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!
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Can I Get A Depedant Visa For An Elderly Parent If I Have A Permanent HK ID Card?
I get 30-40 questions each week and not all of them merit a podcast answer. Some are answered quickly via email and for the next few days I’ll post some of these anonymised replies here.
A Depedant Visa For An Elderly Parent If I Have a Permanent HK ID Card?
QUESTION
My brother is an Indian born in Hong Kong. And he is holding a permanent ID card for Hong Kong. Currently, he is working in Hong Kong with a salary of HKD15,000 per month, speaking fluent Chinese. But his mother is living in India. She is about 72 years of age with no one looking after her. She wants to join her son in Hong Kong. Please let me know if her son can get her a permanent ID Card or any residential visa. To stay with him in Hong Kong.
ANSWER
Your mother can apply for a dependant visa sponsored by your brother. Apart from the application form and travel document, they need to show proof of employment, accommodation, and financial standing. They have to prove that they have arranged under the same roof in Hong Kong by providing a tenancy agreement or proof of ownership. A bank account with deposits covering rental fees of at least one year will be ideal.
It normally takes six weeks to process a visa/entry permit application for residence as a dependant upon receipt of all the required documents.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
How Important Are Employment Testimonials In A Hong Kong QMAS Visa Application?
The Quality Migrant Admission Schemeis designed to attract ‘top notch’ talents to the HKSAR and, by my reckoning, only about 5% of applicants ever receive a Golden Ticket. Of course if you happen to have a Nobel prize or you are an Olympiad with a medal to your name, the odds of an approval are a lot higher. However, if you’re applying under the General Points Test, your educational accomplishments, professional background and career achievements to date are of vital importance. As is documenting them…
QUESTION
“Hi,
The QMAS visa documentation requires “Copies of testimonials from every employer claimed as relevant to your application.”
– Is it same as experience letters from current and ex-employers?
– If not, is there any particular format of these letters?
– Is it a mandatory document?
Thanks so much!”
ANSWER
The Quality Migrant Admission Scheme, the quality of the documentation and supporting information that you’re going to submit in support of the application is of utmost priority.
Therefore, when you ask whether the copies of testimonials from other employer claims as relevant to your application and/or if they are the same as experience letters from current or ex-employers? Well, you could say it’s the same, but really what the immigration department are looking for is for tacit and express confirmation of the work experience that you’ve actually had once you were in those employments and it must go beyond just written confirmation that you say worked from this time to that time and you have such a job title. So, it really does go to the heart of the work that you’re doing when you’re working for those organizations.
There is no specific format, but you should try hard if at all possible to engage with past employers to speak in detail about what you actually did and contributed during your employment with them, as this is the only way immigration department can collaborate your claim on the application.
In terms of the mandatory nature of these testimonials, you could say that everything is mandatory if you expect the immigration department to approve the application. Typically, if they ask for something you should try your ever best to give it to them. If you find it is practically impossible as it can be because of sensitive area by past employments, if it’s practically impossible to get current and past employers to speak to the exact experience and quality of your work, or indeed your proven accomplishments while you were working for them, you might want to consider providing an independent third-party validation of the work that you were doing through, for example, the parties you interacted with who are credible and are able to substantiate in a roundabout way. The representation in the sections that you marked on the application but you find yourself unable to get the express confirmation from your prior employers.
So yes, thinking that would be, well actually could help to get such information in the hands of the immigration department without specifically putting your ex-employers to the task and the challenge in terms of authenticating what you achieved in the past while you were working for them but that should be taken as an adjunct to the confirmation of your employment and shouldn’t be a replacement for those testimonials.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Is It A Good Or A Bad Sign That The HKID Keep Coming Back With Further Requests For Information?
This question seeks to understand what you should make of repeat requests for information from the Hong Kong Immigration Department (HKID) during the course of your visa application.
QUESTION
“Good day.
In the course of what would appear to be a straightforward application, two sets of requests for further information have been sent by the Hong Kong Immigration Department.
One would have thought that they would have put all the relevant questions in one letter.
Is is usual to receive multiple requests like this?
Thanks”
ANSWER
The answer to this question very much depends on the type of visa application that’s in play.
For example, if it’s an investment visa application, that is a business investment visa application. Having three to four submissions subsequent to the initial application paperwork is not unusual at all and that usually plays out over the course of three to four months.
If it’s an employment visa application then two, three, four isn’t completely out of the ordinary, although four tends to be on the on the heavy end as it were.
Two to three is the middling range, and the reason why the immigration departments are making these requests for additional information is because they are building the story for themselves so that they can have specific clarification on the documents that have been submitted prior. So, it just depends very much on how substantial the first application is that went in.
It then depends on how the second request for information was dealt with, but a third and potentially a fourth could be a symptom of the weakness in the first set of information that you’ve put in or it could simply be that further questions have been raised as a result of the earlier information that they just need clarifying on.
So, it’s not out of the ordinary, I wouldn’t worry about it too much if you’ve got what you perceive to be a pretty straightforward case then it probably is a straightforward case. They’re just ticking some boxes and crossing and dotting the eyes and crossing the t’s to make sure that they can give the right outcome.
They do have a responsibility of course to consider all the factors and all the circumstances so I always view a request for further and better particulars as a good positive sign that things are going okay in the application rather than a negative sign. If it was a really negative sign you’d kind of expect that you’d get a denial rather than request for further information of the backend like that. Okay, hope that helps.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
10 Must Have Resources For A Hong Kong Legal Dependant Visa
First Published July 1, 2013 and updated December 15, 2023 – But The Advice Holds Good Today
Continuing our series of 10 Must Have Resources, I have put together this list of materials from our various websites which is designed to help steer you through the process of acquiring a dependant visa for Hong Kong. Remember, for temporary residents this means visas for spouse and unmarried dependant children under the age of 18 or otherwise in full time education. For permanent and other long stay residents, you can add dependant parents over the age of 60 to those who are eligible.
The Hong Kong Immigration Department are not especially receptive to what can appear to be family reunion via the back door…
Can you use the Foreign Domestic Helper visa to employ your mother in Hong Kong?
QUESTION
Hello,
My wife and I are on work visas in Hong Kong and are expecting a baby in the Autumn.
My wife would like to keep working, and wants to bring her mother over (she is from Central America) to look after the baby, possibly for up to a year.
Her mother would only be eligible for a 30-day visitor visa.
Whilst it’s a perfectly logical conclusion to draw that it would make sense to employ your mother or your mother in law as a foreign domestic helper sponsored by you in Hong Kong, unfortunately such an approach won’t hold water with the Immigration Department for a number of reasons. One set of reasons that are specific to the nature of the foreign domestic helper visa and the second reason relates to the nationality of your mother dealing with the nationality issue.
First, the foreign domestic helper visa has been constructed in Hong Kong by the Immigration Department as a result of a series of bilateral negotiations between a variety of different countries that are prepared to allow their nationals to come to Hong Kong to work under very strict conditions as foreign domestic helpers. And principally in this regard strict conditions are relating to the protection of the interests of the nationals that are going to be coming to do the work under foreign domestic helper visas. So, if you’re from, or your wife’s mother is from a country that does not have such a bilaterally negotiated arrangements in place, then citizens of that country cannot participate in the foreign domestic helper programme, unfortunately.
So given that there are no countries in Central America today that have got a bilaterally negotiated arrangement in place, the foreign domestic helper visa will not be available to her, end of story, unfortunately. But in terms of what the Immigration Department do when they receive applications from very close relatives, effectively they look at these applications with a very let’s say cynical set of eyes because whilst it makes perfect sense to want to have a mother or a mother in law in Hong Kong taking care of a new grandchild, especially during the first year, effectively the Immigration Department will see this as an application for family reunion by the back door because there’s non-permanent residents seeking to have their mother, or a parent physically present in Hong Kong with them, that means that you precluded from sponsoring such a dependent visa for that would be the visa type that you would normally use because the dependent visa for a parent normally requires the sponsor to be a permanent identity card holder and the parent to be over 60 years of age and with clear proof of dependency.
And in your circumstances this is obviously not going to apply. So the Immigration Department, for another reason are not going to be receptive to an application for a foreign domestic helper visa notwithstanding the fact that there is an expectation that there is going to be an arm’s length commercial arrangement between the two parties in relation to the provision of employment services. Clearly, where you have a family member that’s going to be providing those services, then this is not going to be a typical arm’s length commercial arrangement. So now that we’ve kind of sort of buried the idea that the foreign domestic help of visa might work for you in your circumstances, what are the other options that are available to you?
Well, you could make, and I would suggest that you do this in any event, make an application for an entry visa for your mother in law to come and join you for an extended period of time on the strength of the fact that you are having a child, and it would be exceptionally useful to you to be able to have your mother physically present in Hong Kong for a few months at least to be able to help out with the new child rearing duties. And you do this by making a visitor visa application, as I say, on an entry visa that is not relying on the 30 days that you are granted upon arrival at the airport, but actually setting out in detail all the circumstances that are giving rise to you seeking to sponsor an extended visitor visa for your mother in law.
You may get a three-month limit of stay depending on how the Immigration Department respond to the application. Additionally, you could conceptually make such an entra visa application for her let her arrive and enter on that perhaps, 60 or 90 day limit of stay, depending what the immigration department give you.
And then at the end of that limit of stay, she could make an exit and then reenter again and get another 30 days, and in that intervening period you could make another application for another entry visa, and again get another 60 or another 90 days, and at the end of that limit of stay you could make another exit and possibly do that twice more before you get to the kind of magic number that the immigration department hold to be quite dear.
And that is, a visitor should not be spending more than half of their time in Hong Kong over the course of a twelve month given period. So I think you’re probably going to be able to finagle possibly six or seven months as visitor visa status for your mother in law in those circumstances.
Not exactly twelve months I appreciate, but if you work the system in a good and logical way and set out all the facts surrounding the need for the need for extended visitor status for your mother and the fact that you’re clearly going to be responsible for her health and welfare while she’s here, I think you’ll find that you’ll end up getting a reasonable amount of time that will allow you to be together during these important months, whether you get a full year or not.
Difficult to say, I would suspect probably not. You’ll be testing the Immigration Department’s patience somewhat, if you made a third or a fourth application for an intra visa on that basis; but you know, the Immigration Department appreciate that this is an important time for you and wonder, actually, what’s wrong with having your mother in Hong Kong, helping you raise your new grandchild in the early months of his or her arrival in Hong Kong.
It’s just a matter of working the process, setting out all the facts, allowing the Immigration Department to understand what the reasons are for this extended period of stay in Hong Kong as a visitor, and I think you’ll find that, all things considered, as far as they’re able to help you, they probably will do so.
Okay, I’ve appended the link to the visitor visa information on the Hong Kong visa handbook that will help you navigate the labyrinth of the visitor visa application process that you’ll no doubt be going through. And also, I hope you found this useful.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
What’s the Best Hong Kong Visa Option for a Recently Graduated British National?
QUESTION
Hi Stephen,
From May through November 2013 I was employed in a well known and large company in Hong Kong under the training visa for a period of 6 months.
During the end of this tenure the company decided to offer me a permanent position however I had to apply for this job under the employment visa.
Unfortunately this was rejected, as the Immigration Department feel this is a job that can be taken up locally.
I’m 23 years old with one years work experience after graduating from university but really want to stay in Hong Kong now I have embedded myself within the team I was working in and learning all the appropriate skills and practices for the role I was undertaking.
I have now become a highly valued member of my working team.
I want to ask whether already having a training visa then having a working visa rejected would affect my chances of getting a working holiday visa?
I also have the option to move to Dubai where I have been granted a visa which can be used as a stop gap to get more experience then look to re-apply in Hong Kong.
But as my primary desire is to stay in Hong Kong can I use the working holiday visa as an additional years experience until the time comes that I need to re-apply for a working visa next year?
And how should I re-apply for that differently?
Can you kindly advise what is the best course of action?
Thanks
ANSWER
In the vast majority of circumstances, whenever you have been able to secure a training visa, usually for six months, sometimes for a maximum of twelve months, depending on the nature of the training that you’re due to receive, it is almost impossible to swap from a training visa through to an employment visa because the issue of the training visa was done on the basis that you would acquire the training and then you would leave.
So it’s natural in many instances where you have undergone that period of training, you’ve inculcated yourself into the working fabric of your team there and clearly your manager at the end of the training, doesn’t want to lose you, recognises your talent, wants you to remain in Hong Kong to work full time, and so you make an application for an employment visa.
Now, two challenges associated with that stated is that as part of your training visa application, there is an undertaking that you will leave Hong Kong at the end of the period of training. And the second challenge is that, to actually convert to an employment visa, you have to pass the employment visa provability test, which is you need to show you possess special skills, knowledge and experience of value to and not readily available in Hong Kong.
And normally this requires, at a very minimum, for you to be a university graduate with two years post graduation working experience in a supervisor in a managerial capacity. And normally if you’re in a training visa situation, by implication you’re not managing anybody or supervising anybody. Quite the contrary, you’re on the receiving end of such management and such supervision.
So when you do make that application to a justice status from training visa to employment visa, uh, in your circumstances, it’s quite, uh, normal to expect that you will be, um, refused in that application. So now the question is begged as to how can you continue to remain in Hong Kong so that you can do the things that you’re doing now.
Fortunately, because of the introduction of british nationals to the list of, uh, qualifying nationals under the working holiday scheme, as of December 2013, you can apply for a working holiday visa which will give you a twelve month limit of staying, uh, and you’ll be able to work for any single employer for twelve months.
So the fact that you’ve had a prior employment visa refused and the fact that you’ve previously held a training visa should not, in normal circumstances, preclude you from accessing the working holiday visa on the basis that you do qualify for the working holiday visa in your own right, which is that you’re under 30 years of age, you’ve got about HKD20,000 in your bank account and you’ve got the necessary medical insurance to cover your staying as a working visa holder in Hong Kong.
And that there’s still a quota available to you. That is that a lot of other British nationals haven’t gotten ahead of you and stolen your opportunity to acquire one of those visas because of the number that are issued each year. So have no fear that you can’t get a working holiday visa so long as there’s quota available and you can meet the conditions.
And then once you’ve got your working holiday visa, you can certainly rejoin your working team, and away you go, so that will then take you twelve months down the road. And then the issue is, well, how do you then get from a working holiday visa through to an employment visa again. And will, in all the circumstances, the time that you spent in Hong Kong as a training visa holder and the twelve months that you had as a working holiday visa holder, will all of that again qualify you, ostensibly for the minimum two years post graduation working experience in managerial or supervisory capacity. That’s a question that can really only be answered at the time that you make your next application, depending on effectively what’s gone on in, in all the time that you were holding the working holiday visa. And frankly, whether or not even one year hence, you’ll be able to argue to the Immigration Department that your skills can’t be found locally, because it may well be that the work that you do there could clearly be a ready pool of local employees, potential local employees, new graduates from university or others that have the necessary skills in the industry that you’re working in department might not be persuaded in any event, that given the nature of the work that you do, that work can’t be uptaken by somebody from within the local workforce.
So that’s always a risk and it’s not something that I can give you any concrete advice upon at this stage in the game. All that I can suggest is that once your working holiday visa expires, go back to the immigration department with a new application for an employment visa and argue your case stridently and forthrightly and see what they make of it as another option.
Given that you do seem to have the ability to go off, in this instance to Dubai, to what I assume is a group company to work there, if all else fails, you could secure employment in Dubai and go spend maybe a year or two in Dubai working for that group company, building up your knowledge, building up your experience, ensure that experience is gained in managing and supervising others and then at the end of that period, you make an application again to transfer back to Hong Kong from that Dubai Group company on an intercompany transferee basis.
And nine times out of ten, if it is a straightforward intercompany transferee application for an employment visa where you clearly now have the necessary post graduation working experience and that given the nature of the work that you’ve been doing for the group company in Dubai, it’s clear that a local person can’t be expected to uptake that work, then you stand an improved chance of approval next time around on the basis that you have been an intercompany transferee.
So all of this sounds really quite long and convoluted and complex, but, strategically, you do have a pathway to your ultimate end game, which is to be working full time, lawfully, for your proposed employer in Hong Kong, doing the work that you clearly love to do; but, you’ve still got a few sort of months ahead of you and a few applications ahead of you before, you get the security and comfort of knowing that finally, the Immigration Department deem you professional for the purpose of the general employment policy.
And you’ve created the circumstances where you can definitively argue that the work that you’re going to be doing in Hong Kong can’t be taken up by somebody locally. Okay, I hope you found that useful.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
