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It’s important to undertake one application at a time en route to your eventual right of abode in Hong Kong…

QUESTION

Hi. I need to extend my IANG visa by the end of July. As of the second week in September I will have been in Hong Kong for 7 years, thus eligible for permanent residency.

I currently do not have a employer sponsor. In negotiating an employment contract (I’m a consultant with no desire to start my own firm) it may be favourable to have a a contract term of 59 days, excluding my potential employer from needing to start an MPF account.

However, would Immigration look unfavourably on that contract term of less than one full year?  I basically need an IANG visa for the “gap weeks” of August 2014 and first week of September 2014 as well as employment sponsor.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

ANSWER

So as I read it, in this scenario you’re seeking to adjust your status from student through to employment status under the Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates (IANG).

Applications for working permissions under the Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates are favourably considered on the strength that you have a suitable employer and that you’ve got a genuine job offer and that the sponsor (in this case, your employer) is definitely suitable and is credible.

Now, on the basis that you can muster that scenario for yourself, that application to take up employment for that employer will be, as I say, favourably considered and you’ll be granted a one year limit of stay without any preconditions. And because what you’re seeking to do in a sense is to bridge the gap over the course of the next few weeks to the point where you will have been continuously and ordinarily residence in Hong Kong for the seven years required for the right of abode.

A question is begged as to the nature of the employment relationship that you  propose to the Immigration Department for the purposes of IANG and you’ve suggested a 59-day employment contract and that would be suitable, I think, as you stated, for the potential employer because of MPF considerations and all that kind of good stuff.

But I think you’re probably looking at it in quite a convoluted and overly complex manner because effectively most employment contracts in Hong Kong are indefinite term. So as long as you go to the Immigration Department with a genuine offer of employment from a suitable and credible sponsor and so long as the employment contract details that you’re suitable for the position and that the salary that you’re going to be beying paid is broadly commensurate with what’s charged in Hong Kong, then the Immigration Department won’t look askance at that contract.

If, as I say, it’s a genuine offer and you are prepared to deploy for a period of time under that offer because if it’s indefinite term, what it means is that by the time you have finalised your approval under IANG and then moved on to make your application for the right of abode at the point of your right of abode being approved, all your conditions attached to your current stay in Hong Kong will be removed. So you’ll then be able to freely negotiate an end to your current employment arrangements with that sponsor and move through into an independent contractor or some kind of freelance arrangement, which is really what you’re hoping to achieve.

So my advice would be to go to an employer and state that what you’re really looking for is an interim employment, and that until such a time as your right of abode application is approved, whereupon you’ll be free to renegotiate your terms of engagement with them. You will be engaged with them on an indefinite term basis, which is, in a sense, standard practise in Hong Kong in any event, and that way you’ll be able to achieve the objective that you’re looking for without too much fuss or kerfuffle, I suspect.

The important thing to appreciate is that the Immigration Department, they’re not going to cut you any slack in your initial application just because you may be eligible to make an application for the right of abode subsequently, because from their perspective, they’re not going to do any assessment as to your eligibility of right of abode. So they’re never going to know whether or not you will get approved under that application. So they’d never take it into consideration. What you need to do is to focus on this particular challenge, and don’t worry so much about the next particular challenge, in this case, your right of abode application.

So that’s the way that I’d play it. And I think you’ll probably be successful all the way through.

Okay, good luck.

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