Hong Kong Visas Made Easy

Interview: Do Mainlanders Typically Enjoy the Same Kind of Immigration Experience as Other Foreign Nationals Do in Hong Kong?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Family Visas, Investment Visas, Long Stay & PR, Musing, Special Programmes, Visitor Visas / 19 responses

First Published July 24, 2013 – Updated October 2026

PRACTICE UPDATE 2026

How the Content Must Now Be Read in Light of the Updated IANG (Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates) Policy

Historically, the video commentary and analysis published on the Hong Kong Visa Geeza at Do Mainlanders Typically Enjoy The Same Kind Of Immigration Experience As Other Foreign Nationals Do In Hong Kong? examined the distinct regulatory segmentation applied to Mainland Chinese residents, contrasting ultra-wealthy individuals seeking tax residency and passport rights with ambitious, overseas-educated professionals pursuing career advancement in the territory. The legacy discussion warned that casual or contrived attempts to enter via marginal commercial assets were routinely rejected by the Immigration Department, which actively filtered applicants to prevent speculative migration while admitting only those who aligned with the city’s economic and talent priorities.

Under the modernized regulatory framework articulated in Practice Update: Hong Kong’s IANG Visa, this cross-boundary talent movement has been formally institutionalized, transforming from individual ad-hoc pathways into a coordinated regional integration mechanism covering eligible graduates from joint-venture campuses throughout the Greater Bay Area under the 2+3+3 pattern of stay. The updated regime removes the historical ambiguity surrounding Mainland talent mobility, but it replaces passive presence with strict scrutiny over actual employment and commercial bona fides at the renewal stage. To resolve the operative standard governing continuing lawful residence across all applicant groups, the Hong Kong Visa Geeza established that: “The essential distinction is that a qualifying academic background can open the door to Hong Kong, but continued residence ordinarily requires a credible employment or business connection with the territory.”

 

On June 6th, 2013 I was interviewed by five law students from the Chinese University of Hong Kong about my experiences practicing immigration here over the last 20 years.

We covered a great deal of ground in the 90 minutes we spent together and over the next few weeks I will be posting the interview broken down into 31 different segments, covering almost every Hong Kong related visa and immigration topic there is.

The students were: Dickens Roy Ken Lam, Sunny Wong, Toby Yip, Margaret Wo and the lady who asked most of the questions and organised the session on behalf of the group, Jacqueline Cheng.

In this segment the question posed was:

Do Mainlanders typically enjoy the same kind of immigration experience as other foreign nationals do in Hong Kong?

My friends and colleagues over at Astus Services Group very kindly hosted us in their facilities in Central for this interview.

 Other Questions Asked During the Session

How has the experience of Hong Kong immigration policy changed over the last 20 years?

Do you personally find Hong Kong an attractive place to live, work and do business?

How has Hong Kong’s attractiveness changed for you over the last 27 years?

Do your clients typically find Hong Kong’s attractiveness today as it was to you 27 years ago?

Do Mainlanders typically enjoy the same kind of immigration experience as other foreign nationals do in Hong Kong?

In what ways do you think the different entry schemes may affect Hong Kong’s socio-economic development?

Do you think the relatively low number of foreigners coming to live and work in Hong Kong is due to it being hard to get a visa? 

Do you think that the Immigration Department suitably promote and encourage participation in the various schemes designed to attract foreign national talent to Hong Kong?

How effective is the Hong Kong Immigration Department’s website in educating and promoting Hong Kong to the outside world as a place to live and work and do business?

In the last 20 years which visa type has been most in demand and easiest to anticipate an approval for?

Has Hong Kong’s effort to forge a particular social fabric through the constructs of its immigration policy been successful do you think?

In real terms what is the difference between the General Employment Policy and the Admission of Mainland Talents & Professionals Scheme?

Has there been any demographic change since the introduction of the Admission of Mainland Talents and Quality Migrant Admission Schemes?

What do you think about the Immigration Arrangement for Non-local graduates?

Do you think that IANG actually allows a loophole for foreign graduates to game the immigration system here?

Has Hong Kong ever been used as a kind of stepping stone into another immigration jurisdiction?

Do you think the special programmes designed  for Mainland residents are as attractive now as they were when they were first introduced?

Is there a threshold to attaining a visa under the General Employment Policy?

What’s actually involved in getting a Hong Kong investment visa approved?

Can it be said ImmD are sometimes lax in enforcing immigration policy? 

Which visa program would be most beneficial for Hong Kong’s society?

What was it like being an immigration consultant in Hong Kong during the time of SARS?

We hypothesize that while the influx of non-residents into Hong Kong may benefit the economy in the short-term, the long-term negative impacts outweigh any short-term positives.  Do you agree with this statement?

Do you think that there is preferential treatment to non-resident workers?

What do you think is the most difficult challenge facing Hong Kong now, when it comes to competing for foreign talents and workers? (i.e. as compared to the 3 other Asian Tigers)

What’s your view on Hong Kong’s liberal visitor visa arrangements, especially regarding the large numbers of Mainlanders who come here now?

So we have 20,000 vacancies in the F+B industry but we don’t have people to fill these spots – what are ImmD doing about it?

What about the possibility of a graduate management trainee visa for a foreign national applicant?

How well does ImmD respond to the lack of skills in Hong Kong through adjustments to the General Employment Policy from time to time?

Do you think any improvements could be made on the entry schemes? If so, how?

What do you think is the biggest problem in dealing with ImmD as an organisation tasked with the dual role of providing a public service yet serving as the gatekeeper to Hong Kong?

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How To Qualify For a Hong Kong Work Visa – From 39,000 Feet (Whiteboard Animation)

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Sherpa / No responses

How to qualify for a Hong Kong work visa – from 39,000 feet! We are presently building the website for our new corporate services proposition, Hong Kong Visa Sherpa.

We are bringing a whole new line of content to help companies with more than 100 employees to do their cases by themselves without needing to pay for any professional help. This new website, to be launched in Q3 this year, will contain many new and interesting ways to help you answer your Hong Kong visa questions and help solve your immigration problems.

The Visa Sherpa website is a build in progress – check us out as we bring the product to life!

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The perils of contriving a job offer in order to make an employment visa application in Hong Kong

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Right of Abode in Hong Kong For Foreign Domestic Helpers – It Was All So-Inevitable Really…

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Long Stay & PR, Musing, Refusals & Appeals / 1 response

First Published March 27, 2013

 

The Court of Final Appeal quashed the hopes of 1,067 long stay foreign domestic helpers(“FDHs”) earlier this week when they ruled that time spent in Hong Kong as a foreign domestic helper is not ‘ordinary residence’ for the purposes of a right of abode application.

Putting the human dimension to one side for a moment, in law, the right outcome, to my mind at least, has been determined.

1. FDH’s come to Hong Kong on prescribed, limited terms of employment – they are not allowed to come with ‘settlement’ in mind.

2. If the Court had ruled otherwise, ImmD would simply have introduced an administrative mechanism (say a “maximum 3 contracts” rule) to obviate an FDH from being able to spend 7 years in Hong Kong so the entire exercise would have benefitted only one segment of the FDH community, leaving the rest out in the cold.

3. Do we REALLY want the Basic Law tinkered with by Beijing after all?

I’m glad the saga is over.

The premise in challenging the law was right but the outcome was legally inevitable.

Wikipedia have an excellent synopsis of the case.

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Why Pay For Professional Help in Your Hong Kong QMAS Application When You Really Can Do It All By Yourself!

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Musing, Special Programmes / 17 responses

How the Content Must Now Be Read in Light of the Updated QMAS (Quality Migrant Admission Scheme) Policy

In the candid advisory piece Why Pay For Professional Help in Your Hong Kong QMAS Application When You Really Can Do It All By Yourself!, the foundational thesis centers on demystifying the application process and discouraging applicants from paying unnecessary, exorbitant agency fees. According to the Hong Kong Visa Geeza, Stephen Barnes, prospective migrants were routinely overcharged by immigration consultants who merely repackaged the Immigration Department’s publicly available application guides. The piece laid bare the empirical realities of the legacy scheme: historical approval rates hovered around 27%, with an overwhelming 77% of approvals absorbed by Mainland Chinese nationals and Western expatriates accounting for tiny fractions. Because the legacy 225/245-point General Points Test functioned essentially as an opaque lottery vetted by a non-official Advisory Committee, paying thousands of dollars for speculative submission assistance—only to endure a 7- to 12-month wait for an unappealable refusal—offered little commercial value to candidates who could easily file self-directed applications using free, professional-grade online toolkits.

That pragmatic, self-directed ethos must now be interpreted through the definitive legal architecture established in our PRACTICE UPDATE: The Quality Migrant Admission Scheme Definitively Stated 2026-27 by Stephen D Barnes, which documents the complete replacement of the legacy points calculation with 12 objective, binary assessment criteria following the late 2024 overhaul. As stated by the Hong Kong Visa Geeza, Stephen Barnes, the rationale for avoiding predatory consultants has only intensified under the contemporary regime: with subjective self-scoring abolished, qualification is now governed by absolute documentary thresholds requiring a pass across at least 6 of the 12 criteria (such as holding a top-100 university qualification, a STEM Master’s degree, or an audited annual income of HK$1M+). An applicant either possesses the objective qualifying credentials or they do not—no agency can artificially inflate points or manufacture eligibility. Furthermore, the 2026–27 update demonstrates that the real challenge has shifted entirely downstream: managing the strict 3+3+2 extension gauntlet requires proving genuine local tax contributions and specialist employment, making self-awareness of long-term settlement obligations far more critical than paying for initial filing representation.

 

On this Blog, I normally eschew talking about my professional practice, how we provide services and how our fees are structured.

Both this website and the Hong Kong Visa Handbook are ‘sell free’ zones.

These 2 websites are designed to provide you with professional quality visa and immigration resources so that you can make fully informed decisions about your Hong Kong immigration status during your time here.

No more. No less.

However, in today’s post I want to both address an issue in respect of the need for professional assistance in a Quality Migrant Admission Scheme application and also create a single source resource that I can point people to when they enquire of our services in respect of a QMAS application.

The overarching message is this:

You Probably Don’t Need to Professional Help in Your Hong Kong QMAS Application!

Not even us.

Firstly the Hong Kong Immigration Department have put out an excellent Guide to Making a QMAS Application.

Most Immigration Consultants in Hong Kong provide their services in the light of this Guide.

Secondly, the Hong Kong Visa Handbook and also our  10 Must Have Resources add further information to the official guidance provided by ImmD.

 

QMAS – Likelihood of Approval

As you may have learned from my blog posts,  I am not a great fan of the QMAS programme.

Of all applications received, only 27% have ever been approved.

Out of this 27%, 77% go to Mainland Chinese and a further 10% go to Canadian, Australian and US nationals collectively.

In my view, it’s a lottery skewed towards Chinese nationals principally and those persons with outstanding personal accomplishments and traits under their belt.

Whilst the Selection Committee entertain all-comers, experience suggests that you to have something quite esoteric or remarkable about you as an applicant.

And waiting 7-12 months for the privilege of learning that your application has been refused, is not for the faint hearted.

That said, you have to be in it to win it and if you don’t apply, you will never know!

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Social Media Keeping Hong Kong Immigration Consultants On Their Toes – Scary Stuff!

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Investment Visas, Musing / 12 responses

First Published June 17, 2102

Hong Kong Immigration Consultants – this video ‘testimonial’ of our client came as a pleasant surprise but also with a great shock. At the time we were working on Annette’s Hong Kong investment visa application, we had no idea she was keeping a video log of the experience. Whilst we were thrilled with what she has done it at once made me understand the true power of social media. What if she had had a less than satisfactory experience? What would it have done to our carefully managed brand? Scary stuff – but by god, does it keep good companies on their toes!

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The Hong Kong Immigration Department Official Video – Almost 10 Minutes of “Why Bother”?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Family Visas, Investment Visas, Long Stay & PR, Musing, Special Programmes, Visitor Visas / 4 responses

The Hong Kong Immigration Department official video was released in June of 2012. As of the date of this post, their video had 35,000 views.

This video is a typical government work of art – which begs the question as to why they produced it in the first place?

Lots of smiling faces, stirring music and suitably stern glances amongst featured Immigration Officers ‘in the know’ – but nothing of real use for service users to be found anywhere in this ‘community service’ effort.

If my Cantonese were not so awful, I’d be lining up to join the more than 5,000 of Wanchai’s Finest myself on the strength of this pitch.

But really, what’s the point?

All of the information served up here is available in their Report  published annually and, in any event, do we really doubt that that the HKSAR passport is produced, by them, to the highest security standards in the world or that the Department is responsible for the registration of all births deaths and marriages in the HKSAR?

Regular readers of this Blog or listeners to my commentary on RTHK Radio 3 will know for sure that I am a huge fan of the HKID. Quite apart from the fact that they enable my colleagues and I to feed our families, they really DO do a great job looking after the needs of the consumers of Department services.

But there’s always room for improvement.

So, while it’s understandable that the HKID do not pro-offer approvability advice to service users (limiting themselves to informing and deciding only) they could easily produce instructional videos on how consumers of Department services can efficiently get to grips with HKID processes and procedures.

A list of such videos, off the top of my head, could include:

1. How employers can inspect a HKID card presented by a candidate for a job to ascertain if they are lawfully employable.

2. The legal obligations of Hong Kong employers who sponsor foreign national employees.

3. The blow-by-blow procedures involved in extending each type of residence visa.

4. The mechanics of assessing eligibility for a PHKID Card at the time of verification by an Immigration Officer.

5.  How to submit an application for an employment visa on a change of status basis.

6. How to submit an application for the endorsement of a newly issued passport.

7. How the birth of a newborn child to a foreign national resident of Hong Kong can be registered and the baby’s travel document endorsed with requisite immigration status.

To cite just a few….

A series of procedural How-To’s would be a lot more useful and a much better allocation of budget than this 9 minutes of blurb about what the Department  and its staff do from day to day.

The HKID website is full of information which is less than useful and it would appear, at least from the emergence of their YouTube channel, that it’s a case of more of the same when it comes to their efforts to embrace service users via social media means.

Loads of  ‘me, me, me’.

Little or no, ‘you, you, you’.

 

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Eligibility Criteria for the Hong Kong Working Holiday Visa Scheme

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Musing, Special Programmes / 89 responses

Image: dontstopliving.net

The Hong Kong working holiday visa programme first came into play in April 2001 and is meant to aid cultural and education exchanges between HK and those nations who take part on a bi-lateral basis.

Participants in the Hong Kong Working Holiday Scheme are not permitted to engage in permanent employment and should not work for the same employer for more than six months (for participants from the Republic of Korea) or three months (for participants from Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Japan and New Zealand) during their visit in the HKSAR.

Participants from Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and New Zealand may also enrol in study or training course(s) during their time under the programme.

The Scheme permits younger people (between 18 and 30) to make an application for a Working Holiday Visa for Hong Kong which enables them to remain in the HKSAR for a maximum vacation period of one year. During their stay, the Working Holiday Visa holder can take up short term work for a period of less than 3 months with any one employer and can study for a fixed duration.

The tradition of the Scheme works to permit a lengthened vacation type experience of working, living and also, the chance of studying in HK for an unqualified maximum period of one year but the Scheme shouldn’t be viewed as an alternative choice to a work visa.

Extensions outside the twelve months aren’t available and an applicant may only receive one Working Holiday Visa during the life of the Scheme.

The overall objective of the Scheme is to offer a valuable opportunity for younger people to broaden their horizons and the programme is subject to a maximum quota of visas to be issued each year.

Countries that have bilateral Working Holiday Scheme agreement with the HKSAR (as at 1 January 2019)

• Australia (annual quota = 5000)
• Austria (annual quota = 100)
• Canada (annual quota = 200)
• France (annual quota = 750)
• Germany (annual quota = 300)
• Hungary (annual quota = 200)
• Ireland (annual quota = 200)
• Japan (annual quota = 1500)
• Korea (Republic of) (annual quota = 1000)
• Netherlands (annual quota = 100)
• New Zealand (annual quota = 400)
• Sweden (annual quota = 500)
• United Kingdom (annual quota = 1000)

Temporary employment

• Australian citizens – not allowed to work for the same employer for more than three months
• Austrian citizens – not allowed to work for more than six months
• British citizens – not allowed to work for more than 12 months
• Canadian citizens – not allowed to work for the same employer for more than three months
• Dutch citizens – not allowed to work for the same employer for more than six months
• French citizens – not allowed to work for the same employer for more than six months
• German citizens – not allowed to work for the same employer for more than three months
• Hungarian citizens – not allowed to work for the same employer for more than six months
• Irish citizens – not allowed to work for the same employer for more than three months
• Japanese citizens – not allowed to work for the same employer for more than six months
• Korean citizens – not allowed to work for the same employer for more than six months
• New Zealand citizens – not allowed to work for the same employer for more than three months
• Swedish citizens – not allowed to work for the same employer for more than six months

Applications are selected on a first-come-first-served basis. Processing of applications takes about 3 weeks.

Conditions for successful application include:

* You must hold a valid national passport issued by the participating country and be ordinarily residing in that participating country.

* Your primary intention is to holiday in Hong Kong.

* You must be aged between 18 and 30.

* You must be able to show financial proof of having enough funds to maintain yourself during the stay in Hong Kong. (e.g. bank statement, saving accounts passbooks, and the like).

* You must have a return air ticket or financial proof of having sufficient funds to purchase one home.

* You must hold medical and comprehensive hospitalisation and liability insurance to cover your time in the HKSAR – certain nationalities: see here.

* The process is by way of direct application in Hong Kong via a local representative or direct to the HKID via mail.

* Applications can also be submitted via the network of Chinese diplomatic and consular missions in the participating countries.

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