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Any Americans get work visas in 2021?

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  1. #21

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    Ok, lots and lots of reasons for a techie not to move to HK right now, and OP hasn't given any reason why they specifically want to, or what they'd bring that would make them employable...

    So let's go back to the original question(s) - how easy will it be for an American software engineer to get a visa right now, and how likely is that to be an obstacle to hiring?
    For the first one, if you can get a job offer from an established company, particularly one which already employs people on work visas, it shouldn't be a big issue. For a tiny startup, it might be more of a problem, and it does seem that Immigration, apart from just being busy/slow, are also being stricter on requirements for things like proving the company tried and failed to hire a local before going abroad.
    For the second one... a lot of the stuff above still applies - hiring is depressed generally, the market is turning more to a China focus, hiring/visa/quarantine is slow - so you're putting yourself at a massive disadvantage compared with people who are already here and locals. Unless - I know I sound like a broken record - you're bringing something special, it's not going to be easy to find something from abroad right now. Not impossible, but hard.


  2. #22

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    https://www.scmp.com/business/bankin...hong-kong-cost

    If you want to read it then figure out how to access. HK banking is not a spoon fed enviroment so dont come back saying you cant read the article.

  3. #23

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    13
    Quote Originally Posted by seirin:
    And it seems like you think somehow HK is different...

    Not to troll but if you're going to throw money into the ocean (a Cantonese saying), do it the right way: take a 100% pay cut, move here for 3 months, 6 months, 1 year when COVID passes. It's not like your income from your salary will make a huge difference anyways.

    I worked in tech in the bay (born and raised). This environment (working, economic, political, natural, etc.) here is absolute crap compared the bay. Once you get sick of people bum-rushing onto trains, jackasses swinging their backpacks like bam-bam from the flintstones, old ladies performing the heisman pose on your lower back, you'll start wondering why you thought BART is so shit when it isn't and how much more pleasant it is to drive across the bay bridge vs the CHT.

    If I may ask, what is the primary reason for you wanting to move here? Does it have something with the 49ers? (no, not the football playing 49ers).
    You've obviously never been on BART or the Bay Bridge recently.


    BART is currently essentially a homeless shelter. Every week, and especially after it rains, your carriage will have multiple homeless people sleeping on multiple parts of the trains. The whole carriage - filled with more than a hundred people - soon smells like a homeless person who hasn't bathed in months.

    Of course, there are also the crazy people. A crazy person with an enormous blanket sitting and staring blankly on the train. A crazy person screaming and smashing the seats repeatedly. A wild-eyed person mumbling racial obscenities to himself. A half-naked person with sores sleeping on the front seat.

    And there are always endless track failures and so on. Every two weeks, during rush hour there's a 30 minute delay (meaning you are late for work) due to a failure. A track failure here, a signal failure there. The union makes a lot of money off of repairing the failures, which inevitably end up broken two weeks later.

    I've experienced all of the above. What I haven't experienced are the robberies, where gangs of teenage thieves run into the train and steal electronics. Or the police shootings. But I've certainly read about them in the newspapers.


    As for the Bay Bridge, it's fun for a tourist to drive on top of it. It's not so fun when you reach it after the end of an morning hour-long traffic jam. Once you get on the bridge and pay the $20 toll, the traffic jam continues and your car needs 20 minutes to cross. Then you are in San Francisco, where you park and pay another $15 parking fee. Finally you can walk for 15 minutes to your office.

    A 1.5 hour commute, and your work-day has just begun.

    When returning home, you reach the Bay Bridge after taking 15 minutes to drive a mile in San Francisco. Then it's 20 minutes of traffic crossing the bridge. Finally you have another 1.5 hour traffic jam before you reach home at around 6:45 p.m.
    MABinPengChau and mysti like this.

  4. #24

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    Quote Originally Posted by Hadoren:
    As for the Bay Bridge, it's fun for a tourist to drive on top of it. It's not so fun when you reach it after the end of an morning hour-long traffic jam. Once you get on the bridge and pay the $20 toll, the traffic jam continues and your car needs 20 minutes to cross. Then you are in San Francisco, where you park and pay another $15 parking fee. Finally you can walk for 15 minutes to your office.

    A 1.5 hour commute, and your work-day has just begun.

    When returning home, you reach the Bay Bridge after taking 15 minutes to drive a mile in San Francisco. Then it's 20 minutes of traffic crossing the bridge. Finally you have another 1.5 hour traffic jam before you reach home at around 6:45 p.m.
    You probably aren't aware that it can take 15-20 minutes to enter or exit certain parking lots here in HK. And that, $15 USD parking is an absolute steal.

    Tunnel tolls are the same, if not, more expensive here because they're charged both ways (not sure why you're driving a 3 axle truck across the BB because it's not $20 USD for tolls).

    Once you factor in the time it takes to go up and down the parking lot lifts, you have the hell of San Francisco.

    And we haven't even discussed lines to get into country parks or the MTR in the summer. It's not necessarily BO wafing through your nose here on the MTR. Good luck standing next to the guy who has washed his shirt but reeks because he doesn't have the facilities to properly dry clothes.

    There's a lot of crap that happens everywhere but what the US excels at showing that in the news. Yes, lots of people have been victims of crime in the US and in that sense, HK is generally on par better, but the crime in the bay isn't THAT bad. SF has always been a rough and tumble place since gold rush days. Some things never change.

    San Ramon, Pleasanton, Dublin, Fremont are all great places to live and to raise a family. Which brings me to a very important point -- I moved here as a single male and will move away as a married man - because HK is no place to raise a family if one has better options.

    Like with marriage, I can tell you the idea of something is sometimes better than the actual thing.
    Cheeky Kiwi likes this.

  5. #25

    If the OP is determined to come I don't see why people are trying to convince him otherwise. The only question is if his skillset is needed here and we don't have enough information to judge.

    seirin likes this.

  6. #26

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    Aug 2020
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    Quote Originally Posted by illini_expat:
    If the OP is determined to come I don't see why people are trying to convince him otherwise. The only question is if his skillset is needed here and we don't have enough information to judge.
    Fair point. Come and play, but there's not going to make career progression in IT.

    Case and point: Self-checkout counters were installed at my neighborhood grocery store in 2004. They just installed them in City Super this year.

  7. #27

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    A San Jose Filipino American woman was nearly raped on BART the other day. Part of ongoing urban street thug attack on Asians in the Bay Area.


  8. #28

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    Visa very hard to get right now. I've heard of several not being approved by employers who used to have no problems.


  9. #29

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    Sep 2015
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    You may get a better experience living in HK and working remotely for Europe, Australia or the US. You'll make same or better money and won't have to deal with commute and local office culture / environment. As others suggest - come over, sit out 3 weeks at a hotel, rent a furnished place and start your explorations. Reset your stay as required travelling out to Macao, SG, Thailand, etc. The visa situation will change, if you still need it after some time. I don't anticipate a political shift towards cutting westerners out of HK work visas. And if one becomes obvious - you better get out anyway.

    seirin likes this.

  10. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by Hadoren:
    I made my money and am willing to do that. The problem of course is the work visa.
    Aside from the COVID restrictions, since you can work remotely as a programmer, can you come live in HK and continue working as a freelancer by getting jobs from Upwork or something?