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What will the Hong Kong Immigration Department make of a very early application for an extension to a business investment visa?

QUESTION

I am 6 months into my first 12 month stint of an investment employment visa. 

I am looking to move into a new apartment and the landlord is requesting a minimum of 12 months remaining on any visa.

Nothing has changed in my circumstances since my application was approved in March.

Am I allowed to apply for an extension to my current visa at this early stage and if so, should it be straight forward?

ANSWER

Unfortunately, the Immigration Department are quite rigid when it comes to seeking extensions of stay; they have only limited resources and they anticipate in the overall extension exercise that the requisite period of time for the delivery of services in the case of an employment visa, or in respect of an investment visa that period of time will have been fully completed so that they’ll be able to properly assess the merits of an extension once the application goes in.

Consequently, if you have a need, for whatever reason, to attempt to secure an extension four or five months prior to the expiry current limit of stay, I think you’ll find that the Immigration Department will not be particularly receptive to it, citing the fact that they believe that you don’t need the extension, even though you have got a good ancillary reason for requesting that extension, in this case, in order to assist you get a new residential tenancy grant because of a condition which the landlord seems to be imposing upon you. So unfortunately, whilst you can certainly attempt to make the application, I think you’ll find that you’ll get rebuffed at the first barrier where the initial officer will say: hang on a minute, you’ve still got five months left on your current limit of stay, we can’t see any compelling reason as to why we should grant you the exercise of considering an extension application at this time because your reason is not that compelling. On occasion, the Immigration Department do come to the party, but you do have to have a compelling reason.

In my experience those compelling reasons usually come down to matters of ill health, and that’s probably about the shape of it when it comes to the Immigration Department assisting with early extensions.

I’m sorry the news isn’t good, but I hope you found this information useful.

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