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Overstayed in Hong Kong for a very long time previously…?

Great question this, not so much because the answer is mostly quite obvious, but because it gives me a chance to have a discussion about overstaying generally.

QUESTION

I was looking for a male helper and found a suitable one for our family.

However, he overstayed in Hong Kong and surrendered to the Immigration Department and has now gone back to his country. He overstayed for almost 5 and half years,

He has all the qualifications we are looking for.

My question is: will Hong Kong immigration let him come back if we apply domestic helper visa for him ?

Or we are just wasting our time by applying for a visa for him?

Thanks a lot.

ANSWER

Yes, you have kind of concluded for yourself towards the end of your question the likelihood of the Immigration Department granting any kind of immigration status to a foreign national who previously overstayed by five and a half years is just not going to happen.

There are a number of implications for people who overstay, but the most important one to consider from a long term visa perspective is the fact that you have a negative prior record and the Immigration Department naturally enough don’t articulate too widely what exactly negative prior record constitutes or how you can go about attaining one.

But there are a number of different things that in my experience tend to work against you in relation to future possibilities for immigration status in Hong Kong, and certainly overstaying is one of them. Certainly overstaying by five and a half years is really sending a message to the Immigration Department that this particular individual, for his or own reasons has made a decision that is going to blatantly break basically every facet of Hong Kong law by virtue of the fact that it is an overstayer.

Not only are we talking about these activities just by being physically in Hong Kong, being a contravention of Hong Kong immigration law, he would not have been sitting idly by for five and a half years; during that time he of course would have been working, and whilst he has been working he would have been working unlawfully, he would arguably not have been part of the tax loop,  so he would have been breaking revenue law, and ostensibly there is every possibility that he could have been breaking other laws whilst he was outside of his conditions of stay as a previous either resident or as a visitor or whatever his status was at the time that he first went into an overstay situation.

So the bottom line is that your immigration status in Hong Kong is absolutely sacrosanct. And of course people do make mistakes and sometimes they find themselves a day or two out of status. And the Immigration Department see that for what it is, you know, normal, typical human foibles, and they don’t penalise too heavily. They prefer to just deal with the process of regularising those slight technical overstays, and that puts an end to the matter very quickly. But in the instance where it’s manifestly obvious that a person has made the determination that they are going to stay in Hong Kong unlawfully going to slip under the radar screen, and until such a time as they are either apprehended or until they as in this instance surrender themselves, they have effectively made a determination every single day to break the law; and that obviously goes without saying that irrespective of how the punishment is dealt with via the court subsequently, that is an indication to the Immigration Department of what the particular person’s attitude is towards immigration law that represents a negative prior record as far as they’re concerned, and so there’s no chance that he’ll ever be admitted back into Hong Kong again, even if for example he presents himself at the border as a visitor maybe ten years from now, potentially just to come on holiday for a week or so as a package to, he’s going to run the risk of being refused entry even in those circumstances.

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