September 22, 2008

  • So many types of Chinese --- A perspective from Hong Kong Employment visa

    From time to time, I touched on employment visa cases for new employees.  They are from all over the world; they all need an employment visa to work legitimately in Hong Kong.

    The employment visa in Hong Kong is a self-adhesive label.  The employee, upon receipt of the employment visa, is required to stick the label onto a blank page of his/her passport.

    However, from time to time, there are smart people who forgot to stick their employment visa onto the passport before they pass through the Hong Kong Immigration checkpoint.  Consequently, some of them entered Hong Kong as "tourists".  Apparantly, visitors in the capacity of "tourists" are not employable.

    To resolve the problem, the Immigration requires those "tourists" to exit Hong Kong and enter again with their employment visa properly glued to their passports.  The point is....where are you exiting to?

    Fortunately, there are 2 interesting places to tackle this awkward situations --- Macau and Shenzhen.  Non-Chinese-passport holders would usually spend half/one day to take a round-trip to Macau.  Taiwanese people are the same --- go to Macau because they can't go to Mainland China.  For Chinese-passport holders may not be allowed to go to Macau; they would have to go to Shenzhen to do some shopping and return Hong Kong.

    For the purpose of HK employment visa, It's interesting to see how the Immigration categorizes the applicants:

    1. Chinese Residents of the Mainland (i.e. Chinese living in China)
    2. Not Chinese Residents of the Mainland, which are:
      • Taiwan residents
      • Macau residents
      • Overseas Chinese holding Chinese Passports
      • Others (e.g. Americans, British, stateless persons...etc)

    From the above, you'll see that the Immigration holds one set of administration to manage employement visas for Chinese applicants from China and another set of administration for virtually everyone else.  I believe this is because the immigration system in China is so different from the rest of the world.  For example, if a Chinese from China is granted an employment visa to work in Hong Kong, he/she is also required to apply for an exit-visa from China to allow them to exit.  More example: for a Chinese applicant from China, he/she is required to get some kind of consent from the local official authority in China to allow them to leave and work in Hong Kong; there is no parallel thing for people of Category 2 above.

    You'll be asking, why the employment visa applications from Chinese of the Mainland (in Category 1) is processed so differently from the applications from Chinese residing overseas (in Category 2)?

    I can't tell for sure.  But obviously a Chinese residing overseas are free from the limitation of the local official authority.  To my understanding, when a Chinese from Mainland is obtaining a Chinese Passport, he/she will be removed from the local account/record.  So, a Chinese Passport does mean something symbolic to a Chinese from Mainland!

    If i'm working for the Immigration, and if i'm sensitive enough, I think I can't just say "I'm a Chinese".  To be on the safe side, I must say "I'm from Hong Kong."  hahahah.