Hong Kong Visas Made Easy

Why Do Hong Kong Technology Startups Mostly Struggle To Win Investment Visa Approvals For Their Founders?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in 60 Second Snapshot, Employment Visas, Investment Visas / No responses

I’m often asked how feasible business investment visas are for foreign nationals seeking to establish a new technology start up here.

Bootstrappping and running Lean can be a double edged sword as a foreign national starting up in Hong Kong…

The actual extent of the challenge is, in fact, no more onerous than it has always been – namely the foreign entrepreneur needs to be able to show that he or she can make a substantial contribution to the economy of Hong Kong in order to have a business investment visa application approved.

To this end, the normal three legged business investment visa approvability test must be satisfied, namely that the business must be homed in premises suitable for the business, there must be a clear pathway to the creation of local employment opportunities and the business must be properly resourced, meaning sufficient cash and other business-critical resources present so that the Immigration Department can be satisfied that the business will go on to become a solidly entrenched commercial enterprise.

But here’s the problem with most technology start ups.

Unless very well funded from the outset, most of them are boot strapped, most of them are run according to the Lean philosophy – and most of them fail, and the Immigration Department know this.

Where the present approvability criteria demand a ‘substantial contribution to the economy of Hong Kong’ the vast majority of technology start ups are simply unable to pass the test – making Hong Kong a very hard place indeed for foreign blood to come in and help Hong Kong transition into a fully fledged connection economy.

There are ways to improve your chances of success, though, requiring a realignment of your plans and an increase in available capital to fund your ambitions.

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The Quality Migrant Admission Scheme – A Practical Guide

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Musing, Special Programmes / No responses

In this section of the talk, I talk about the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme (QMAS) – this much maligned programme that is ‘on the books’ so we continue to provide coverage of it (of course!)

On March 21, 2014 I gave a presentation at the Chinese Club entitled Business Immigration to Hong Kong – A Practical Guide. The content is still relevant today and can be summarised as follows:

The purpose of the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme is to attract highly skilled or talented individuals to settle in Hong Kong, with the aim of enhancing Hong Kong’s economic competitiveness. Unlike other visa schemes, successful applicants are not required to have secured a job offer in Hong Kong prior to their arrival. However, all applicants must meet a set of prerequisites before they can be awarded points under one of the two points-based tests: the General Points Test and the Achievement-based Points Test. These tests are used to assess applicants’ eligibility and allocate quotas accordingly.

To apply for the Scheme, the applicant must:

– Be at least 18 years old

– Prove financial capability to support themselves and any dependents during their stay without public assistance

– Have no criminal or immigration records

– Be proficient in Chinese or English

– Have a good education background, preferably with a university degree or equivalent qualifications

If the applicant fails to provide satisfactory documents to prove that they meet these requirements, their application will be refused immediately.

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LIFTING THE LID: Leaving Your Hong Kong Visa Extension To The Very Last Minute

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Family Visas, Investment Visas, Musing, Special Programmes / No responses

In this short piece, I discuss the impact on our practice when clients leave their Hong Kong visa extension applications to the very last minute!

In this occasional series of commentary, I provide a peek inside our professional practice and offer a glimpse of what it’s like to be part of the Hong Kong Visa Centre team.

Leaving your Hong Kong visa extension application to the very last minute can be an absolute nightmare because there is a quota that the Immigration Department has each day that is allocated to people seeking to extend their visas and, of course, a lot of people leave it to the very last minute and it can be that the visa is going to expire within a day or two, and it can mean as queuing up at six o’clock in the morning to get access to the quota for the day. However, humans are humans, and things get left to the last minute very often; it’s not an ideal situation, therefore we try to encourage clients not to do that, but we service them and try and give them the best possible outcome that’s available, all things considered.

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Get Your 100% Free Hong Kong Visa Extension Kit Here

How To Apply For A Hong Kong Investment Visa Without Paying For Professional Help – 4 – Investment Visa For Mainland Chinese Applicants

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Investment Visas, Musing / No responses

I have given this talk around town for the last couple of years now and so pleased to finally add it to our coverage of the Hong Kong investment visa, specifically discussing the Hong Kong investment visa for Mainland Chinese applicants.

The talk was graciously hosted at WYND Co-working Space, ran by a group of great people who I have a lot of time for.

The Complete Talk in Logical Segments

1 – Introduction

2 – Policy

3 – Visa Problem?

4 – Mainlanders

5 – Visitors

6 – Work Visa?

7 – Investment Visa?

8 – Approvability Test

9 – Cash Needed

10 – Catch 22

11 – Loved Ones

12 – Visa Refused?

13 – Trying Again

14 – D-I-Y

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QOTW: Can I Get A Hong Kong Work Visa With No Degree?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Musing / No responses

An old chestnut this question which comes up time and time again about getting a Hong Kong work visa with no degree – albeit this time in the context of a technical apprenticeship undertaken straight out of senior high school.

QUESTION  OF  THE  WEEK

I moved to Hong Kong from France one month ago.

I came here together with my boyfriend who has started to work here (we are not married, so no dependant visa!!).

In France I was working for Company A as a customer service agent. I actually also got a job at Company A here in Hong Kong before I arrived here.

But I don’t have a university degree. I did my A-Levels in France followed by a 2,5 year apprenticeship in my niche and after that I worked there for about 2 years.

What are my chances to get the working visa, without holding a University degree?

ANSWER

The General Employment Policy in Hong Kong calls for applicants for employment visas to have a university degree; however, what happens if you don’t have a university degree but have technical qualifications instead? Could an applicant who possesses special skills, knowledge, or experience of value to and not readily available in Hong Kong, obtain an employment visa?

Generally, an employment visa applicant is expected to have a university degree and at least two years post-graduation working experience in a managerial or supervisory capacity; however, what happens in real life is that not everybody goes to university and there are plenty of people in Hong Kong who do have working visas but they never went to university themselves; therefore, how did they get their visas?

Essentially, the Immigration Department have a certain amount of flexibility and in general terms, if you don’t have a university degree but you have technical qualifications the immigration department will expect you to have at least five years post-qualification working experience in the managerial or supervisory capacity, and if you don’t have technical qualifications you’re expected to have at least 10 years of working experience in a managerial or supervisory capacity; so, in this instance it seems to me that you haven’t yet quite met the five years post-qualification working experience in the managerial or supervisory capacity that you need and therefore I suspect you might find it difficult to persuade the Immigration Department that you should be granted an employment visa in your circumstances; and, of course, aligned with all of this, is this overarching question – does the work that’s being offered to you, can actually be undertaken by a local person, and that’s an objective test and the immigration department will make the determination based on all of the evidence that they’ve got bundled up inside the application.

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Can I Study Online For A UK Tertiary Qualification While Staying In Hong Kong With A Visitor Visa?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Visitor Visas, Your Question Answered / No responses

This question gets to the heart of permitted activity as a Visitor and the ability to remain here on an indefinite basis on that status.

QUESTION

Hi, I am a New Zealander currently staying in Hong Kong with my partner who is a permanent HKID card holder.

I do not have a HKID card, just a tourist visa, and I wish to study a university degree via correspondence (online study) from a UK university.

Do I need a Hong Kong student visa or a visa of any kind to do this?

ANSWER

The final analysis, whatever is deemed to be permitted activity as a visitor visa holder is actually driven by the determination of the Immigration Department to prosecute for breach of conditions of stay. And so, in my experience, if you’ve made the decision that you want to remain physically in Hong Kong and undertake a course of study with a foreign education institute, doing it online remotely, I believe you’d be very unlucky or unfortunate for the Immigration Department to want to prosecute you for breach of conditions of stay.

So, I’d certainly hazard a very positive guess that you’d be perfectly okay to undertake that course of study while you’re in Hong Kong as a visitor. But that’s not the real issue here. The real issue is the fact that you’re obviously intending to remain here on an indefinite long stay basis, and the visitor visa category isn’t really designed for people to stay in Hong Kong on an indefinite long stay basis; therefore, you need to have a formal rationale for being in Hong Kong on a long stay indefinite basis. However, considering the current circumstances that you find yourself in, unfortunately you’re in a round peg square hole situation – you’re here with your partner who’s a permanent identity card holder, but you’re not married to him and therefore the rationale of dependency and family reunion doesn’t strictly apply. Thus, you can’t get yourself a legal dependence visa. If you have had a history of prior cohabitation with your partner, particularly overseas, prior to arriving in Hong Kong, it becomes possible to conceive of you procuring a prolonged visitor visa on the strength of your pre-existing relationship and that in a know would couch you as de facto spouses.

However, if it’s a boyfriend- girlfriend-type situation and the relationship is relatively new (and relatively new for these purposes is sort of two years or less) you may struggle to persuade the Immigration Department to grant you a prolonged visitor visa for you to remain in Hong Kong under his charge, as it were.

Apart from that, what you’re then left with, is running the gauntlets of the Shenzhen shuttle or frequently coming and going across the boundaries in other ways, flying possibly back to New Zealand every now and again when your 90-day period of stay as a visitor comes up for renewal.

So unfortunately, what you have at the moment is quite an unsustainable situation that is going to, at some stage or other, catch up with you.

I’ve included in this post a number of resources that deal with the question of being a long stay visitor in Hong Kong, and how the Immigration Department view these arrangements.

So, as I say, love will conquer all. I’m certain that you’ll be able to come to some sort of arrangement that will allow you to solve your problem, but it’s certainly not going to be plain sailing from here on in, and there’s certainly no visa category degree that addresses the rationale of remaining in Hong Kong in order to undertake a course of study with a remote foreign university.

I hope this helps!

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How Can You Extend Your Hong Kong Work Visa if Your Passport Is About to Expire?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Musing / 5 responses

How can you extend your Hong Kong work visa if your passport  has only a very limited amount of time remaining on it before it expires?

QUESTION

Hello,

My passport is currently being renewed but my Hong Kong work visa runs out very soon. 

However I cannot start the visa extension application process without a new passport.  

I am worried my visa will expire before the application is complete. 

Does immigration allow special extensions for such circumstances?

ANSWER

This situation would occur a lot more frequently than you might imagine and the Immigration Department have a very straightforward way of dealing with it; essentially, what you do is that you start your extension application with your old passport details – the application should be submitted within 30 days of the expiry of your current Hong Kong employment visa limit of stay, and at the same time, you submit proof of your new passport application to the Immigration Department as part of that extension exercise.

This inputs the Immigration Department that there is a new travel document in process and they will wait until the issue of your new passport in order to finalise your new extension that will go into your new passport.

I hope you find this useful!

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