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Coming to Hong Kong to frequently visit family members resident here is not such a problem (usually)…

QUESTION

My daughter and family are moving to Hong Kong.

I would like to spend as much time as possible with them.

If I go to Hong Kong as a tourist from the US and return home after 90 days, how soon can I return for another 90 day stay?

ANSWER

The answer to this particular dilemma is actually quite a bit easier or simpler than you might otherwise imagine. If your family are resident in Hong Kong working and you want to clearly come and spend as much time with them as you can, and the only immigration stay available to you as a US national visiting is a visitor visa, then you will be able to procure, as you can appreciate, 90 days upon arrival each time you present yourself at the border.

And every time you do present yourself at the border, you need to satisfy your bona fide as a visitor to the examining immigration officer. And, in this respect, as long as you’re able to satisfy the Immigration Department as to the reasons for you being here frequently and spending the length of time that you do, is for family reunion purposes, then it’s quite reasonable to expect that the immigration officer looking at you, once he’s appraised of all of these facts and has got clear evidence to allow him to effect a positive act of discretion to admit you for 90 days, then the likelihood is that the officer’s not going to admit you for 90 days because otherwise he would be essentially doing you some kind of injustice, even though, of course, he does have all the legal power, under the immigration ordinance, to stop you from arriving and to limit the amount of time that you spend here.

So my best advice to you would be each time that you present yourself at the border or at the airport, you have with your portfolio of information including your family members, Hong Kong identity cards, copies of their visa labels, if they have children, family photographs, and be ready to produce this to the immigration officer at the point of entry and explain that, well, you know, you have good reason for being here frequently you are staying with your family members and it’s really important that you are able to spend as much time with them as you possibly can.

And, if you could, arrange for a letter to be written by your family members, with their contact details in the event that the officer is to perhaps second guess your motivations, he will then have the opportunity to directly speak to your daughter and her husband, and at that point, your bona fide as a visitor should be satisfied. So the key thing, of course, is that you do this each time that you present yourself, it’s a different examination, a unique and individual examination.

So potentially you can go through this for any number of times before perhaps an immigration officer might say, well, hey, you’ve spent the last year and a half here almost continuously, clearly you do have another country that you can call your home. You need to go back and spend a little bit of time there before you continue to spend extended periods of time here as a visitor. So I think you’ll find all things considered, a balance of frequent visits, perhaps spending as much time as you can in Hong Kong without maximising each day as a visitor for 90 days.

That will allow you to carry this forward probably for a couple of years without too many problems. So, of course, in those two years, perhaps your daughter and her family might leave Hong Kong and your problem is up after all. So it’s not simply a question of how much time should you spend away from Hong Kong between visits.

It’s more a question of, well, what’s keeping you here and how can you satisfy the Immigration Department as to your bona fides for these frequent visits; and I think you’ll find that will get you everything that you need. You can, of course, always make an application at the Immigration Department itself to extend your visitor visa permissions if you don’t have any need to travel across to Macau, say, or to fly off somewhere in order to get yourself a 90 day extension, as it were normally.

You can expect perhaps up to a 30 or 60 day extension, but it’s a one time event only and it’s almost a full day’s waiting down at the Immigration Department. So you may find it just much more conducive and easy to make the exit and make the reentry with your portfolio information as I’ve just suggested.

Okay, I hope you find that useful.

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