China Law Blog

Marry a Chinese woman. There are plenty!

Marry a Chinese woman for a visa, imagine that? I think I sense a new business opportunity for an enterprising individual.

I'm getting married in a couple of weeks anyway - will this really do anything in terms of applying for a visa?

I was under the impression the only visa related thing getting married to a Chinese national would help is applying for a residence permit after holding a Z-Visa and a job continuously for five years.

Is there some other visa you can apply for after being married to a Chinese person?

Has anyone heard about F-visas being cancelled at the border? Can you get a visa and a residence permit if you are engaged to a Chinese woman or do you have to be married? Do you have to be married in China or can you be married in Hong Kong?

Plenty? I wouldn't call 5 women for every 6 men plenty...

It's strange that the officer told him that he should find a company to "sponsor" him for a Z-visa. As I understand it, they've also (in the past year or so) been more strict on making sure foreigners are *actually* working for companies when they have Z-visas. Wouldn't getting one of these debatable visas put one at risk for having all that effort wasted?

We are having a similar visa issue here in Shenzhen. I work in a rep office for a US company. We are trying to register another ex-pat as a general rep of the office. The latest headache is our local visa security officer believes that 3 ex-pats is enough and won't issue a visa. We already have them approved with the labor bureau but the visa officer does not seem to care.

This is a big problem for Randy but u can marry with a Chinese woman.life will go smoothly.

With all due respect to your troubles, this is a belated reflection of the hassles the U.S. Gov't has given Chinese for the past 10 or more years. When L-1 (intracompany) work visas were a throwaway in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they were occasionally abused, as sham corporations were established in the US to facilitate the movement of people to the US, who often disappeared into the fabric of American society. Then the INS (now CIS) and State Dept. became tougher, and the INS's feared "blue letters" came in to our offices, asking the most ridiculous questions, such as asking huge Chinese corporations to provide photos of the interior spaces of their Chinese and US offices (e.g. show the desk Mr. X sits at in Beijing; show the desk Mr. X will sit at in NY), not to mention requiring all sorts of personnel information and examples of job performance data, all of which had to be copiously translated from Chinese into English. Then there's the wonderful merry-go-round of INS(CIS) approvals of "status", followed by irrational denials of "visa" by US Consulates, who in their infinite wisdom speak for a few minutes to an already-CIS-approved visa applicant, and then make an independent determination, sometimes based on body language and misinterpretation of the absolutely-justified nervousness of the candidate, as to whether that person deserves the regal gift of a temporary US work visa, even if the sponsoring corporation in the US is blue-chip.
The Chinese work visa process been fairly accomodating in China until the present. Perhaps "what goes around, comes around."
My advice? Hire good Chinese lawyers who will coordinate preparation of the requisite filings with your US lawyers, so that it is done correctly the first time.

@Matt: When did you hear that F visas are being canceled at the border? Is it just a rumor? That would suck for me, because I consider myself one of the lucky ones with a multiple-entry F visa that lasts until the end of 2009!

Also, you should all know that there are now troubles getting legitimate Z visas in Hong Kong. Someone I know had all the proper paperwork from one of the big state-run media outfits and was told in HK that she'd have to go back to Australia to get the Z visa.

@Michael - I doubt your visa will remain a multiple entry F. You do have to get it renewed every 60 days right? I had a multiple entry F originally good till November. The first time it was renewed 3 months after I got here, they cancelled it and gave me a single entry F, now only good till July 1st. I'd check up on that.

And from what i hear about Z visas, you can only get them in your resident country. That's what i'm going home to try and do at the end of June. I'm sad about having to leave so soon and it's frustrating but it's nothing compared to getting visas for the US so I guess I shoulnd't complain.

If you're married to a Chinese citizen you can get a "spousal L" visa, which is basically a one year, multiple-entry tourist visa. Useless for (legal) work purposes. You have to have been married for 5 years and living in China for 5 years before even attempting to apply for permanent residence, and even then you'll likely be denied. For a US/China couple, it's much easier for them to live and work legally in the US than in China.

I have spent 2 months each year for the pst 4 years in China.. I have just got back home. I thought you might want to know that the main reason right now for Visa problems is because of the Beijing games. It will cool off after they are over. Right now lots of visitor Visas are being refused.

I was married in China in 2005, Canadian, Met wife at US University 1999 , married her in China, been to China 9 times in 3 years, 19 total, no problem with VISA or living there, own house with wife. I bought her house like chinese tradition says, red packets are to much