QOTW: Can I Get A Hong Kong Work Visa With No Degree?

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

An old chestnut this question which comes up time and time again about getting a Hong Kong work visa with no degree – albeit this time in the context of a technical apprenticeship undertaken straight out of senior high school.

QUESTION  OF  THE  WEEK

I moved to Hong Kong from France one month ago.

I came here together with my boyfriend who has started to work here (we are not married, so no dependant visa!!).

In France I was working for Company A as a customer service agent. I actually also got a job at Company A here in Hong Kong before I arrived here.

But I don’t have a university degree. I did my A-Levels in France followed by a 2,5 year apprenticeship in my niche and after that I worked there for about 2 years.

What are my chances to get the working visa, without holding a University degree?

ANSWER

The General Employment Policy in Hong Kong calls for applicants for employment visas to have a university degree; however, what happens if you don’t have a university degree but have technical qualifications instead? Could an applicant who possesses special skills, knowledge, or experience of value to and not readily available in Hong Kong, obtain an employment visa?

Generally, an employment visa applicant is expected to have a university degree and at least two years post-graduation working experience in a managerial or supervisory capacity; however, what happens in real life is that not everybody goes to university and there are plenty of people in Hong Kong who do have working visas but they never went to university themselves; therefore, how did they get their visas?

Essentially, the Immigration Department have a certain amount of flexibility and in general terms, if you don’t have a university degree but you have technical qualifications the immigration department will expect you to have at least five years post-qualification working experience in the managerial or supervisory capacity, and if you don’t have technical qualifications you’re expected to have at least 10 years of working experience in a managerial or supervisory capacity; so, in this instance it seems to me that you haven’t yet quite met the five years post-qualification working experience in the managerial or supervisory capacity that you need and therefore I suspect you might find it difficult to persuade the Immigration Department that you should be granted an employment visa in your circumstances; and, of course, aligned with all of this, is this overarching question – does the work that’s being offered to you, can actually be undertaken by a local person, and that’s an objective test and the immigration department will make the determination based on all of the evidence that they’ve got bundled up inside the application.

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What Can I Do If My Employment Contract Ends On The Same Day As My Hong Kong Work Visa And I Need To Stay Here A While Longer To Sort Out My Affairs?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Your Question Answered / No responses

Employment law and immigration law are often overlapping but must be dealt with separately…this post talks about what can be done if someone’s employment contract ends on the same day as their Hong Kong work visa, but they need to stay in Hong Kong for a while longer to sort out their affairs.

What can I do If my employment contract ends on the same day as my Hong Kong work visa and I need to stay here a while longer to sort out my affairs?

QUESTION

I am in a fix with a difficult-to-deal-with local company.

My 2 year contract with them expires this October 20. My work visa expires on the same day.

Is my employer legally required to serve a one month notice?

If the HR Department mention nothing to me, is my last day at work October 20, and am I required to leave the country? I am Canadian.

Is my employer required to contact the Immigration Department and notify them of my employment ending? At what date?

If I leave Hong Kong on the 20th of October to Macau for the night and return on the 21st, can I come in on a 3 month visitor visa so I can pack up the house?

Or is it better to go to the Immigration Department on the 18th/19th and apply for an extension to pack up my things and leave Hong Kong?

ANSWER

Whilst I’m not an employment lawyer, I’m not really qualified to discuss matters of employment law, it does seem to me that if you have a fixed term employment contract which is going to expire in your case as of October the 20th, then you need to look to your contract to see if there is any arrangement that speaks to an extension of that employment contract and if there is a specific notice period that the employer will need to give you in order to advise you of the termination of your employment as at the date of your contract termination too.

So look to the contract to see what that’s all about. But, in any event, all of that notwithstanding the question of your ongoing employment visa is tied directly to your ongoing employment. Therefore, if your employer has not yet indicated the possibility of an extension to your employment contract it will be the case that come October 20, when your current employment visa expires, effectively you will no longer be lawfully employable in Hong Kong.

I understand your challenge insomuch as well if you’re no longer going to be working in Hong Kong after October the 20th, you can’t just, in a sense, stop working and then mystically, magically wonderfully, before midnight that day head off back to Canada.

You’re going to need to have some time in order to manage your affairs here in the wake of your intending departure. So there are two things that you can do. One which is recommended, one which I would suggest you avoid.

The first thing that you can do is to go down to the immigration department on the 21st and explain effectively what your situation is and ask them to give you an extension.

You may find that they will give you a temporary extension for perhaps a week, maybe two at the most in your circumstances. And that is barely recommended because of the way that the immigration officers in immigration tower usually consider these applications.

The second option that you have, which is the one that I recommend, is that on the 20 October, you take the 11:00 p.m. ferry to Macau, and then after you’ve arrived in Macau, immediately jump back on the 01:00 a.m. ferry on the 21 October back to Hong Kong, and then the immigration officer upon arrival will admit you as a Canadian national for 90 days as a visitor, and that three months will then give you all the time that you need to finalise your affairs and make your exit from Hong Kong to return home. So, that’s what I would suggest you do.

I hope you find this useful.

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Can I Study Online For A UK Tertiary Qualification While Staying In Hong Kong With A Visitor Visa?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Visitor Visas, Your Question Answered / No responses

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!

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Will A Criminal Record Impact On Your Application For A Hong Kong Residence Visa?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Family Visas, Hadley Says…, Investment Visas, Long Stay & PR, Refusals & Appeals, Special Programmes, Visitor Visas / 144 responses

UPDATE: March 5, 2024

This article tries to clarify the impact of a criminal record on your application for a Hong Kong residence visa

Used to be no – but now the game has completely changed.

Criminal records now must be disclosed across all visa types.

Every now and again the question of criminal convictions and the impact they have on the Hong Kong visa process raises its head. Hadley here waxes lyrical on this subject and surprisingly, has quite a lot to say!

Criminal Record Impact On Your Application For A Hong Kong Residence Visa – Is Your Conviction Already Spent?

Of course, the million dollar question right now is will the existence of a prior criminal conviction automatically disqualify an applicant? If not, what is the threshold? Will ‘spent’ convictions need to be disclosed?

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More Stuff You May Find Useful or Interesting

Can You Have 2 Separate Applications Pending At One Time?

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What Hong Kong Visa Options Exist for Unmarried Trailing Partners?

Is it Possible To Get An Extension To My Hong Kong Visitor Visa To Stay With My Girlfriend Here?

How Can You Extend Your Hong Kong Work Visa if Your Passport Is About to Expire?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Musing / 5 responses

How can you extend your Hong Kong work visa if your passport  has only a very limited amount of time remaining on it before it expires?

QUESTION

Hello,

My passport is currently being renewed but my Hong Kong work visa runs out very soon. 

However I cannot start the visa extension application process without a new passport.  

I am worried my visa will expire before the application is complete. 

Does immigration allow special extensions for such circumstances?

ANSWER

This situation would occur a lot more frequently than you might imagine and the Immigration Department have a very straightforward way of dealing with it; essentially, what you do is that you start your extension application with your old passport details – the application should be submitted within 30 days of the expiry of your current Hong Kong employment visa limit of stay, and at the same time, you submit proof of your new passport application to the Immigration Department as part of that extension exercise.

This inputs the Immigration Department that there is a new travel document in process and they will wait until the issue of your new passport in order to finalise your new extension that will go into your new passport.

I hope you find this useful!

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How To Apply For A Hong Kong Investment Visa Without Paying For Professional Help – 6 – Work Visa Vs Investment Visa?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Investment Visas, Musing / 1 response

This post on how to apply for a Hong Kong investement visa without paying for professional help deals with the differences between  work visa vs investment visa.

I have given this talk around town for the last couple of years now and so pleased to finally add it to our coverage of the Hong Kong investment visa, specifically discussing the distinction between an employment visa and an entrepreneur visa (Work Visa vs Investment Visa).

The talk was graciously hosted at WYND Co-working Space, ran by a group of great people for whom I have a great deal of time.

The Complete Talk in Logical Segments

1 – Introduction

2 – Policy

3 – Visa Problem?

4 – Mainlanders

5 – Visitors

6 – Work Visa?

7 – Investment Visa?

8 – Approvability Test

9 – Cash Needed

10 – Catch 22

11 – Loved Ones

12 – Visa Refused?

13 – Trying Again

14 – D-I-Y

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More Stuff You May Find Useful Or Interesting

10 Must Have Resources For A Hong Kong Investment Visa Application

Is It A Good Or A Bad Sign That The Hong Kong Immigration Department Keep Coming Back With Requests For Further Information?

My Hong Kong Employment Visa Application Has Been Refused – What Can I Do Now?

How A Hong Kong Employment Visa Application Can Go Completely Wrong If You Don’t Know What You’re Doing

How To Engage The Hong Kong Visa Centre If Your Application Has Been Refused By The Hong Kong Immigration Department

Foreign Nationals Working In Hong Kong – Getting Married, Changing Visas & The Immigration Status Of Children Born Here Subsequently

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Family Visas, Your Question Answered / 4 responses

So, what are the immigration implications of getting married and then having children in Hong Kong if you are a temporary resident presently holding an employment visa?

QUESTION

Hi,

Can you please help with a few questions?

1. I am getting married next month and would like to cancel my employment visa through my employer, and change to a dependent visa through my spouse. I would like to remain with the same employer. Is that possible? Would I still require an employment contract with my office (same employer) or would I no longer need an employment contract.

2. If we are married in the US and have a US marriage license, how do I register that in Hong Kong?

3. If two US citizens, living in Hong Kong on employment visas, have their baby in Hong Kong, is that baby now a Hong Kong citizen, or does his/her status follow the visa status of the parents?

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