Do You Need An Employment Visa For Short Term Work In Hong Kong?
Yes, No, Maybe …
First Published August 29, 2021
A foreign national seeking to come to Hong Kong to work, paid or unpaid, for a long or short duration, requires the permission of the Hong Kong Director of Immigration.
I am a UK based one person limited company and have been asked by a major design company with a business based in Hong Kong to undertake 10 – 15 days consulting work in HK – as a one-off exercise.
I am now considering leaving this role and going back to actively work in my business.
Can I apply for an investment visa for a second time or does it simply get transferred to my own company as an employment visa?
ANSWER
This is a really great question and I’m so grateful to you for asking it.
I have seen this situation probably a dozen times in the last 20 years and in every single instance the Immigration Department have come to the party and have indeed allowed a previous investment visa holder who has then changed status to an employment visa and who then has a change of heart and decides that paid employment is not really for them and they wish to go back to their own business pursuits once more and the Immigration Department have approved these applications as I say. So there’s no reason to suggest that you won’t be successful in your application, too.
The way that you go about it is to effectively treat the application as a change of category application going back from employment visa sponsored by a third-party through to business investment on the strength of your own Enterprise in Hong Kong.
The approvability test is just the same as it always is for an investment visa, that is, in light of your present circumstances given that you once, in a sense, put your business on the shelf while you went off to work for another employer, your business now moving forward, if the Immigration Department allow you to do so, will mean that you can make a substantial contribution to the economy of Hong Kong.
I’ve dealt with the investment visa approvability test ad nauseam elsewhere on the blog, so I’ll let you go and research that and understand effectively what’s required from you to to be successful. But as the essential premise of your investment visa activities were originally approved, it’s certainly feasible to expect that you’ll get approved this time around. You’ll certainly need to have the requisite level of resources. You’re going to have to have a pathway to the creation of local employment opportunities once again, and you’re going to have business premises that are suitable for you and your proposed activities.
The Immigration Department will effectively put you to that test, and I think, as I say, it’s fair for you to be able to pass it. But you’re also going to have to, sort of plug the gap as to kind of what happened, whilst you were an employee in the business, assuming as I mentioned, it was probably on the shelf in the meantime. But talk to the Immigration Department about how you, sort of put the business into deep freeze and that you are now ready to sort of bring it out into the open and go for it one more time.
So, just as I say the key thing is to pass the approvability tests all over again. The fact that you had an investment visa once previously, augers well on the basis that you can explain the gap as to what happened to the business during the time that you were an employee and that on the basis the Immigration Department approve you to join in this business one more time and you can make a substantial contribution to the economy of Hong Kong.
Do it on the fifth floor of immigration tower via a change of category application and you should take between 4 and 6 weeks to finalize. If your current limits of stay has got less than six months on it, use not only the ID 999a application form, use also the ID 91, which will allow the immigration department once they approve, you to grant you an extension to the current limit of stay, by a further year. As I say, assuming that you’ve got less than six months remaining on your current limit of stay then include the ID 91.
Okay. I hope you found this useful.
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ANSWER
When you secure an employment visa in Hong Kong you are lawfully employable by the employer, which has successfully sponsored an employment visa for you.
Once you stop working for that sponsoring employer in so far as you are continuing employment visa permissions go, in essence, all bets are off until you make an application to the Immigration Department to change your sponsorship from your old employer through to the proposed new employer.
And in preparing for this application, you need to anticipate that it’s a process that’s very similar to the application that you underwent the first time in so far as getting the visa approved for the status that you’ve got right now. And in the Hong Kong visa handbook employment Visa section, I’ve set out the documentary requirements that govern these types of applications, whether it’s a new application or in fact, it’s a change of sponsorship application.
Now the way that the process works is that you go to the Immigration Department with your completely assembled bundle and you file your application to change your sponsorship, without at this point, if this is in fact the case, having stopped working for your present employer. And during the currency of your new employment visa application your current employer really shouldn’t be privy to what’s going on because Immigration Department certainly won’t correspond with your existing employer. All that will happen is that whilst the Immigration Department are considering your application, which by the way happens on the 5th floor resident section, not the 24th floor entry visa section, so on the fifth floor. So whilst the Immigration Department are considering your application, they will correspond with you directly and that they’ll raise any questions or requests for information or other requisitions that apply in the context of the application before you.
And in so far as the chances of approval go, you need to anticipate that as long as it’s a like-for-like employment, and as long as you are clearly a professional under the general employment policy and the new employer is justified in engaging your services as opposed to the services of a local person, then it’s reasonable to assume that you’re change of sponsorship application will be approved. Normally the Immigration Department respond positively to such applications.
Now the way it works once you’ve got nine tenths of the way through the application process, is that you’ll see that the Immigration Department will call for a document from you, that demarcates the date of last employment with your current employer, so that they can then, when they finalize your approval, set a line between your previous sponsorship and your new sponsorship. They will need a line in the sand, as it were, a date from which the new sponsorship obligations of your new employer will prevail and at the same time relinquishing your old employer, your past employer of their continuing sponsorship in relation to you. And it’s when the Immigration Department call for this document that you’ll get a sense that they are about to finalize your application positively. And at that stage, what you do is you submit your resignation and give a copy of the resignation documentation that sits between you and your current employer, which in turn will denote what your final date of employment is with that old employer and you submit copies of that documentation to the Immigration Department and they will then, as I say, be able to demarcate the old sponsorship from the new sponsorship.
Then, after you’ve been approved you should receive a letter from the Immigration Department stating when your new employment arrangement are going to commence from, that is your new sponsorship, employment visa sponsorship arrangements are going to commence from, inviting you down to go and process an extension to your current limit of stay because at the moment you have less than six months left on your current limit of stay. And these circumstances rather than put Immigration Department resources through, on the one hand, a change of sponsorship application and then a few weeks or months later because your current limiter says going to expire, put Immigration Department resources through a second application, in so far as giving you an extension to your current limit of stay. Usually the Immigration Department as I say, if you’ve got six months or less remaining on your current limit of stay, they normally endorse your passport at the same time as they give you the new approval and normally that 12 months limit starts from the expiry of your current limit of stay, which in this instance would be July.
So in effect, that’s how that process is handled and that’s how that process is managed and included on this post are a lot of other resources that I’ve dealt with challenges associated with the change of sponsorship application that you’re looking to accomplish.
And again, I refer you back to the employment visa section of the Hong Kong Visa Handbook where all the documents that you need, checklists, templates and all the rest of that good stuff that will apply in allowing you to go through that process, you can find them all there.
Just to remind you, because you’re an existing resident you would submit the application on the resident section on the fifth floor of Immigration Tower, not on the 24th floor, which is the entry Visa section, which is where applications for the very first time for the employment visas are considered.
How Do You Prove To ImmD That You Have Tried to Recruit Locally?
What Will The Hong Kong Immigration Department Accept?
Excellent question earlier this week. Great opportunity to slay a few sacred cows.
QUESTION
Hi, one of the requirements for the work visa application is a proof of genuine vacancy. What if a sponsoring company doesn’t do job ads? What can he present? He does recruit locally via his network since he is just a small company. Appreciate your inputs.
ANSWER
It’s important to understand that not every job that has a foreign national candidate for it and a consideration of employment visa hanging off it, not every local job needs to have a local worker for it.
It just depends on all the circumstances of the case. There will be circumstances where you can visit the nature of the position and the circumstances that give rise to that foreign national needed to do that work. It becomes very self-evident that no one will exercise what needs to be undertaken. But how it works is if you are asked by the Immigration Department for proof of a local recruitment exercise, you have to show it. That is if you have conducted it, you need to show that you’ve done it. If you’ve conducted it unsuccessfully, you have an opportunity to explain why, supplying proof, how have you gone about the recruitment exercise and then just explaining how that process works.
If you haven’t conducted it, then you have to justify your application from the perspective that you’re the right person for the job. And either way, the sophistication and consideration exercise really gates the question and the mechanics of the recruitment process, to my way of thinking it may really be a bit hard there’s more important things going here.
So you have to be absolutely certain that no local can do a job before you make a claim that no one locally can reasonably be expected to do that job and that’s where all your focus should lie.
Ok, I hope this helps.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Unemployed When Your Eligibility For Right Of Abode Accrues?
Can You Still Qualify For PR Even Without A Job …
First Published June 4, 2103
Do you need to be employed on the date that your 7 year anniversary of your residence in Hong Kong comes up which then allows you apply for the right of abode with the wrinkle that your current employment visa expires on exactly the same date?
QUESTION
I started working in Hong Kong with a working visa on 21st of April 2007.
Since then I have been continuously in Hong Kong, but have been made redundant this year.
My current working visa will expire on the 21st of April 2014.
Since I do not have a job, I will not get a new visa, so that day I will also have to leave Hong Kong.
My question: can I apply for the permanent residency on 25th of April 2014 (as I have been at least 7 years now in Hong Kong, continuously, and I have decided to make it my home) and then leave Hong Kong and come back on a tourist visa while waiting for the -hopefully- approval?
Or just wait abroad untill they contact me? If not, what should I do to ensure that I at least qualify the requirements for application?
I love Hong Kong so much that it would be a shame to just lose the PR because of that small period I am missing.
Thanks a lot.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Right of Abode & Continuity of Ordinary Residence Calculation
What Counts & What Doesn’t?
First Published October 4, 2014
Got 2 very similar questions in recently so I’m taking the opportunity to kill 2 birds with one stone…
QUESTIONS
I have a residency visa and this is my 6th year in Hong Kong. I need to go back to my country due to some medical urgency. What amount of time can I spend outside Hong Kong so that my 7 years of continuous stay here remains unaffected?
&
I came to Hong Kong in 2009 as dependent child of my parent. I am supposed to apply for PR in 2015. But I spent more than a year out of Hong Kong to study within this period and I have my academic certificates to support my reason for my stay away. Will the Immigration Department approve my reason or count the 7 years all over again?
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Is There Such An Animal As A Job Seekers Visa For Hong Kong?
If There Is, Please Tell Me More …
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!
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
QUESTION
