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Q: can you exit country on same day visa expires
Can you exit the country on that on the same day that your visa expires?
for instance, if my visa expires the 25/08/2017 and my flight is on the 25/08/2017 00:30.
will there be an issue with this? Has anyone been in a similar situation?
Thank you
6 years 34 weeks ago in Visa & Legalities - China
I think it would be ok, but if that's how you're planning it just remember that all it would take to f**k up your leaving is a missed or late flight and then you'd be an over stayer.
China has one of the worst rates in the world for delayed flights...
Marcos_Cisneros:
In cases of delayed flights at the major airports, the ACTUAL calculated departure date and time is calculated at the Exit Control Point upon departure. Thus, if your flight is scheduled to leave at 23h59 on x day and your visa expires at 00h00 of the y day, if you were to pass through Exit Control at 21h00 on x day, that is the mandatory three hour check in for Beijing and Shanghai, even if your flight were to leave three days later, once you have passed Exit Control, you are deemed to have left the country.
Should the flight be scrubbed entirely, insist that you are booked into one of the airport hotels in the transit area, even if it is for several days. Do not voluntarily exit yourself from the Exit Area and return to the original boarding station. In that case, you will have problems.
Insist that you be booked on the first outbound flight. Yes, Chinese airlines are sometimes notoriously late but I have found the same true in the United States and sometimes worse.
Just make sure that your passport is CLEARLY stamped at Exit Control with the date and time. In any case, with the new biometric system, your exit will be also archived. So please respect the three hour advance check in time because in case of last minute cancellations and or delayed departures, and with a visa on its last hours or minutes, this can decidedly play in your favor.
If however you decide to go rogue and turn up at the airport three days after the visa has expired, you will be fined, you will be hauled off to Concourse 1B at Beijing Airport and be treated like a minicriminal and all this will be entered into your file. Indeed it will. And while they will let you go, after paying the fine, and after some hefty abuse, you may find that securing your next Chinese visa has suddenly become problematic under the new rules.
All the best to you, OP.
Stiggs:
Good point Marcos, but if he were to arrive late and miss the check in for his international flight because a domestic connecting flight was delayed I wonder if that rule would still apply.
OP, if you can, arrange it so you leave the day before your visa expires just to be safe.
I think it would be ok, but if that's how you're planning it just remember that all it would take to f**k up your leaving is a missed or late flight and then you'd be an over stayer.
China has one of the worst rates in the world for delayed flights...
Marcos_Cisneros:
In cases of delayed flights at the major airports, the ACTUAL calculated departure date and time is calculated at the Exit Control Point upon departure. Thus, if your flight is scheduled to leave at 23h59 on x day and your visa expires at 00h00 of the y day, if you were to pass through Exit Control at 21h00 on x day, that is the mandatory three hour check in for Beijing and Shanghai, even if your flight were to leave three days later, once you have passed Exit Control, you are deemed to have left the country.
Should the flight be scrubbed entirely, insist that you are booked into one of the airport hotels in the transit area, even if it is for several days. Do not voluntarily exit yourself from the Exit Area and return to the original boarding station. In that case, you will have problems.
Insist that you be booked on the first outbound flight. Yes, Chinese airlines are sometimes notoriously late but I have found the same true in the United States and sometimes worse.
Just make sure that your passport is CLEARLY stamped at Exit Control with the date and time. In any case, with the new biometric system, your exit will be also archived. So please respect the three hour advance check in time because in case of last minute cancellations and or delayed departures, and with a visa on its last hours or minutes, this can decidedly play in your favor.
If however you decide to go rogue and turn up at the airport three days after the visa has expired, you will be fined, you will be hauled off to Concourse 1B at Beijing Airport and be treated like a minicriminal and all this will be entered into your file. Indeed it will. And while they will let you go, after paying the fine, and after some hefty abuse, you may find that securing your next Chinese visa has suddenly become problematic under the new rules.
All the best to you, OP.
Stiggs:
Good point Marcos, but if he were to arrive late and miss the check in for his international flight because a domestic connecting flight was delayed I wonder if that rule would still apply.
OP, if you can, arrange it so you leave the day before your visa expires just to be safe.
@Stiggs, I just spent thirty minutes answering your latest query and then the system went... so let's go again.
If he is departing on a connecting international flight from a domestic transfer, in either Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang, Guangzhou or Chengdu, the airlines will require a minimum of six to eight hours connecting time between the flights. Additionally, if you are connecting outbound, first domestic and then international, from Shanghai - to Beijing and vice versa, anywhere domestic to Shenyang, chances are nearly 70% that you will be obliged to pass through Exit Control upon domestic check in. It is a good example of how the Chinese system actually works. So, as happened to me, if your flight from Shanghai to Beijing, for an onbound connection to Buenos Aires, is scrubbed in Shanghai, you have technically left China and will be treated as an international in transit. Need be, you will be put up in the Transit Hotel in Shanghai, as happened to me, and not allowed egress to the airport. In Beijing, you will be ushered through a special international connections lane, on to a sealed international transit subway card, processed again by airport security but not by PSB Exit Control, and then you will be escorted or pointed to your gate, all the while technically having left China.
With the new microchips in nearly all foreign passports, the airport police can follow you around on a computer scan very easily.
Now, for example, as happened to a colleague of mine at the Urumqui Field Office of my NGO.... he had one day left on his NGO visa in his United Nations passport (a Kiwi guy). A sandstorm shut down the local airport for three days. He was allowed to fly on to Beijing, eventually, by the local non Exit and Entry PSB Airport but he was detained at Beijing Capital Airport, fined a goodly amount, and then had a seven day exit visa placed in his passport (which he had to pay for). I do not know if you are aware but for the Chinese Government, a seven day exit visa is the kiss of death. When he arrived in Auckland, he was unable to secure a return visa on the NGO passport nor on his New Zealand ordinary passport as he was deemed an illegal over stayer. He was told that he would be banned for minimum of five years. We had to fly team from Shanghai to Urumqui to secure his pets for overseas shipment, to liquidate his apartment, and to arrange for closure and transfer of his bank accounts to New Zealand (that was the worst part of the process). His wife and two daughters had to be hastily shipped to New Zealand, and that was difficult as they were not Kiwis by passport. In the end, Geneva Head Office was furious with him, for causing embarrassment to all around, for the financial loss, and for the energy required to calm down an already aggravated Chinese Government. Once back in Auckland, he was unfortunately given the sack.
So if you are travelling outbound internationally directly, without connecting flights, please just observe the three hour windows UNLESS the airline calls you to announce a cancellation, in which case you must scramble. In such cases in my office, we simply exited staff on expiring visas to Hong Kong, or even more easily to Taipei or to Seoul.
If you are connecting domestically to international, please allow for a minimum TWELVE hour connection time as basic emergency planning. In my colleague's case, the minimum twelve hours would have allowed to do a land crossing into Mongolia or into Kazakstan and then outbound via Hong Kong or Alma Aty.
Thank you for the question. It was a bit legalistic but very, very valid.
And having been all over the world, there are only a few countries in which I fear the Exit and Entry Control at the airport ... in Russia, in China, and in North Korea.
ambivalentmace:
you could have lost his passport in New Zealand, get a new passport and passport number and he could have come right back into China like a neophyte that has never been to China and start all over again. we do this all the time with kicked out teachers that we get back in, have 3 black listed teachers working for us right now.
Marcos_Cisneros:
@Ambivalentmace, thank you for your comments but in the case of my employees and my colleagues, losing a passport is not an option. We are all here on United Nations Passports, or International Committee of the Red Cross passports. We are vetted by the Chinese as NGO employees far more heavily than ESL teachers. And in terms of documentation, and reporting to the PSB, we are held to a much higher and stricter standard that you might be, for example.
We all have had our biometrics taken by the PSB and have been fingerprinted. Routine check in visits from the PSB are very common. Additionally, many of my colleagues have been required to provide DNA samples for the biometrics info present on the Chinese PSB system.
I do not know where you are in China but the new biometric systems have been rather well rolled out through most of China. My colleague left China on a blue UN passport with a seven day exit visa. His fingerprints, his biometrics and his DNA are all on file with Fifth Department of the PSB in Beijing, if you are familiar with the Fifth Department of the PSB, you will understand.
He could have tried to re enter on his New Zealand passport but under the rules governing NGO's, we would not have been able to secure him a proper NGO visa with full exemption. Even if he had tried to re-enter China on his New Zealand passport, upon entry in Beijing or Shanghai, the PSB computers would have spit out his biometric information, based upon face recognition and finger print, and then he would have been detained under the Illegal Entry Clause of the Entry Act of 1956. It is not something that we tolerate in my NGO.
Thank you for your comments.
Marcos Cisneros
Facebook page : marco_cisneros@yahoo.com
Twitter: @CisnerosCharrua
Instagram: marco_cisneros@yahoo.com
whocaresreally:
good luck with your endeavors there, not a fan of the UN or the red cross, too many bad experiences of corruption and incompetence in Africa over the 12 years I was there, hope things have improved.
Marcos_Cisneros:
@whocaresreally. With all due respect, your opinion of the UN and the International Red Cross is irrelevant to me. Yes, I agree that Africa is full of corruption ... in my opinion, since Africa is not my professional purview, I can frankly tell you that there is not one incorrupt government on all of the African continent. It is amazing how Africans can steal from, and murder, fellow Africans without the slightest remorse. You all complain about corruption in China, but comparing my professional experiences with the Chinese Government to any given African government is like comparing a limpid, blue river to a gutter cesspool, the level of corruption in Africa is that bad. Again, thank you for your comments but for me, they are perfectly irrelevant.
ambivalentmace:
marcos, he is talking about the red cross in Africa giving supplies to government leaders instead of the people directly affected and having sold on the black market and never getting to the victims.
he is talking about UN peacekeepers from Muslims countries that go into a Christian village and rape all the women and nobody did anything about it, except the French Foreign Legion. The reality that never gets in the press and covered up everyday. I hope you never see the dirty side of these two organizations, better to be naive and not have a bitter taste in your mouth every time you here the names like I will for the rest of my life. I never thought i would have to see a blue uniform UN soldier committing rape on a 8 year old girl and watch my men have to cut his throat. I was wrong.
Spiderboenz:
Speaking of the Red Cross... Who remembers this from a few years ago? http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2011-07/15/content_12912148.htm
its bettr to leave a day earlier if psbl, just to avoid any unforseen situatns (delayd or missd flt, road accidnt, traffic jam etc). why tke a chance?
