If you find yourself often in Hong Kong as a frequent Visitor is it lawful and / or possible to rent an apartment in order to keep accommodation expenses down…
QUESTION
I’m an Expat based in Thailand & often come to Hong Kong for meetings or transit for business trips to China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan.
Let’s say roughly 10-14 days a month, with an average of 2-3 entries.
Since hotel costs are ticking up & I can’t leave documents in a safe place, I’m considering renting a 850 sqf apartment in Wanchai.
Would this be a problem for Immigration?
Can I rent an apartment in Hong Kong as a Visitor?
In actual fact there are no immigration implications of a decision to rent an apartment by a frequent visitor in Hong Kong. For the purposes as you’ve enunciated them, Immigration won’t really have anything to say about that per se because there’s no real forum for them to have an opinion about it.
As a foreign national granted visa free privileges upon arrival, then you don’t have to seek any prior clearance of the Immigration Department. So there’s no questions ever asked in relation to your accommodation proposed for Hong Kong. Moreover as a travel enrolled in the frequent traveller programme, you don’t actually have to meet face to face an immigration officer who would ask you questions that speak to your accommodation arrangements while you’re in Hong Kong and therefore it doesn’t raise itself as a practical issue for you.
In reality the real challenge that you’re going to face is that as a visitor to Hong Kong you’re never going to be able to get Hong Kong identity card and the landlord that you may find yourself negotiating with may require a copy of a Hong Kong ID card before he or she’s comfortable in entering into a tenancy agreement with you.
And, whilst there are no, as I say, legal preclusions from entering into what actually is a private arrangement when it comes to a tenancy agreement for residential purposes, you may find that the landlord when he realises that you don’t have residence visa status here, may suddenly demand a much higher deposit or try to leverage a premium on the rent, but that is ultimately a negotiation for you to engage in.
But in a nutshell, there are no immigration implications to what you’re proposing as such and I wish you all the very best with it.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Coming to Hong Kong to frequently visit family members resident here is not such a problem (usually)…
QUESTION
My daughter and family are moving to Hong Kong.
I would like to spend as much time as possible with them.
If I go to Hong Kong as a tourist from the US and return home after 90 days, how soon can I return for another 90 day stay?
ANSWER
The answer to this particular dilemma is actually quite a bit easier or simpler than you might otherwise imagine. If your family are resident in Hong Kong working and you want to clearly come and spend as much time with them as you can, and the only immigration stay available to you as a US national visiting is a visitor visa, then you will be able to procure, as you can appreciate, 90 days upon arrival each time you present yourself at the border.
And every time you do present yourself at the border, you need to satisfy your bona fide as a visitor to the examining immigration officer. And, in this respect, as long as you’re able to satisfy the Immigration Department as to the reasons for you being here frequently and spending the length of time that you do, is for family reunion purposes, then it’s quite reasonable to expect that the immigration officer looking at you, once he’s appraised of all of these facts and has got clear evidence to allow him to effect a positive act of discretion to admit you for 90 days, then the likelihood is that the officer’s not going to admit you for 90 days because otherwise he would be essentially doing you some kind of injustice, even though, of course, he does have all the legal power, under the immigration ordinance, to stop you from arriving and to limit the amount of time that you spend here.
So my best advice to you would be each time that you present yourself at the border or at the airport, you have with your portfolio of information including your family members, Hong Kong identity cards, copies of their visa labels, if they have children, family photographs, and be ready to produce this to the immigration officer at the point of entry and explain that, well, you know, you have good reason for being here frequently you are staying with your family members and it’s really important that you are able to spend as much time with them as you possibly can.
And, if you could, arrange for a letter to be written by your family members, with their contact details in the event that the officer is to perhaps second guess your motivations, he will then have the opportunity to directly speak to your daughter and her husband, and at that point, your bona fide as a visitor should be satisfied. So the key thing, of course, is that you do this each time that you present yourself, it’s a different examination, a unique and individual examination.
So potentially you can go through this for any number of times before perhaps an immigration officer might say, well, hey, you’ve spent the last year and a half here almost continuously, clearly you do have another country that you can call your home. You need to go back and spend a little bit of time there before you continue to spend extended periods of time here as a visitor. So I think you’ll find all things considered, a balance of frequent visits, perhaps spending as much time as you can in Hong Kong without maximising each day as a visitor for 90 days.
That will allow you to carry this forward probably for a couple of years without too many problems. So, of course, in those two years, perhaps your daughter and her family might leave Hong Kong and your problem is up after all. So it’s not simply a question of how much time should you spend away from Hong Kong between visits.
It’s more a question of, well, what’s keeping you here and how can you satisfy the Immigration Department as to your bona fides for these frequent visits; and I think you’ll find that will get you everything that you need. You can, of course, always make an application at the Immigration Department itself to extend your visitor visa permissions if you don’t have any need to travel across to Macau, say, or to fly off somewhere in order to get yourself a 90 day extension, as it were normally.
You can expect perhaps up to a 30 or 60 day extension, but it’s a one time event only and it’s almost a full day’s waiting down at the Immigration Department. So you may find it just much more conducive and easy to make the exit and make the reentry with your portfolio information as I’ve just suggested.
Okay, I hope you find that useful.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
I have been spending the last 4-5 months of my life fending off the reasonable concerns which clients have about how long it is taking Hong Kong Immigration Department to finalise most type of visa applications but mostly employment and business investment (entrepreneur) applications.
Here’s an example of how it works (real life case example) from a recent employment visa application.
Submitted On: April 3, 2024
Official ImmD Receipt Received: April 12, 2024
First Request For More Information: May 15, 2024
Respond by Date: May 29, 2024
Approval Date: July 1, 2024
Total Time to Approval = 12 weeks
So much for the typical four weeks case consideration time frame which sets the expectations of applicants that their visas will be approved in about a month from the initial date of submission.
It’s true that if you have a ‘slam dunk’ application then you might well get approved in 4 weeks. I’d say perhaps about a half of our applications do get approved in four weeks.
However, the moment ImmD ask you a question in your application you can readily add a further 6 weeks to your time to case finalisation.
Essentially, ImmD’s new policy of not resuming any work on your case UNTIL the Respond By Date has passed means that you have a 2 weeks delay and then possibly up to 4 weeks after that until you get the result.
This can quite properly be couched as ‘working to rule’.
And the stats on our website also bear out our own case management experience.
Also, in the Summer Rush season at the Hong Kong Immigration Department things to tend to take longer in any event. However, if you’re applying for an employment visa brace yourself for a 50% chance that it’s going to take significantly longer than 4 weeks to get your visa.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
If you have left the employ of your current Hong Kong employment visa sponsor, or even just thinking of doing so, you need to undergo what is known as a change of sponsorship application before you start working for anyone else in Hong Kong, including yourself!
FIRST PUBLISHED APRIL 19, 2013 – STILL OF INTEREST TODAY
To do this you have to consider it just like an entirely new visa application.
Just because you have a stamp in your passport that says ‘employment’ this is not a carte blanche approval to work for just anyone you like or can act on an entrepreneurial seizure without considering the ramifications of unauthorised immigration activity in Hong Kong.
If you are seeking to work for another employer you have to pass the employment visa approvability test.
If you are seeking to work for yourself – or in partnership with someone else – you have to pass the investment visa approvability test.
Complete details on how to do this are contained in the Hong Kong Visa Handbookand elsewhere on the Hong Kong Visa Geeza blog.
To go about changing your Hong Kong employment visa sponsorship you have to submit your application bundle on the 5th floor residents section of Immigration Tower with the correct application forms and expect the process to take between 4 and 8 weeks to complete.
It could very possibly take much longer depending on the strength and quality of your application, the length of time you have been previously resident in Hong Kong and whether or not you have already breached your conditions of stay by taking up an unauthorised employment before realizing that it’s illegal to start your own business or work for any employer other than your current employment visa sponsor.
Every new employment or business activity proposed must be cleared first by the Director of Immigration and you could find yourself in some very hot water if you do not comply with Hong Kong’s immigration laws as ignorance is no defence!
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Hong Kong change of employer application – how can you readily manage the should-you-resign-before-your-change-of-work-visa-sponsorship-application-has-been-approved conundrum?
QUESTION
I have held a Hong Kong work visa for 2 .5 years now and I am currently in the process of finalizing an offer letter with a new employer here.
I need your advice in relation to the timing of me notifying my current employer that I am set to leave.
So should I resign after a sign the offer letter or wait for my change of employer / work visa application to get approved from Hong Kong Immigration Department?
ANSWER
The Immigration Department are very familiar with this problem and therefore they work the system to the extent that they will receive an application from you in anticipation of you joining a new employer, and as they give due consideration to the application and they are about ready to approve your application, they will then ask you to supply what we’ve couched as a bye-bye letter, which is essentially correspondence between you and your employer, which speaks to the final date of employment termination in your current job.
And when you submit a copy of that, and usually it’s a copy of your resignation letter or if you’ve been a redundant, your redundancy letter, but specifically, if you’re still employed and you want to move to a new position, it would be a letter of resignation from you, acknowledged as received by the current employer, and on that letter will be the final date of employment termination.
And when you adduce that letter to the Immigration Department upon their request, they’re essentially sending you the signal that your application is about to be approved, and therefore you can quite safely resign from your current employer, knowing that the moment that you submit your bye-bye letter to the Immigration Department, they will issue you a letter of approval stating that you’ll be able to uptake the new employment normally from the day after the date on your bye-bye letter.
So that’s how the Immigration Department manages that process.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Short period of time away from Hong Kong break my continuity of residence?
Sometimes, continuity of ordinary residence can inadvertently be broken due to factors outside of your control…
QUESTION
I recently graduated from a Hong Kong university after 2 years of permanent study.
Due to circumstances I had to return to my home country for a few months, however I am due to return to Hong Kong next month to take up employment and apply for a Non-Local Graduate Visa.
The test for the Right of Abode in Hong Kong is that you need to show that you’ve been continuously and ordinarily resident in Hong Kong for a period of not less than seven years, and that any absences from Hong Kong in that time need to have been of a merely temporary nature, as evidenced by what you leave behind to return back to at the end of each temporary stay abroad.
So to get to the heart of your question, there are a number of issues that need to be factored into the mix; the first is the time away from Hong Kong. If it has been more than a few months, then arguably you’re going to have to have a really good explanation as to why you have spent that time away from Hong Kong, and more importantly, as part of that explanation, be able to demonstrate that you still had continuing intent to remain settled in Hong Kong throughout that time, and therefore, an analysis of what you had left behind to return back to will definitely fall into the mix. And because there’s not a great deal of facts available to me on the question, it’s difficult for me to particularly drill down on how your circumstances might be perceived by the Immigration Department at the point of view making your application progressing your claim for unbroken continuity of ordinary residence.
Having said that, you also need to possess a residence visa in Hong Kong throughout all of that time. So if you have finished on your student visa and have not yet moved into the realms of the privileges under the Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates, as a fresh graduate, then effectively, as I read your facts it seems that when you come back to Hong Kong, you’re coming back as a visitor.
So you’ve effectively relinquished a residence visa you’ve exited Hong Kong. You may or may not have left behind proof of your intent to remain settled here; and, for all practical purposes, you’ve given up your residence visa, now returned to Hong Kong as a visitor again.
And now you’re going to be making an application to adjust your status from visitor through to an employment visa predicated on the immigration arrangement for non-local graduates. Again, because you’ve had a break in your formal sort of back to back residence. That is, you haven’t gone directly from a student visa into a visa issue to you under the immigration arrangement for non-local graduates.
There is another question mark there as to the state of your mind, at the point of view making your exit from Hong Kong to attend to matters that you needed to take care of back in your home country. So, I mean, all things considered, usually if the break in back to back residence visas as a result, due to what I’ve called the state of administrative flux, then normally the immigration department don’t hold that against you and it tends not to break your continuity of or in a residence, and on the ROP 145 form, which is the application form for the right of abode that you will be completing subsequently, there is a section that you complete to indicate any absences from Hong Kong that have been more than six months. You offered an opportunity to explain what the purpose or what the reason underlying that absence from Hong Kong was all about.
If it’s less than six months, you don’t have to expressly state what that the reasons were for your time away from Hong Kong. But that notwithstanding, there is still an assessment of that time away from Hong Kong by the Immigration department to ensure that you have maintained your intention as regards your settlement throughout all of that time.
So for all practical purposes, then, you’ve got a little bit of a job of work ahead of you going forward, and in the final analysis, it will all depend on what the immigration department make of your explanations at the time that you make your application and what evidence you’ve got to show that even though you did temporarily depart it was your intention to depart temporarily.
And that the subsequent pattern of your behaviour and what happened immediately in the wake of your return to Hong Kong demonstrated that you had good reason for not being here during that time. And as soon as the circumstances overseas terminated such that you could get back to Hong Kong to continue your settlement, then you may be able to carry the day with the immigration department, but not clear cut, it will all depend on the exact circumstances of your situation.
Okay, I hope this helps.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
I am separating from my wife and she is refusing to keep me on her Dependent visa.
My visa expires in a month and my employers have always made it clear that they won’t sponsor Employment visas – and I don’t know what to.
Do I need to find a new job if I lose my Hong Kong dependant visa in this way?
How long would it take for a first time visa application?
Can I just keep quiet at work? They probably won’t check my visa status…
What would be the implications for that?
ANSWER
This is a scenario that presents itself all too frequentlyin actual fact, and on a previous occasion I have answered, this question. So at the beginning to the answer of this question on the blog you’ll find a link called marriage has irretrievably broken down. If you follow that link from 39,000ft that will give you a broad overview of the various immigration options that can apply in an instance where for one reason or another a dependent visa can’t be extended.
So essentially what you’re left with here is this idea that your current employer who normally would step forward to serve as your employment visa sponsor to allow you to adjust your immigration status so that you can continue to reside in Hong Kong notwithstanding the fact that your marriages are retrievably broken down.
It seems that that employer is not going to play ball with you. Therefore, in essence, you need to organise for yourself a new employment visa sponsor, someone who is prepared to play ball with you. The challenge that you are going to have here is that when you make your application, you will not be making your application within the auspices of your existing employment, you would have to be making your application from the perspective of a completely new employment. And in that regard, particularly if your dependent visa has expired at the time that you apply for a new employment visa you’re going to have to independently pass the provability test for an employment visa sponsored by a third party, arms length employer, namely that you possess special skills, knowledge and experience of value to and not readily available in Hong Kong, that no local person can reasonably expect it to take the work, that the compensation is broadly commensurate with market rates for the type of work, but most importantly in this particular instance that you are deemed a professional for the purposes of the general employment policy here, if you have a university degree with at least two years post graduation working experience in a managerial or supervisor in capacity, and the other aspects of the approvability criteria for an employment visa are satisfied, then you can expect to go on to get approved even though you’re coming off the back of a visitor visa which was only available to you in the wake of your dependent visa expiring, which in turn wasn’t being sponsored by your previous employer.
That is, your incumbent employer and normally the Immigration Department are positively minded to approve applications where there’s been an irretrievable breakdown in marriage and the dependent visa can’t be extended if the employment visa sponsorship that follows comes from an incumbent employer. So you’ll be losing some aspects of favourable consideration by not making an application with the support of your existing employer.
But if you can pass the probability criteria as I’ve just outlined anyway in the guise of a new employer, then everything should be okay. So that deals with essentially how you manage the situation with a new employer who’s going to be in a position to sponsor a new employment visa for you.
In terms of you just keeping quiet at work, that is not letting your current employer know that there’s been a material change in your immigration circumstances that is not recommended, I repeat not recommended, because the moment that your dependent visa expires you will become not lawfully employable.
In any event, the moment your dependent visa expires you’re going to have to leave Hong Kong for a quick trip to Macau and then come back and re enter as a visitor, and then maintain that status until you’re able to reorganise a new residence visa for yourself ostensibly on the strength of a new employment offer that you’ve got.
But under no circumstances should you just stay quiet because you’ll be breaching your conditions of state from the very first moment that you report for work whilst you’re holding a visitor visa. And the fact that they won’t check your immigration status really doesn’t absolve you from the responsibility to maintain that you are compliant in your immigration arrangements here.
And the implications are, well, bad. Very bad, potentially jail, serious fine, and will certainly disrupt your residence in Hong Kong. So unfortunately whilst your circumstances are not great you don’t have a lot of options available to you, unfortunately. But as I say, if you’re able to secure a job offer from a new employer and in the context of that job offer you are deemed a professional, then there’s no reason realistically we can’t expect to be able to adjust your status through from whatever you’ve got at the time that you make that application through to employment so that you can remain in Hong Kong.
So I think that’s about it. Application to change your immigration status through to an employment visa sponsored by a new employer should take between four – six weeks from the day that you supply the immigration department with all the papers that they need to give due and full consideration to the application.
Okay, I hope you found that useful.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
