Talent visas in Hong Kong

Two schemes admit people on merit here, and both differ from an ordinary work visa in the same structural way: the permission they grant is limited by time alone, with no company written on it. Nobody has to have an offer to apply, and nobody has to stay with one employer afterwards. What they ask instead is proof — of income, of a degree, or of a record.

Routes that do run through a named employer sit on work and freelance visas here. The rest of our practice in the territory is on the Hong Kong page.

The top talent pass and its three doors

Category A is a single test: annual income of HK$2.5 million or more, or the equivalent in another currency, in the year immediately before the application. Income here means taxable employment or business income — salary, allowances, stock options, profits from a company you own — and returns on personal investment are left out of the count. Categories B and C read a degree from an eligible university instead, B with at least three years of work experience over the past five, C with less than that and inside an annual quota allotted first come, first served.

The points-based route beside it

The second scheme is for people intending to settle, and it runs in stages. Four prerequisites come first: eighteen or over, able to support and accommodate yourself and any dependants without public assistance, no criminal or adverse immigration record anywhere, and normally a first degree. Then one of two assessments — a general points test with twelve criteria and a passing threshold, or an achievement-based test with two. Selection exercises follow at regular intervals, and the Director of Immigration may put an applicant before a panel chaired by the Secretary for Labour and Welfare.

Where the two routes part company

On the length of what they grant. The points route opens with 36 months and then repeats in a three-then-two year rhythm; two years in, an assessable income of HK$2 million for salaries tax turns the next grant into five years. The achievement route skips all of that and opens with eight years outright. The pass, by contrast, grants its first term once and once only, and the renewal after it is earned by showing employment with a stable income or a business established or joined here.

Dependants travel on the same sponsorship

A successful applicant sponsors a spouse or civil partner and unmarried dependent children under eighteen, on proof of a genuine relationship and of the means to keep them well above subsistence level in suitable accommodation. Their limit of stay is tied to the sponsor's, and each of them pays the same non-refundable application fee and issuance fee as the principal.

Sources: Top Talent Pass Scheme, Quality Migrant Admission Scheme and the fee tables (Immigration Department).