Work Ended – What Visa Options Do You Have to Stay in Hong Kong For Another 2 Years to Get Your Permanent Residency?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Family Visas, Investment Visas, Long Stay & PR, Special Programmes, Your Question Answered / 3 responses

Work Ended – What Visa Options Do You Have to Stay in Hong Kong For Another 2 Years to Get Your Permanent Residency?

First Published October 14, 2012 – Updated October 2026

The question about what visa options do you have to stay in Hong Kong when you work ends and you’re not quite sure how to go next, is a popular topic that people query our websites about, so it’s timely that we received this question out of the blue yesterday. In my answer I refer to the following content resources: QMAS, Dependant Visa, Business Investment Visa.

PRACTICE UPDATE: How the content must now be read in light of current ImmD policy re Entrepreneur visa status:

Historically, this guide addressed the critical dilemma of foreign professionals facing sudden job termination after five years of continuous residence, needing to bridge the final two-year gap to reach the seven-year permanent residency threshold. The Geeza laid out a pragmatic menu of administrative bridging strategies, highlighting the GEP Investment route as an accessible self-rescue mechanism. Seasoned residents were encouraged to leverage their accumulated local background to launch a boutique advisory or consultancy: with modest seed funds of a few hundred thousand dollars, a serviced office desk, and a credible promise to secure local clients, sympathetic case officers routinely granted two-year approvals, allowing applicants to comfortably complete their countdown to Right of Abode.

The game has changed from a flexible residency preservation maneuver into a lethal institutional risk for anyone lacking heavy corporate capital. Attempting to deploy an entrepreneur visa as a personal holding vessel across the five-to-seven-year stretch now triggers the full force of TTPS Category A operational standards (~HKD 2.5M enterprise scale). ImmD grants zero quarter for past years lived in Hong Kong; the business must immediately substantiate HKD 1.5M–2.0M in deployed corporate liquidity, exclusive physical “four walls,” and active MPF payroll for 2–3 local permanent residents. Unless a laid-off professional has an accredited government incubator behind them or the immediate liquidity to fund full-scale corporate operations, pivoting to entrepreneurship to “ride out” the final two years will result in swift refusal, an immediate break in ordinary residence, and the catastrophic forfeiture of years of progress toward permanent residency.

QUESTION

“I have been working in HK since 2007 on a working visa, which expired in August 2012. Is there any legal status that I can apply for, except getting another job in HK or investing HK10m, to extend my past 5 years so that I can apply for a permanent residency in HK in 2 years time?

I travel often to other countries but I have been practically living in HK and renting an apartment since 1997.  I hold a Canadian passport.   Currently, I am here as a visitor.”

This is a very interesting question, but it’s also quite involved because it requires the essay of three particular visa categories, that may be open for your consideration to assist you to get back into residents visa permissions.

The three visa consents that you are looking at applying under potentially, which don’t include going and getting an employment visa or investing ten million dollars under the Capital Investment Entrance Scheme Visa. The only other three options available to you are the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme program, a Dependant visa or in fact a Business Investment visa.

Just dealing with these programs very quickly. The Quality Migrant Admission Scheme program could be available to you if you are particularly well educated or very well accomplished in your particular professional area of expertise. The dependant visa could be that if you were in a loving committed relationship and residents of Hong Kong and you’re not presently married obviously, then you could make an application for a dependant visa and that would give you the residents permission that you need to continue your residence here. Thirdly, if you are entrepreneurial in spirit and you’ve got a modicum of funds to invest and you can show that you can make a substantial contribution to the economy of Hong Kong, you could consider an application for Business Investment visa. Now each of these three visa categories, I’m going to include links in the body of this post, to give you access to the information.

So, those are effectively your options to bring your existing visitor visa and to regularization that a resident visa consent and then you just need to deal with the issue about the impact that all of this will have on your subsequent application after you have been here for seven years for a permanent residency status, and getting a permanent identity card in the process.

The more time you spend as a visitor without taking any steps towards regularizing your resident visa will after the fact count against you for the continuation of the ordinary residency.

However, if you are able to quickly get a new application into the system and subsequently go on to have that application approved no matter how long it takes, then that time spent as a visitor should not count against your continuous ordinary residence. I mention this particularly because the QMAS program takes five to seven months to complete. The business investment visa application only takes three to four months to complete and a dependant visa is really just an administrative exercise so that will take three or four weeks for that process to play itself out.

So there is a consideration that you need to bring into play as to what the most realistic way of getting status is available to you and how fast it will be for you to be able to bring your current tourist visa into a resident visa status.

Okay, I hope that helps in your quest to stay in Hong Kong.

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Work In Hong Kong For 5 Years – Leave For 2 – Then Return – Will I Lose My Continuous Residence for PR Purposes?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Long Stay & PR, Your Question Answered / 2 responses

Work In Hong Kong For 5 Years – Leave For 2 – Then Return – Will I Lose My Continuous Residence for PR Purposes?

It happens a lot. You stay and work in Hong Kong for 3, 4, 5 years and get over the hump en route to the magic 7 years needed for a Permanent Identity Card. Then you find yourself having to spend time away from Hong Kong to further your career, education or due to special circumstances. The issue is, however, will all this time spent in Hong Kong be lost and will you have to reset the clock once more when you eventually return after your temporary sojourn abroad?

QUESTION

“I will be leaving Hong Kong to study in Australia for the next two years. I have lived in HK for the last 5 years and would like to return after I have completed my studies.

I am wondering if it is possible to maintain my residency in Hong Kong if I returned every 4 months.  I have a work visa here that is valid until next September but will be leaving for school in July. I am hoping to get my Permanent Residency here and would like to have the five years that I have lived here count towards that instead of having to start all over when I return.

Is this possible?  Thanks.”

ANSWER

The test for permanent residency in Hong Kong is that you need to be able to show that you have been continuously and ordinarily resident here for period of not less than seven years and then the absence outside of Hong Kong in that time has been merely temporary as evidenced by what you leave behind to return back to after your time abroad. Moroever as you are leaving Hong Kong for two years, after living here for five even though in your own mind your absence is just temporary the real issue for you is that your residency, the part of the test that’s important as well as time spent away from Hong Kong needs to be addressed.

You see, you need to have held the residence visa all throughout the seven years and from the circumstances that you describe there you no longer have a residence visa while you’re away. Consequently, when you make your application after seven years it will likely fail because you haven’t been resident.

Even returning every four months won’t help you because as when you return you’ll be here only as a visitor and whilst holding the visitor visa during the seven years residency for the purposes of a right of abode application doesn’t automatically disqualify you for permanent residency.

Anytime, which you spend as a visitor needs to result from kind of administrative flux between residency visa approvals, which tend to be sort of a few weeks at most. Therefore, you are effectively abandoning your residence visa status after five years or so and then trying to pick it up again two years later.

That won’t be deemed due to administrative flux, it will be likely that the Immigration Department will see you as having abandoned your residency so that you can spend this time in Australia but the time that you come back to Hong Kong really is just as a visitor and that, and when you make your application subsequently  for you right of abode I’m afraid the Immigration Department will more than likely conclude that you did abandon your continuity of residency at the time that you set off to Australia to commence your studies.

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I Would Like To Apply For A Job Seekers Visa For Hong Kong – How Do I Go About Doing It?

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

I Would Like To Apply For A Job Seekers Visa For Hong Kong – How Do I Go About Doing It?

Hong Kong immigration is rife with visa gossip and rumours so I am pleased this question has been raised as it allows me to slay an old dragon once and for all!

QUESTION

Hi Stephen,

Thanks ever so much for your amazing website. I have never seen anything like this before – and I can’t believe it’s all free!

I have been looking around for details about the Job Seekers Visa For Hong Kong but can’t find anything.

Does this visa actually exist?

I have been told by a couple of people that I can come and live here for 3 months no questions asked as I look for a job, then swap that job seekers visa over to a work visa.

How do I go about doing this?

Thank you again!

ANSWER

In Hong Kong there is no such animal as a job seekers visa, that’s the bottom line!

This old chestnut has been kicking around for quite some time now and I’m glad that this question has been raised in the way that it has because it allows me to deal with it.

I think there’s a certain amount of confusion between the immigration status that you get as a visitor at the border for those nationals that are entitled to a 90-day period of stay when they arrive.

And potentially also under the working holiday visa, which allows you to work for 90 days for any single employer during the 12-month period that you hold such a working holiday visa.

So in a sense, you might be confusing the visitor visa and the working holiday visa, which both avail the ability to look for work. Given that seeking a job in Hong Kong as a visitor and indeed as a working holiday visa holder is permitted activity.

Whilst if you’re a visitor visa holder looking for a job, it isn’t permitted activity to take up any employment offer that results from you looking for that work.

But to suggest that there is a discrete immigration status called a job seekers visa is erroneous. And it could possibly be a confusion from some other jurisdiction that that perhaps avails that type of permission to be in Hong Kong to look for work.

So, there is no such thing as a job seekers visa. Come as a visitor – it is permitted activities to look for work as a visitor. If you have a working holiday visa, in any event, you can look for work. And indeed you can take up employment for up to three months with a single employer during the currency of that visa.

But job seekers visa itself, no, doesn’t exist.

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How Easy Is It To Secure A Work Visa Issued Under The Immigration Arrangements For Non-Local Graduates On The Basis Of Freelance Employment?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Long Stay & PR, Musing, Special Programmes, Your Question Answered / No responses

How Easy Is It To Secure A Work Visa Issued Under The Immigration Arrangements For Non-Local Graduates On The Basis Of Freelance Employment?

Can you realistically expect to work for yourself if your employment permissions have been granted under IANG?

PRACTICE UPDATE: How to read in light of current ImmD policy:

While the historical scenario examined by the Hong Kong Visa Geeza in How Easy Is It To Secure A Work Visa Issued Under The Immigration Arrangements For Non-Local Graduates On The Basis Of Freelance Employment? correctly identified that an entrant could utilize the unmonitored flexibility of an unexpired IANG stay to freelance and cross the seven-year threshold toward the Right of Abode, it must now be read through the modern regulatory framework set out by Stephen Barnes in Practice Update: Hong Kong’s IANG Visa: the scheme has shifted from a passive retention mechanism into an active economic participation assessment, meaning any attempt to secure formal ongoing extensions as a self-employed professional can no longer rely on paper corporate formalities and instead demands verifiable commercial substance under the operative rule: “A registered company, by itself, should not be assumed to establish sufficient grounds for an extension. Applicants should be prepared to demonstrate genuine commercial activity.”

QUESTION

Hi Stephen, thanks a lot for answering the questions on this website.

I must say that all the information on visageeza.com is of immense value.

I would like to pose a question regarding the Immigration Arrangement for Non-local Graduates (“IANG”) visa renewal.

Currently I am on an IANG visa which has been sponsored by my current employer.

I would like to know that shortly after the IANG visa has been granted (say few days or weeks after the approval), can I change my job or leave my job for whatever reason and start my own freelance consulting?

Is it really something permissible in the eyes of the immigration?

My second question is linked with my first one.

Let’s say if I leave my job and after leaving my job I cross the seven year mark, what impact would this have on my Right of Abode application?

I would really appreciate your help on this matter.

Thanks a lot.

ANSWER

To maintain your immigration status under the immigration arrangements for non-local graduates, each time you present yourself for an extension of stay, you need to have a valid employer and you need to be able to demonstrate to the Immigration Department that you’re being paid a compensation that’s broadly commensurate with market rates and that you are engaged in work that’s related in some way to your education and background.

Moreover, the sponsoring employer needs to be suitable and credible, all things considered. So, you can essentially get yourself an extension under immigration arrangements for non-local graduate sponsored by a current employer. Then you could cease working for that current employer and then conceptually, you could start to engage in your own freelance activities.

Whether or not the Immigration Department would deem your freelance activities to be sufficiently suitable at the time that you’re next IANG application came up for consideration, is another matter again, because the Immigration Department, in those circumstances, expect you to have established a sizeable business. Which for all practical purposes, means you need to pass the approvability test to show that you can make a substantial contribution to the economy of Hong Kong. And in that regard, I’d suggest that you read the information on our websites about the business investment visa, because it’s no small challenge to be able to secure an ongoing sponsorship in Hong Kong on the basis of your own, in a sense, freelance activities. So, that answers the first part of your question.

In so far as the second part of your question goes, let’s set the scene. For example, let’s says that you’ve been here under continuous residence visa permissions for six and a half years and that your current IANG Visa has just recently been extended and you’ve secured a one-year limit of stay, which is then going to take you conceptually to a full seven and a half years’ worth of continuous ordinary residence in Hong Kong, holding back-to-back residence visas throughout all of this time. So the point of seven years, of course, you can make your application for the right of abode and at that point you have to show that you have been continuously and ordinarily resident in Hong Kong for those seven years.

There is no inquiry as to what you’re doing in relation to your existing employment. The Immigration Department will want to see that you do have a valid period of stay under employment status and they will typically not look for confirmation as to how you’re going to be spending your time under your 12 months of immigration arrangements for non-local graduates.

Therefore, conceptually, it might be that you can get to seven years by having extended your immigration arrangements for non-local graduates’ visa and then gone off and freelance for a few months before making the right of abode application. And because at the time that you get your right of abode application approved, all conditions will be lifted as to your continuing residence in Hong Kong, you would then typically not be called to account for any time that you spent under immigration arrangements for non-local graduates, once you were freelancing as such. So that’s the upshot of it.

And I hope you found that useful!

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What Exactly Do You Need To Include In A Visa Application To Join In A Side Business In Hong Kong?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Your Question Answered / 2 responses

What Exactly Do You Need To Include In A Visa Application To Join In A Side Business In Hong Kong?

So, you sense there’s an opportunity to augment your salary with some freelance work so how do you go about making an application to join in a side business in Hong Kong?

QUESTION

Dear Visa Geeza,

I have listened to your podcasts regarding sole proprietorship and followed the information given.

Background information – I am currently working as a Business Manager (3+ years) for a Hong Kong based company who holds my working visa.

My employer has agreed that I can work outside of my current company as a sole proprietor / freelance.

I have registered and got my BRC and waiting on forms to open a bank account.

My questions is, what is the best way to approach immigration / who to write to regarding acceptance of my sole proprietorship?

1) My employer to write a letter confirming that they allow me to work outside the company – is there anything you would advise to include / not include?

2) A personal letter from myself outlining my business activates / plan – during work for my current company I have been approached by a number of other businesses and sometimes friends who want certain services for Hong Kong companies.

Do I need to outline in detail or just explain what services I will be offering?

Do I then need to link how this will benefit Hong Kong and potentially create new jobs etc?

Any advice would be great as this will hopefully be the last step and I can start accepting work during my free time and keep immigration happy.

Thanks!

ANSWER

Yes, so as you’ve understood going about getting the permission of the director immigration to joining the side business requires you essentially to get the permission of your current employer to confirm that they have no objection to you taking up this side business, and they need to do that in writing.

And in so far as the inclusions essentially so long as the employer, sponsor clearly denotes that he has no objection to taking up that side employment then really that’s the sum of that correspondence part to the Immigration Department.

Then in terms of a personal letter from yourself outlining a business activity, yes, essentially what you do is you talk about the work that you do for your current employer, how you have sufficient time, free time that you could use productively, and you’ve been approached by various parties in Hong Kong to provide those services. Consequently, in anticipation of the Immigration Department approving you to uptake that side business, you have established a sole proprietorship, and you are standby ready to begin work on side projects the moment the director of immigration authorizes it in writing.

So, yes, I would essentially set out in your current letter to the Immigration Department, the rationale for you wishing to take up that side employment. At this point I wouldn’t really get into issues about how it’s going to benefit Hong Kong and potentially create new jobs and the like, the expectation of a side business is that it’s something you do on the side, something that supplements and supports the income that you receive from your current employer and by giving you permission to join in the side business the Immigration Department essentially saying okay, we acknowledge that you have other talents that could be marketable, we don’t particularly want to stand in your way of you being able to exercise those marketable talents for profitable end, just so long as your current employers employment interests are not compromised by your proposed side business activities hence the Immigration Department needing the permission of the employer to go forward with an approval for such an application.

So, yes I wouldn’t harp on too much about how we’re going to create local jobs and add a lot of value to the economy of Hong Kong. Essentially the side business process anticipates that there is some value creating activity, there’s no need to argue for it as such and clearly if you do believe you’re going to create new jobs then that begs the question as to whether or not that’s a part time side business or whether it’s a full time business and if it’s a full time business and clearly you need to stop working for your current employer and make an application for a wholly-fledged business investment visa instead.

So, essentially those are the 2 things you need to be thinking about when crafting your letter to support the proposition that you should be allowed to join in your side business.

Okay, its application to the 5th floor of immigration tower address to the residence section, you can send it in by mail, there’s no need to show up with your passport to progress this type of application and the Immigration Department will deal with you by correspondence through to your approval.

Okay, I hope you found that useful.

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I Am An Independent Contractor Not An Employee – Can I Get An Employment Visa As An Intercompany Transferee?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Investment Visas, Your Question Answered / 4 responses

I Am An Independent Contractor Not An Employee – Can I Get An Employment Visa As An Intercompany Transferee?

Sometimes, round-pegs-in-square-holes situations crop up which make the challenge of securing a Hong Kong employment visa especially daunting!

This question raises a very interesting set of circumstances which make for an interesting visa application experience ahead!

QUESTION

“I have been working for the same group of companies for the last 7 years. We have operations in both Singapore and Shanghai turning over approximately USD7 million each year. While I am based in Singapore, my employer wants me to relocate full time to oversee our operations in Hong Kong. Our Hong Kong company has no staff and only a ‘brass plaque’ presence, however, we have been booking profits there for the last couple of years and can show a USD2 million turnover. This will increase by another USD3 million in the next 12 months. I have been providing my services to the group via a Pte Ltd company in Singapore since the very beginning and will be doing the same thing in Hong Kong through my own Hong Kong Ltd company which I established 6 months ago in the expectation of this relocation. My annual contract is valued at USD150,000 p.a. plus bonuses. The Hong Kong business will grow with my relocation there and we will hire local employees and share an office, initially, with one of our trading partners – although it will take 9-12 months for any of this to happen. What type of visa am I looking at, what documents should I prepare and how long will it all take? Thanks!”

ANSWER

Essential Approvability of Your Circumstances

Given the size and nature of your company’s commercial endeavours in both Singapore and Shanghai along with the fact that your Hong Kong company is showing a historical turnover of c.USD2 million in the recent past and will likely record a further c.USD3 million in the next 12 months, there is little doubt, in my opinion, that your company’s ‘story’ for Hong Kong will pass muster with the Hong Kong Immigration Department (“HKID”).

Moreover, the fact that you are a 7 years strong ‘defacto’ intercompany transferee being deployed to Hong Kong from Singapore in pursuit of that story, gives me confidence in being able to advise you that, when your application for a Hong Kong residence visa made under the General Employment Policy has played itself out, you will indeed be granted the immigration permissions you are seeking to allow you to direct, manage and oversee the Hong Kong activities of your group as you have set them out in your question.

The Principal Challenge

The fact that you are not a formal employee of the group business but are an independent contractor places you in a round pegs in square holes situation in so far as your application to the HKID goes.

Under the General Employment Policy, an application for an employment visa on an intercompany transferee basis is usually a quite straightforward affair. Ostensibly, you need to adduce evidence to the HKID of your current employment with a group company (official governmental filings evidencing you as an employee usually serve this role), produce an employment contract extended from the Hong Kong entity to you personally to cover your ‘transfer’ into Hong Kong and then set out educating the HKID as to how the economy of Hong Kong will be substantially benefitted by your Hong Kong company being afforded the privilege of being deemed an acceptable sponsor for your employment visa permissions.

This Infographic lays out in simple terms what’s involved in the out and out employment visa scenario. Whilst this content does not assume an intercompany transferee situation, the approvability test and the process involved are essentially the same.

However, due to your historical status as an independent contractor and not an out and out employee, the HKID will automatically assess your application on the investment visa criteria which will put you in the realm of a one-man business. This Infographic covers this scenario.

As you can see, the two approaches in the employment visa consideration exercise under the General Employment Policy are very different and the trick to an efficient, stress free application in your circumstances is to educate the HKID as to the rationale for the independent contractor relationship both in your situation specifically and also in your industry generally and then go on to apply a hybrid investment visa/employment visa approvability argument, seeking to minimise the onerous requirements of the investment visa criteria and up-play the intercompany transferee employment visa criteria.

This is not, by any means, a run of the mill situation!

For more reading on the investment visa, please read this Post. Moreover, this content discusses how, sometimes, in what appears to be a straighforward intercompany transferee situation, things can go terribly wrong (hence the need to be careful about how an application is approached).

Documentation Generally

You can gain a sense of the documentation needed under both of the visa types at play in your situation as follows:

Employment Visa Checklist
Investment Visa Checklist

Case Processing Time

It would be reasonable to expect the application processing time, from first submission through to application outcome, to last 10-14 weeks, depending on the speed at which you turn around the provision of documentation when called for by the HKID as part of the case consideration exercise subsequently.

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How Does Hong Kong Right Of Abode Downgrade To The Right To Land Materialize And What Are The Immigration Implications Of This?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in 60 Second Snapshot, Long Stay & PR / 84 responses

How Does Hong Kong Right Of Abode Downgrade To The Right To Land Materialize And What Are The Immigration Implications Of This?

First Published January 17, 2013

If you are a foreign national permanent resident of Hong Kong you will hold a permanent identity card and, as a result, will possess the Rolls Royce immigration status of what is called the right of abode.

The right of abode provides you with, effectively,  defacto citizenship of the HKSAR, although you are not entitled to apply for a HKSAR passport as you would have to go one step further by renouncing your current nationality and complete the process of naturalizing as a Chinese citizen first.

The right of abode is exactly that.

With the status of right of abode owner you get the following rights:

(1) to land;
(2) to be free from any condition of stay (including a limit of stay)
(3) not to be deported from Hong Kong, and
(4) not to be removed from Hong Kong.

However, the Hong Kong Right of Abode can be downgraded to the Right to Land and therefore have a series of implications that we will detail above.

In immigration circles, there is raging debate about the true quality of the right of abode granted to long stay foreign nationals in Hong Kong because, in actual fact, it can be lost.

In order to maintain the right of abode, foreign nationals have to satisfy one ongoing condition – that he maintain his connections to Hong Kong by showing that he has been present in the HKSAR on at least one occasion in any given 3 year period.

This can easily be achieved, by making a single entry through immigration and landing in Hong Kong. Conceptually, you could then turn right around and leave Hong Kong immediately, and your right of abode would be maintained for another 3 years.

However, if you fail to satisfy the 3 year rule you will, by operation of law, lose your right of abode and be downgraded to the mere right to land – which effectively means that you can now be deported from Hong Kong after all.

In a practical sense, this doesn’t really have any major impact on the affected person.

You can still live in Hong Kong, work, establish or join in a business, study, sponsor parents for dependant visas and enjoy all of the other day-to-day privileges which accompany life in Hong Kong, although you won’t be able to vote in elections, access public financial assistance or participate in the various government programmes such as the recent Scheme 6000 or benefit from the stamp duty benefits in relation to the purchase of property.

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