The Prague Post Online: Careers: Entering the zone

July 20th, 2008

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Entering the zone

Schengen could spell trouble for illegal expats as crossing border to renew 90-day tourist visa won't work in '08

By Julie O'Shea
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
September 5th, 2007 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST

TEFL trainer Romana Vančáková leads a group of future teachers at the Caledonian School, one of the few schools to provide visa support.

GETTING A WORK VISA

Necessary documents:
Passport
Birth certificate translated into Czech and notarized
Relevant, job-related education certificate
Visa application
Accommodation papers signed by all registered owners of your flat or house, verifying you live there
Employment papers signed by your Czech employer stating they are allowed to employ foreigners
Crime register extract
Work permit
Three passport-size photos — one for work permit and two for visa
Steps:
To obtain a work permit you will need a note from a doctor stating you are healthy
Take completed documents to a Czech embassy outside the country — Dresden, Bratislava and Vienna are the closest —
to process your application
Your visa will be ready for pickup about two months later
Register your visa with the Foreigner's Police in Prague
Cost of visa: 7080 euros ($96110)
Cost of work permit: 500 Kč ($25)
Whole process takes approximately six months to complete

BORDER CROSSINGS

Schengen countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden
Countries set to join by 2008: Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia

The Czech Republic will officially be a member of Europe’s burgeoning Schengen zone by the start of next year, a move that could potentially put dozens of foreigners working here illegally in a major bind.

Over the past two decades, teaching English as a foreign language has become a booming business, funneling hundreds of eager, young travelers into the country each year. The profession is one of the easiest ways to earn cash for those without a visa or work permit. But that may be about to change in 2008.

Crossing the border every 90 days to renew a tourist visa — a popular tactic currently used by many in the teaching community — will no longer be a viable option under the Schengen Agreement, which essentially eliminates passport checkpoints but makes it harder to stay in member countries past three months. As this law reads right now, non-European Union citizens without a valid visa are only allowed to stay within this border-free area up to 90 days within a rolling six-month timeframe. Those caught without proper paperwork could face serious consequences, least of all the threat of deportation.

Currently, 15 countries are Schengen members with 10 more in Central and Eastern Europe scheduled to join within the next couple of months.

“The foreigners living here illegally are … exposed to routine immigration and police checks,” says Petr Vorlíček, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. “The practice, in this respect, will not differ from the current situation when enforcing the national immigration law.”

An often-heard complaint among English teachers in Prague is that there seem to be very few language schools here willing to help expats through the tedious and costly visa process. As a result, many teachers choose not to bother dealing with these time-consuming and sometimes confusing legal issues on their own.

“It’s so difficult to get a work permit here, especially if your school won’t sponsor you,” says Mark Wright, a 33-year-old from Texas who has been teaching English in Prague without a visa for the past two years. “If they actually enforce this [border law] the way it is written, I have a feeling a lot of people are going to leave.”

Wright had started to think about the possibility that he was going to have to leave at the end of next March when his final 90-day tourist visa expires; however, he recently landed a teaching job with a school that plans to help him get a work visa.

“I don’t really want to risk never being about to come back to Europe and have my name put on some sort of Schengen [offenders] list,” Wright says.

This is something that worries Molly Weisse-Bernstein, too, but, “the country needs to balance the need for English teachers with the laws they are trying to enforce,” she says. “It doesn’t do the country any good to make it impossible for native [English] speakers to get visas.”

The 27-year-old New Mexico native recently left Prague after a year of teaching English.

There are two main governing bodies in the country, which oversee standards for language schools. The Czech Association of Language Schools lists 17 member schools on its Web site. The Association of Czech Language Schools and Agencies has 25 members, four of which are in Prague.

“All our members help their foreign teachers to obtain [visa and work permits] in respect of the Czech visa policy and work law,” explains Štěpán Blahůšek, the association’s president. “I cannot say how many nonmember schools do not respect this policy.”

Of course, Blahůšek adds, “with more traveling teachers, the language schools must be more careful to choose qualified and responsible teachers.”

They should also make sure all their teachers are legal, says Kate McCloghry, director of studies at Threshold Training Associates, a language school in Prague 5.

“It’s enormously risky for schools to employ illegal teachers,” she says. Unfortunately, though, as McCloghry points out, it happens all the time.

“We only have legal teachers, which might sound strange,” she says. “It’s not the norm.”

Asked if schools might start opting to hire only EU citizens or bilingual Czech nationals once Schengen hits, McCloghry shakes her head.

“Clients still ask for an American teacher,” she says. “They want to hear an American accent.”

Despite these strict upcoming changes to the border laws, McCloghry, along with many others familiar with the language school scene here, note that the reality of Schengen hasn’t fully set in yet.

“Judging from our experience, the vast majority of teachers doesn’t even know what the term means,” says Martina Šindelářová, the personnel and quality manager at Caledonian School, one of Prague’s biggest language campuses.

Caledonian, through a relocation company, provides full visa and work-permit support to all full-time employees, Šindelářová says.

“But it can happen that there are those who rely on the possibility to reenter the country every three months to legalize their stay within the Czech Republic,” she adds. “I believe this will be much more difficult from now on.”

It will also be harder to work illegally, McCloghry says.

“I don’t know if that is necessarily a bad thing,” she says. “The upside is that schools will take more responsibility for visas.”

Regardless of how things turn out, there are some foreigners who simply aren’t that worried.

“I just don’t care — I don’t,” says Mike Karesky of San Diego, who recently went through a TEFL training program in Prague. “If some country chooses to deport me, I’ll go somewhere else. I feel I’d be an asset anywhere I land.”

Julie O'Shea can be reached at joshea@praguepost.com

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