In a broad sense employment visas can be broken down into three categories. Please note, however, that these categories are descriptive of the general themes in the employment visa acquisition process: the words are our own terminology and, with the exception of category (1), most certainly are not recognized by these labels at the Hong Kong Immigration Department!

1. Inter-Company Transferee Expatriate Staff
2. Locally Recruited Expatriate Staff
3. Specifically Recruited Expatriate Staff

Inter-Company Transferee Expatriate Staff

This category covers the situation where the visa applicant is already working for a parent, sister or other formally associated company of the intended Hong Kong employing company. This basically means that a group or parent company wishes to transfer, for either a short or long time, a staff to Hong Kong from overseas to work in the Hong Kong office.

Depending on the length of the prior employment with the parent or group company, the work nature proposed for the visa applicant in Hong Kong and the possibility of an objective assessment of the fact that no local Hong Kong person could really be placed in the position to undertake the job proposed for the transferring staff, these types of visa applications tend to be merely administrative, as opposed to argumentative, in nature.

Of course all of the information which the Immigration Department need to assess the application must be supplied in the usual way and in a timely manner but, from the perspective of approvability of applications, Inter-Company Transferees tend to secure employment visas with little or no need for distinctly argumentative representations to ‘convince’ the Immigration Department of the critical need to transfer a staff to Hong Kong from a parent or group company.

However, in the consideration process the Immigration Department deliberate all the circumstances of a case and look to such factors as the ratio of local staff to expatriate staff employed, the special skills, knowledge and experience of the incoming transferring expatriate staff, whether the incoming transferring expatriate staff is replacing an outgoing expatriate staff and the general circumstances of the employing Hong Kong company as a whole. Thus it is especially important when applying for an employment visa for an Inter-Company Transferee expatriate staff that the whole picture be viewed to answer the question "Could this job realistically be undertaken by a suitably qualified local Hong Kong resident?"

As a general rule of thumb the larger the number of local Hong Kong staff employed the easier it is to justify the visa for a transferring expatriate staff. Similarly, the longer a company has existed in Hong Kong, the easier it is to get such a visa approved. Most importantly, however, is the length of prior employment with the transferring company. If the incoming transferring expatriate staff has been with the transferring company for only a few months this is not very favourable. Three years or more represents a considerable advantage, but still, all of the other factors will be considered in the case - no one point in itself is definitive for approvability purposes.

Locally Recruited Expatriate Staff

This category covers the expatriate staff who has been recruited locally in Hong Kong. This most often means the person who comes to Hong Kong ‘on spec’ hoping to find a job during an extended visit, often registering with a recruitment agency. This person usually comes to Hong Kong as a Visitor and then is offered a job here - and needs to secure an employment visa in order to take up the job offered to him or her.

These cases are most often the argumentative ones - and the most difficult to secure approvals for. Much care must be taken in ensuring that the Immigration Department are informed of the critical need to employ such an expatriate staff and to demonstrate definitively that no local Hong Kong person could realistically undertake the proposed work responsibilities. In borderline cases, sincere and consistent efforts to try to recruit a local Hong Kong person will have to be shown to the Immigration Department to have taken place before the locally recruited expatriate staff was offered the job.

This second category makes up an extremely large proportion of Hong Kong employment visa applications from foreign nationals. There is no reason at all why the majority of such applications need not be approved if the applications are handled correctly.

Specifically Recruited Expatriate Staff

Often, foreign companies recruit new staff abroad for specific deployment to their Hong Kong operation. Usually, after a few weeks of orientation in the parent business operation overseas, the expatriate staff is then transferred to Hong Kong to begin his or her duties. In these circumstances the employer has often gone to considerable expense in locating the expatriate staff and the expatriate staff themselves usually have given up great stability elsewhere in order to take up the position in Hong Kong, all before the visa situation has been satisfactorily resolved.

Employment of specifically recruited expatriate staff often occurs because of Mandarin or Cantonese language ability, prior China or Hong Kong related experience or for particular technical or industry specific skills.

In such types of applications the visa applicant must take great care to ensure that the Immigration Department are totally informed as to the underlying reason why an expatriate is favoured over a local Hong Kong person. In fact the Immigration Department frown upon such recruitment activities and the task of securing employment visas for these types of staff is often one of the most difficult to be found in the Hong Kong immigration process.

However, again, if the visa application is approached from the right angle, such types of visas will most often be approved.

Administrative Cases vs. Cases Which Need Strident Argument

By way of example, the following scenarios are illustrative of chances of approvability across the employment visa acquisition spectrum. It can be noted that these cases fall into two distinct categories, with a third ‘borderline; category coming into existence when a case doesn’t fit squarely within the administrative or the argumentative headings.

Scenario One: A securities house in Japan ‘headhunts’ a Japanese national Asian securities’ specialist from another Japanese securities company in Singapore for deployment in Hong Kong. This visa applicant has more than ten years of relevant experience in his field and his remuneration package very generous. Ultimately he would be licensed as a securities trader with the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission and would be appointed a director of the employing company in Hong Kong. Due to the high level nature of the appointment his application would very much be treated as an administrative one.

Scenario Two: A garment concern in Italy recruits a designer/fabric co-ordinator in Italy for specific deployment in their Hong Kong subsidiary. The reason for a Hong Kong deployment, as opposed to an Italian placement, is that the business itself had recently undergone a reorganization to reflect the importance of Hong Kong and China in the garment manufacturing and supply operation for their clothing supply business throughout Europe. Due to Italian QC standards, consumer tastes and market trends, the designer/fabric co-ordinator necessarily needs to be an Italian national with considerable experience and formal qualifications in this field. Indeed, if it were not for the recent corporate reorganization such employee would have ordinarily been employed in Italy without any need for her to be based in Hong Kong. Her visa application would be a borderline administrative/argumentative case.

Her visa would ultimately be approved due to the Immigration Department having been given definitive proof that (i) the parent company in Italy had indeed recently undergone a reorganization of business there necessitating her deployment in Hong Kong, (ii) the position needed an Italian national qualified in garment design techniques and experienced in fashion trends and Italian consumer tastes, and (iii) that, in all the circumstances of the employing company’s business in Hong Kong, they were justified in bringing in an expatriate staff to undertake this job function.

Scenario Three: A Korean company in Hong Kong, through a chain of informal introductions, recruited a Korean lady directly from one of the leading foreign language institutions in Korea. Her duties were to be basic general administration type duties in Hong Kong but with a measure of responsibility for business management. She, herself, was very capable and ambitious and eager to work in Hong Kong. Mandarin and Cantonese had been her major subjects at college and she had spent one year of her degree program in Beijing at university on an exchange program. Her visa application would fall squarely into the argumentative category. Extensive ability in languages is not sufficient in itself for visa approvability and a modicum of prior work experience would be called for. Moreover, the rationale for the employment of an expatriate staff in this case is not acceptable. The company wish to employ her in order to secure cultural affinity comfort and confidence that she would do a good job of what is actually a not very demanding job - whilst being an important position nonetheless. If everything were to work in her favour in the visa application she might stand an outside chance of an approval - but the application would have to be tailored around her strengths and the weaknesses marginalized. Moreover, the job position itself would have to include much more responsibility and have ascribed to it management and decision making functionality. Her visa, whilst not totally impossible to secure, will be very difficult to obtain.