to the grant of a dependant visa with the burden of proof decreasing the longer you have been married. Consequently, the newer your relationship / marriage the greater the onus is on you to satisfy ImmD that this relationship does not exist just for visa purposes.
QUESTION
Dear Stephen,
I’m a 41 year old Brit who has been living here for 3.5 years. I am on an employment visa.
My Girlfriend is Indonesian, has been here for 1.5 years and is currently on a 2-year domestic helper contract (and visa) that will end in January 2020
We have been together for 6 months and plan to get married in the next 6-12 months.
The domestic helper visa/girlfriend scheme is obviously out of the question since it’s against the law and I’ve read somewhere else on your site not to get married for visa reasons.
But, knowing immigration’s obvious bias against Filipinos and Indonesians, what will I need to do in order to prove to immigration that we want to marry in order to be together here and start a family and also provide her a better situation? (I’m obviously looking to have her as a dependant).
Just to share our mindset on this: I consider myself a proud immigrant here and not an expat and my girlfriend and I consider that our right to live here is way too important to risk it by “gaming the system”.
My early and cautious assumptions on this, given immigration’s bias, is that they might ask for proofs of relationship so I’ve already started backing up our whatsapp conversations to cover that side of things.
What is the best way to prove to Immigration that we are marrying for the right reasons?
How do we do the right thing ?
Thanks in advance.
ANSWER
Thanks for your question. The right kind of visa in this instance is the dependent visa, and the dependent visa will be available to you at the point of your fiance having become your legal wife through having completed the formalities of a legal marriage. And at that time you will need to be able to satisfy three components to the approvability test.
First, you’ll need to satisfy that you can put a roof over her head and food on her table, because the nature of the visa is such that your fiance will need to show that she’s in a sense dependent on you. So being a good provider is a vitally important part of that.
So you’ll need to show your proof of income and that you’ve got the financial resources to support in your marriage. So, in addition to that, you’re going to have to show that your relationship is a genuine relationship, that you haven’t just sort of come together at the last minute to contrive a situation so that one party can go on to secure a dependent visa.
So the Immigration Department’s policy in relation to the proof of general relationship is that, in actual fact, when you are in a loving, committed, lifelong relationship with a partner, you generate a significant amount of evidence just through the normal pattern of your lives that can speak to the genuine nature of that relationship.
So for example, have you had an engagement party? Are you planning an engagement party? Have you got any proof to show that that has occurred? What paperwork have you got? What photographs exist? In relation to rings, have you got the receipts for the engagement ring? Have you already purchased the wedding rings? If so, show the receipts to the Immigration Department.
Another, good proof of social confirmation that your relationship is genuine is photographs with your respective families, emails going back over time between the two of you, independent written confirmation of friends and other upstanding members of the community.
All of these things, in addition to you having a record of your WhatsApp conversations, will go towards satisfying the Immigration Department that this relationship isn’t flashing the panel and hasn’t come together just for immigration purposes, but it is in fact a genuine, committed relationship that’s going to last your lifetimes.
Now bearing in mind that if she’s going to become your legal dependent, she’s going to need to acquire that status and she can make an application to adjust from foreign domestic helper, through to temporary visitor onto dependent visa while she’s in Hong Kong on the basis that she’s completing her contract.
On the other hand, if, after six months, when her contract comes to an end, you are trying for her to remain in Hong Kong as a visitor until such a time as you can complete the nutcracker, I think you’ll find that the Immigration Department won’t play ball with that.
They’ll give her a one time, two-week only extension, and then she’ll have to leave. She can then come back at any point in time as a visitor, but, the question is begged as to whether or not the Immigration department are going to allow the fact of your intending nuptials to be a good reason for her to remain in Hong Kong as a visitor until you actually complete your wedding formalities accordingly.
So if you’re planning to marry twelve months down the road, anticipate that from month six through to month twelve after her current FDH contract has come to an end, you’re going to struggle to be together on the basis that you have not yet gotten married. But if you do get married before her current limited stay expires as a foreign domestic helper, then you can put an application in to convert directly from foreign domestic helper temporarily through the visitor into dependent visa. So just bear that in mind from a practical and logistics perspective.
And I just want to raise a point here in fairness and in defence of the Immigration Department, because you do state on a couple of occasions that you believe that they are obviously biased against Filipinos and Indonesians. I think it’s important to appreciate that foreign domestic helpers come to Hong Kong on a very strict set of conditions that are embodied in their foreign domestic helper visa contract.
Those terms and conditions were negotiated between the Filipino government and the Hong Kong government, and the Indonesian government and the Hong Kong government as being the satisfactory set of arrangements to protect the interests of their nationals. And from an immigration perspective, the Hong Kong immigration perspective, they administer those international agreements in light of what’s been prescribed, as how the protections for these nationals should be afforded during their time in Hong Kong.
And also the Immigration Department have to deal with hundreds of thousands of Filipinos and Indonesians, entire foreign domestic helpers. It’s the single biggest part of their workload. So when you understand the way that Filipino and Indonesian foreign domestic helpers are here in Hong Kong, and the legal arrangements that have been negotiated internationally for their protection, and the fact that they are the largest single body of migrants that need to be administered on a regular basis, it’s easy to assume that the Immigration Department are biased against these nationals, but they are not. These nationals, in fact, are just part of a very large system that they have bought into and that system prescribes effectively what they can and what they cannot do for immigration purposes. So I do feel that we need to defend the Immigration Department in this respect, because they come under a lot of flack, for situations that are not of their own making at all. And it is, in this instance, just the perception that there is bias, but there is no bias. The reality is it is all governed by agreement, both at the individual level and also at the international level.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
