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Tough question this – so what’s the answer…?

QUESTION

Hello Hong Kong Visa Geeza,

This website is simply wonderful and resourceful!! Thanks.

I had a question and was wondering if you can please help.

I finish 7 years in Hong Kong in November and my current employment visa expires on the same day

I would like to continue my life here as a Hong Kong Permanent Resident.

However, my employing company is not doing that well and it may shut down or a few of us might be fired this summer.

Unfortunately, if it happens in September or October, it will leave me very little time to find a new job/apply for any academic course to be able to remain resident here under a new employment or student visa.

I am already looking for jobs but it’s not easy to get one currently.

Please let me know your opinion about the best course of action I can take now or in the coming days and what is the usual course of action if someone is fired 15/20 days before end of 7 years, for example.

Thanks again 

ANSWER

If you find yourself having been continuously and ordinarily resident in Hong Kong for the requisite seven years to go on to qualify for permanent residency, when you make your application, you need to have a valid residence visa endorsed in your passport on the day that you apply and you need to have a valid residence visa endorsed in your passport on the day that the Immigration Department finalise your application.

So in your circumstances, if you find that you lose your job for whatever reason in the weeks running up to your seven-year anniversary and your present residence visa expires on exactly the seven-year anniversary, you’ve got a couple of options available to you: the first option is that you earnestly try to arrange another residence visa, possibly through an extension to your employment visa because you have secured an alternate job offer and you’re suitably qualified, both professionally and immigration wise to take up that employment and the Immigration Department approve it and that will then carry you over the seven year line with the one year visa you get at that point which will then make you eligible, all things considered to promote an efficient right of abode application.

Alternatively, you could do it via a student visa as well, that’s also an option to you; but as you’ve pointed out, you don’t have a high level of confidence that you’ll be able to create those circumstances, and therefore what’s going to happen if you get to the seven-year anniversary and you’re not in a position to have a new residence visa available to you?

Well, effectively what you do is you make an application 30 days before your seven-year anniversary and ensure that every single piece of paper that the Immigration Department will need to look at your case positively and be ready to approve you so that there’s no need for them to engage in any ongoing correspondence with you to get other documents such that when you make your application and your supporting letter you indicate that you’re no longer employed, that you won’t be in a position to have a residence visa the day after your seven-year anniversary and therefore could the examining officer kindly see fit to finalise and approve your right of abode application on the seven-year anniversary when your current limit of stay expires; that’s one technical way to address the challenge that you’ve got. However, in the final analysis it boils down to the workload of the immigration officer and the disposition of the immigration officer to entering into that kind of arrangement; it’s certainly not guaranteed and effectively means that the immigration officer who is tasked with your application is prepared to organise his or her workload to accommodate you, all things considered.

So that’s, effectively one way that you can go about doing it; and we’ve seen instances on two or three occasions in the past where the right of abode officer has been able to come to the party, as it were. But if you do find yourself not able to finalise your right of abode application on the exact seven-year anniversary, then no matter, as long as you continue to earnestly look to create the circumstances so that you can get a new residence visa in due course during the currency of the transition from your old situation to the new situation that is going on to get a student visa, or continuing to interview for new jobs, and thereby going on to get an employment visa subsequently, any time that you spend in Hong Kong as a visitor, during that process, because that’s the only immigration status that you’ll have available to you, will not, in normal circumstances, break your continuity because the act of trying to create the circumstances for a student visa or new employment visa show your continuing intent to remain settled in Hong Kong. And therefore the Immigration department won’t allow any time as a visitor as long as it’s a reasonably short period of time to break your continuity of your residence. And therefore, subsequently when you do get your new residence visa, you can then make your application for the right of abode and I think your family goes through without too much of an ado.

I hope you found that useful.

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