Hong Kong’s new visa programme allows graduates to relocate without a job offer

John Lee, the chief executive of Hong Kong, introduced the “Top Talent Pass Scheme”. With a two-year working visa, the government expects this programme to attract talent from all over the world to pursue professions in Hong Kong.

During his first policy speech, Lee stated that they need to be more proactive and aggressive in competing for enterprises and competing for talent. The government would actively search the world for talent, in addition to actively cultivating and keeping local talent he assured. 

Top Talents Pass Scheme

Graduates of the top 100 colleges in the world with three years of work experience, qualify as eligible talent for the Top Talents Pass Scheme. The Chinese embassies will establish specialised teams to communicate with the top colleges and their alumni. 

Lee proposes to ease immigration restrictions for international students and students from mainland China by expanding the stay limit from one year to two, as well as tax rebates and more lenient procedures for firms that hire foreigners. The advanced infrastructure of Hong Kong in both hardware and software, and top-notch skills from all over the world already attract foreign talent to the city. 

Hong Kong’s publicly financed universities welcomed the information, and the University of Hong Kong issued a statement stating that they have an international academic environment, backed by a strong mainland market, which gives chances for knowledge exchange and commercialisation of the products of the researchers.

Reasons to take this step 

Since China’s National Security Law took effect in 2020, there has been a recent brain drain, which is the cause of the talent war. While delivering a speech to the press, Lee said that Hong Kong had lost over 140,000 workers over the previous two years and that as a result, the government had set a policy objective of hiring 35,000 suitable individuals annually.

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