I am in need of some advice for my visa situation. I am an ex-China citizen born in Beijing naturalized in the US and carries a US passport, having formally revoked my hukou in Beijing and returned my China passport.

I have worked for a NASDAQ listed US tech company in a managerial role since I was around 19 years old - I am 28 now, having never switched employers. I had been employed while in college. Unfortunately due to business needs I had to stop my university studies when I was 20 and was relocated to a SE Asian country for many years. This has caused me to never complete my bachelor's degree as I am about a year shy of receiving it. I had never had a problem obtaining work permits in Singapore, etc, but have run into major issues in China.

I have been since sent to China last quarter (F Visa) for the same company to setup a part of their operation and this role has a critical component of needing managerial and process expertise from our US operational side and the critical need of speaking Mandarin, which out of our department i am the only one with these set of skills. We can't find a China national equivalent who can replace me (due to needing specific operational skills from our headquarter in US) at this time and I need to be in China for at least thru 2011, meaning they now need to apply for my work permit as F visas you are only legally able to stay for 183 days and our company wants to keep everything legal.

Our company is registered as a rep office (RO) in Beijing. and while there is not a problem , according to FESCO, in getting me registered as a legal rep, they have told us they will not be able to obtain a work permit for me at all because a bachelor degree is required and only after that does the work experience (2 years) count and told us there is no recourse at all and basically I should just pack my stuff and go home.

How can this be? There is a real pressing business need for our company to have me here, and regardless of whether I am a degree holder or not I have nearly 10 years of experience working this role for this company and the only reason I have not completed the degree is because I have been sent around to other countries to perform this role for the company. Frankly I am quite shocked at the response i got from FESCO.

Does anyone know if there are any recourse to my situation or any place I can escalate the issue w/in the Beijing government to talk some sense into these people? I understand that we can utilize agents with special relationships with the beijing labor bureau, but my company is very hesitant to do that in the name of trying to keep everything 100% ethical and "legal".

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks!