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How Long Should You Wait After a Rejected Hong Kong Employment Visa Application Before Trying Again?

July 9th, 2024

Posted in Employment Visas, Refusals & Appeals, The Hong Kong Visa Geeza, Your Question Answered /


 

Is there a ‘minimum waiting time’ between a rejected Hong Kong employment visa application and  then ‘trying again’?

employment visa

QUESTION

I have a visa question, I got an offer from a recruitment company in July, they applied the working visa for me, but it got rejected by the end of August.

Now I have a new offer from another recruitment company, they will try to apply the visa for me, if they phrase my qualification better this time, is that possible to be approved?

Is it a good idea to apply again within 6 months?  

Will my first, rejected Hong Kong  employment visa application be a problem the second time around?

ANSWER

Thanks for your question. It’s an interesting topic that hasn’t really been raised in this guide before, so I appreciate you putting it forward to us for sharing on the blog.

There is no minimum waiting time between employment visa applications. The Immigration Department considers such applications on their own merits, and if you’ve been refused for one employer and you’re seeking to make another application, this time for an alternate employer, then the Immigration Department will consider, as I say, that second application entirely on its own merits, irrespective of what passed previously.

So, yes, you’re not going to be advantaged at all in any meaningful sense by, say, waiting for six months. So if you have a job offer and you’re eminently qualified for that job even though you’ve been refused previously, it doesn’t automatically follow that you should wait before your next application.

But I think the real question at play here is the reason why you were denied. From your question, it’s difficult to understand what the circumstances are that could have led to that refusal; it may be, for example, that because you don’t have a university degree, the Immigration Department don’t deem you to be a professional.

On the other hand, you may have a university degree, but you may not have at least two years post graduation working experience in the managerial or supervisory capacity. These are two good reasons for why you might have been denied the first time around. And, even if you make a second application with a new employer, those challenges will not be overcome. They still subsist and the Immigration department will not be deeming you as a professional, so you won’t get approved.

On the other hand, you may be a professional under the policy, but the Immigration Department may not like the sponsor, or they may not believe that the sponsor is a suitable and credible employer.

The sponsor may, for example, have a track record of securing employment visas for a very large number of expatriates with almost no local employment opportunities being created, and they may feel that the local workforce is not being potentially advantaged as a result of allowing an employer to continuously sponsor on an unlimited basis foreign nationals for employment visa permissions.

I’m just stabbing in the dark here, of course, because I don’t have any detailed information as to what the reasons might be. But in very general terms, the refusal could lie at your feet, it could lie at the feet of your old employer; and then when you take an application for a new employee to the Immigration Department, it may be that you’ll be successful; that time you could have been denied also on the grounds of compensation arrangements, not receiving the necessary minimums to be deemed a professional under the policy.

So lots of things in play that could impact on your initial application, and then you could find themselves still at play in your subsequent application. So, all things considered, no, don’t be restrained from making a subsequent application because you think your chances will be improved as a result of you waiting six months.

Rather do a searching assessment of whether you’re actually approvable yourself and whether the sponsor is deemed a suitable and credible sponsor for the purposes of the application. And of course, all things considered, could a local person be expected to take up that role? And, do you have the necessary experience to boot in order to fulfil that job to the exclusion of a local person doing that work?

Okay, I hope you found that useful.

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The Hong Kong Visa Geeza (a.k.a Stephen Barnes) is a co-founder of the Hong Kong Visa Centre and author of the Hong Kong Visa Handbook. A law graduate of the London School of Economics, Stephen has been practicing Hong Kong immigration since 1993 and is widely acknowledged as the leading authority on business immigration matters here for the last 24 years.

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