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The Hong Kong Immigration Department official video was released in June of 2012. As of the date of this post, their video had 35,000 views.

This video is a typical government work of art – which begs the question as to why they produced it in the first place?

Lots of smiling faces, stirring music and suitably stern glances amongst featured Immigration Officers ‘in the know’ – but nothing of real use for service users to be found anywhere in this ‘community service’ effort.

If my Cantonese were not so awful, I’d be lining up to join the more than 5,000 of Wanchai’s Finest myself on the strength of this pitch.

But really, what’s the point?

All of the information served up here is available in their Report  published annually and, in any event, do we really doubt that that the HKSAR passport is produced, by them, to the highest security standards in the world or that the Department is responsible for the registration of all births deaths and marriages in the HKSAR?

Regular readers of this Blog or listeners to my commentary on RTHK Radio 3 will know for sure that I am a huge fan of the HKID. Quite apart from the fact that they enable my colleagues and I to feed our families, they really DO do a great job looking after the needs of the consumers of Department services.

But there’s always room for improvement.

So, while it’s understandable that the HKID do not pro-offer approvability advice to service users (limiting themselves to informing and deciding only) they could easily produce instructional videos on how consumers of Department services can efficiently get to grips with HKID processes and procedures.

A list of such videos, off the top of my head, could include:

1. How employers can inspect a HKID card presented by a candidate for a job to ascertain if they are lawfully employable.

2. The legal obligations of Hong Kong employers who sponsor foreign national employees.

3. The blow-by-blow procedures involved in extending each type of residence visa.

4. The mechanics of assessing eligibility for a PHKID Card at the time of verification by an Immigration Officer.

5.  How to submit an application for an employment visa on a change of status basis.

6. How to submit an application for the endorsement of a newly issued passport.

7. How the birth of a newborn child to a foreign national resident of Hong Kong can be registered and the baby’s travel document endorsed with requisite immigration status.

To cite just a few….

A series of procedural How-To’s would be a lot more useful and a much better allocation of budget than this 9 minutes of blurb about what the Department  and its staff do from day to day.

The HKID website is full of information which is less than useful and it would appear, at least from the emergence of their YouTube channel, that it’s a case of more of the same when it comes to their efforts to embrace service users via social media means.

Loads of  ‘me, me, me’.

Little or no, ‘you, you, you’.

Other Stuff You May Find Useful or Interesting

STOP PRESS! Hitler’s HKSAR Passport Application Has Been Denied!

The Impact of Brain drain & Resulting Immigration Policy Development

 ImmD are out to deny, not approve, visa applications – aren’t they?

The Hong Kong Immigration Department – what an efficient organisation they really are!

Why internet forums are a cr@p source of Hong Kong immigration advice