If you have an employment visa and have stopped working for your sponsoring employer, no matter what the reason, you will not have to leave Hong Kong straight away.
The HKID provide you with enough time to make arrangements to find an alternate employer or, if you prefer, to lay the groundwork to start your own business.
Ninety-nine per cent of the time, the Hong Kong Immigration Department will allow you to carry on living in Hong Kong until your current visa expires but you’re expected to leave at that time.
But if you find another employer or have made ready to start your own business you can apply for new visa permissions to continue living and working in Hong Kong – and get a 12 months extension to your present period of stay in the process.
But in either case you have to make the applications and get the Hong Kong ID’s approval before you start working – otherwise you’ll be breaking the law.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Understanding the Minimum Salary Requirements for a Hong Kong Employment Visa
This is a vexed question for many visa applicants and their employers but there is a simple rule of thumb that needs to be adhered to.
The Hong Kong Immigration Department expect that a foreigner seeking employment visa permissions to work in Hong Kong will perform, at a minimum, supervisory duties under his or her employment contract.
This essentially calls for an employment that is valued, as a minimum, at HKD200,000 p.a., depending on the nature of the work.
However, it is simplistic to believe that you take HKD200,000 and divide it by 12 in order to achieve a monthly salary amount that is acceptable to the HKID (namely HKD16,670 per month).
No, the HKD200,000 annually can amount to the total value of the employment each year.
Therefore it is acceptable to state in the employment agreement the total value of the emolument received by the employee each year and then break it down into its constituent components.
For example:
Salary: XXXXX
Employer MPF Contribution: XXXXX
Guaranteed Bonus XXXXX
Medical Benefits: XXXXX
Travel Allowance: XXXXX
Meal Allowance: XXXXX
Etc:
Total: 200,000
This approach provides you with flexibility where the monthly cash salary is on the lower end of the scale but where the true cost of the employment does reach the threshold for visa approval.
Whilst HKD200,000 is not definitive in each and every case (we’ve seen approvals down at HKD186,000 in actual fact) it is certainly fair to say that the higher the value of the employment, the more likely the Immigration Department will look more favourably on the application.
However, it is always preferable to avoid bumping against the bottom of this HKD200,000 sum as you’re not doing your application any favours by trying to eke out the bare minimum that you can pay your foreign national staff, expecting the Immigration Department to play ball!
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
First Published September 9, 2016, still valid today
Over the last 20 years or so I have coined a number of phrases in Hong Kong immigration parlance.
In this short piece I discuss the old chestnut of contrived employment (fake job offers).
Contrived employment is where somebody doesn’t have a genuine job offer. Instead, they have arranged with another party—who is in a position to extend a job offer to the receiving party—no effort is made to create a genuine employer-employee relationship. This arrangement is only cobbled together because one of the parties has an immigration problem, and the other party is foolish enough to join in this illegal endeavor. When you make an application for an employment visa, immigration authorities are looking to see that there is a genuine job offer. If they are satisfied that there is a genuine job offer and that the other aspects of the approval criteria are met, you will receive the visa. However, if there is no genuine job offer, at the point of submitting your application paperwork to the Immigration Department, you are effectively submitting false representations. This is a criminal offense, and that is what constitutes contrived employment.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Losing your job in Hong Kong can affect your employment visa status in the HKSAR. This brief video outlines the legal implications if you find yourself in this situation.
The Hong Kong Immigration Department are highly sympathetic to foreign nationals who find themselves with an employment visasponsored by an employer that has had to make them redundant.
In this situation you can expect the employer to notify the HKID of the fact of your redundancy and therefore you need to act on the basis the Immigration Department are fully aware of the change in your employment circumstances resulting from the loss of your job.
Best practice now is for you to independently write to the Director of Immigration and advise them of what has happened to you. Do this within 14 days of the notification to you of your redundancy.
You can then expect that the HKID will then write back to you stating that it’s ok for you to remain in Hong Kong until your current limit of stay expires.
Assuming it is your intention to remain in Hong Kong, this should then provide you with sufficient time to make alternate arrangements to stay in here, either to find another employer or, if you’re so minded, to start up a new or join in an existing business.
In the meantime it is lawful activity to look for, interview and accept a new job offer.
And also pursue the possibility of starting up your own company or investing in someone else’s.
However, it is not lawful to take up a new job until you have secured the permission of the Immigration Department to do so, nor indeed to commence activity in any new business which you are involved with until the HKID have agreed that is ok for you to do this.
So your next move is to make a new application to the HKID either to change your employment visa sponsor to work for an alternate employer or make an application for an investment visa in respect of your new business endeavours.
The availability of the consent of the Immigration Department to these ends will be determined on the individual merits and the circumstances of the new application and should not be assumed as automatically approvable.
You still needed to pass the approvability test for these applications in their own right but you can rest assured it is unlikely the HKID will force you to leave Hong Kong just because you have, through no fault of your own, been made redundant from your job in the HKSAR.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Over the last 20 years or so I have coined a number of phrases in Hong Kong immigration parlance.In this short video, I discuss the Hong Kong visa Twilight Zone.
The twilight zone is where you’re an existing resident, your current conditions of stay prevail, but because you’ve made an application to the Immigration Department to change your employment visa sponsor, they’not in a position to endorse your passport with anything new until such a time as they positively finalised your application to change your sponsor, which will take four to five weeks all things considered.
So now that you’re sitting in the twilight zone, essentially you can’t leave Hong Kong without first getting a departure memo from the immigration officer that’s tasked with considering a change of sponsorship application. But by the same token, you are not deemed to be an overstayer at this point because you’ve essentially regularised it previously and the Immigration Department have kind of moved past that issue and are now focusing on determining whether or not you should be granted the ability to take up this new employer.
Now normally, whilst the immigration Department absolutely frown on overstay, if you are genuinely now seeking to change your employer and that employment is for all practical purposes for employment, you can go into that application with a reasonable level of confidence that you’re going to get approved, notwithstanding the fact that there were these overstay problems associated with you actually formally moving your application into the department for your change of employer.
So, if you get stopped on the street, the immigration Department essentially know all about you. They are not in a position to endorse your passport with anything new presently, as I say, until your new employment visa application has been finalised.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
One of the really great things about the subject of Hong Kong visa and immigration is that there is never any shortage of things to blog about and share.
Every day in our professional practice, we undertake cases which provide ongoing, often entirely new, insights into how the Hong Kong Immigration Department are implementing policy and which I then routinely pass on via this blog.
Moreover, visitors to our websites ask questions for me to answer by PodCast and every one of these, each with their own unique facts and circumstances, adds to the Hong Kong immigration knowledge graph which we are slowly mapping over time.
Additionally, the data we receive from searches undertaken on this website as well as the Hong Kong Visa Handbook, indicate to us what we should be blogging about each day and what is of pressing interest to our visitors.
Finally, Google Analytics tells us that our websites now deliver our content against more than 70,000 Hong Kong visa and immigration related search topics and it’s the top 50 of those that we blog about 80% of the time – keeping our content topical, relevant, practical and useful.
But now its time to ask you…
What would you like me to write, PodCast and make videos about?
This is an open invitation for you to make suggestions about Hong Kong visa and immigration related content and inclusions for this website.
I’m keen to hear from you what you would like to learn more about, what you think is missing, what can be taken to the next level of detail – including further D-I-Y resources to help you along in your Hong Kong visa and immigration quests.
However there are 3 things we do not, as a matter of policy, cover.
These are:
1 – Anything requiring or involving litigation. We routinely refer this on to Daly & Associates. We are not a solicitors firm and you need lawyers with practising certificates to undertake this work for you. This is not our bag. Mark Daly and his team are the masters of their craft. These lawyers are responsible for most of the human rights and right of abode related litigation in Hong Kong – and the only other immigration firm here that I will refer our clients to.
2 – Student visas. This work is purely administrative and involves close coordination with college or university administrators. We don’t add any real value to this process, and most certainly are not worth our HKD3,000 hourly consultation rate so don’t take the work on. Consequently, we have never developed any specific expertise in student visas, although, of course, we know how it all works.
3 – Foreign Domestic Helpers. For existing clients who specifically ask us to help out with their FDH visa processing challenges we are happy to get involved and provide the service when so requested. In fact Ruby, our business manager, manages this work personally when we are so instructed. Otherwise, we steer well clear. There are countless other service providers in Hong Kong who offer great value for money undertaking this work, but it’s not for us and for 20 years we have eschewed developing any level of expertise in it.
Otherwise, we’re fair game!
So, if you want to me to cover any specific Hong Kong visa and immigration topic, no matter how small – or all-encompassing – please feel free to let me know.
Simply email me via: feedback@hkvisacentre.com and I’ll make sure it’s added to our editorial calendar.
I’ll acknowledge receipt of your suggestion within one business day and indicate by when the content will be developed and the material fully covered for inclusion on our websites.
In the meantime, of course, if you have any particualr question you’d like answering, please feel free to Ask A Question and I’ll give you a PodCast answer within 48 hours – completely free of charge!
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
If you’re claiming skills, knowledge or experience on your CV as part of your argument for a Hong Kong Employment Visa Application – what’s the gig if you can’t fully support your claims with references or testimonials?
QUESTION
Hi, I am 8 weeks into applying for an employment visa (I’m British).
I have given the documents and a couple of weeks ago had to supply a reference which I managed to get hold of.
And yesterday my would be company heard from them again asking for another reference that was listed on my CV.
However.. the person has now left the company (the company may have even closed and now they have changed careers (it was a 5 year ago position I was referencing).
Do you think it’s OK for this person to state that they have left the company and just provide a letterheaded reference from their current place?
My other friend said it may be tricky.
Please help if you can. I’m not sure what to do.
Thanks a lot!
ANSWER
Naturally enough, if you are claiming certain skills and experience on your CV and you’re expecting the Immigration Department to rely on them as being a true and accurate statement of your experiencing and work capabilities, it’s incumbent upon you to produce the kind of documentation which speaks to the veracity of your CV.
Now of course, on occasion, it might prove impossible as you’ve encountered to pick up a particular reference from some time prior, particularly if that employer is no longer in business. So usually what the Immigration Department are prepared to do is to at least receive the second best evidence that you can supply; and if that happens to be a reference or a document that speaks to your time in that business or in the employent with that organisation, and it’s from someone who knew you at that time or possibly was your superior, the Immigration Department will certainly take that into consideration.
Whether it will prove ultimately satisfactory or not in the final analysis depends on just how important the time spent in that employment is to the relevance of your current application. Because if,for example, you’re saying that you’ve been responsible for producing moon widgets for that company and your special skills, knowledge and experience for the new employee areas to show that you’re going to be producing moon widgets and the Immigration Department have got no way of concluding effectively that you have the experience that you claim, then it could speak to the approvability; all told, however, if it’s just general affirmation that you spend time in that role in that position, there’s nothing too sensational about it from an approvability perspective, then you can expect that that second best evidence will suffice.
But in the final analysis you have the burden of proof in relation to the extent of your CV. So, as far as you can satisfy their requirements that end the stronger you’re putting yourself forward for an eventual approval.
Okay, I hope you find this useful.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
