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Schengen's teaching hurdles

New border rules cause mass exit in TEFL community

By Curtis M. Wong
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
April 23rd, 2008 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
David Young trains a new batch of English teachers during a recent session at Oxford TEFL in Prague.
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When Neal Baker arrived in the Czech Republic in November of last year, he was hoping to build a new career as an English teacher, establish a life in a foreign country and travel.
Unfortunately, his reality — the same as it is for many non-European Union expats in the wake of the country’s recent accession to the Schengen zone — was a lot more complicated than he’d expected.  
After completing his month long Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages certification course in December, Baker landed a job at a school in January and began the work permit application process immediately. However, in February, Baker was unexpectedly slapped with a 60-day departure order from the Foreigners’ Police, requiring him to get legal within the next two months or risk arrest and deportation.
“My goal was to build a new life … to do work I enjoy and not to return to the U.S. [with] its deteriorating economic and political conditions,” Baker says. “The school … was not acquainted with the new Schengen rules, and had neither made an appointment nor submitted any of my paperwork by the deadline.”
Unfortunately for Baker, the exit order expired before his scheduled visa application appointment. He eventually left the country April 10, after receiving a phone call from the Foreigners’ Police the previous day, demanding his departure within the next 24 hours.
While Baker’s situation is extreme — at present, Prague-based language schools have yet to report any similar government orders — it’s clear the Schengen designation is creating serious problems for the country’s once-burgeoning population of English teachers. Having been a booming business here for the past decade or so, some language schools are reporting that a steady stream of non-EU teachers have turned in their resignation letters over the past few months.    
“There has been a lot of concern [since the Czech Republic entered the Schengen zone], mainly because reliable information about the changes to the visa process has been very hard to come by,” says Roman Kačín, managing partner of St. James Education Centre.
Previously, crossing the border into a neighboring country to renew a 90-day tourist visa was a popular tactic used by many teachers. This, however, is no longer a viable option. While passport checkpoints were eliminated under the Schengen Agreement, staying past three months within the borders of the member countries without the proper paperwork has become harder, if not virtually impossible. As the Schengen rules currently stipulate, non-EU citizens without a valid visa are only legally allowed to stay within this border-free area up to 90 days within a rolling six-month time frame.
While some short-term expats were reluctant to deal with the costly and often tedious visa processing in the past, most of those who plan to reside in the Czech Republic for six months or longer say they are willing and eager to make the effort, provided their employers make the proper information readily available. Yet, despite a barrage of printed material on the issue, as well as the U.S. Embassy’s two open Schengen forums in the past months, some teachers say the requirement to obtain a work visa has yet to be enforced by many schools.
Others complain of conflicting information received from colleagues, embassies and local agencies that assist in preparing the necessary legal documentation.
“The school where I worked didn’t create any complications with getting a visa, but equally, they really didn’t emphasize the importance in any coherent way,” says Patrick Hine, a native of Toowoomba, Australia, who left Prague in March because of visa issues. “There’s a lot of confusion and misinformation flying around, and most Czech government Web sites connected with the issue were only written in Czech with no foreign language options.”
Hine says he also sought advice from a local law firm, which told him that his only option to apply for a work visa was to travel to the Czech consulate in Dublin because nearby embassies in Dresden, Bratislava and Vienna were booked well beyond his 90-day tourist visa allowance.
With applications taking up to six months in some cases, the ability to obtain a working visa from a foreign consulate while on a 90-day tourist allowance creates an additional series of problems, officials say.
“People want to be compliant but aren’t sure how to fulfill the requirements in the allotted time,” Kačín says. “There’s great concern about traveling outside of the Czech Republic to the embassies in order to submit the application or pick up the visa itself. We are not able to avoid the risk [of non-EU residents being deported from the Schengen territory] at this point.”
Despite these concerns, however, it may be too early to sound the death knell for non-EU applicants interested in the Czech-based teaching industry just yet.
“There is a degree of mild panic,” says Sean Hayward, a teacher and trainer at Oxford TEFL, which certifies new teacher trainees from abroad each month. While his firm is looking into providing professional visa services and the business license options for its trainees, he adds, “a significant portion of the teaching community is very transient, and it would be a mistake to attribute any continuation of that to Schengen.”
As to whether or not the changes will have a lasting impact on the number of non-EU applicants for teaching-related jobs in the future, Hayward says there’s simply not enough interest or skills to replace non-EU employees within the teaching field entirely.
 “The belief that you really need a teacher who is a native speaker is still prevalent, and many [language school] clients will insist on this,” Hayward says. “As long as there is sufficient demand for non-EU teachers, whatever provisions necessary will be made.”
In order to keep those employees, officials agree that more schools will be forced to invest resources to understand and keep pace with the Schengen changes. There is still ample opportunity for new applicants who are willing to get their work visa applications started prior to or immediately from their start date.  
“The community will shrink as a result of the tougher laws. … This is a natural process whenever barriers are erected,” Kačín says. “Our main concern is to hire the most qualified candidates that are available to us, no matter what nationality. For Americans already in the country with their paperwork sorted, there should be no problem and therefore no reason for them to leave.”
Adds Hayward: “There may be a slight decline initially. Unless large numbers of non-EU teachers suddenly start being forcibly deported, it seems unlikely that it will last. Whose interest would such a heavy-handed approach serve?”

Curtis M. Wong can be reached at specialsection@praguepost.com


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Reader's comments:

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[18:45 19/05/2008] : As an illegal teacher here, I am furious with the whole process, not because of the regulations, but because of certain schools' unwillingness to help their teachers.
My school claimed to have filed necessary paperwork back in November, only to tell me weeks ago that nothing had yet been done to make me a legal worker.
This information only came to me after months and months of hassling this school on a daily basis.
I really don't want to leave the Czech Republic as I have many friends here, a girlfriend, and a good job (despite the lack of organization), but it is becoming increasingly nerve-wracking to be here.
So, to those of you who seem to believe that it is the fault of those employed, you need to understand that some of us are dealing with some unacceptable circumstances beyond our control.
Pope Plese
Prague
[11:05 01/06/2008] : The good side of it is that it will discourage all those backpackers that after taking a pretty useless TEFL course want to start teaching English to have some cash to pay for their partying, before moving on to another party town after a few months.
pivero
Prague
[10:36 02/06/2008] : That's right. We wouldn't want to allow a handful of young people (those darned backpacker slackers) to find a way to extend their wanderjahr an extra summer before they're forced to put on the yoke and spend the rest of their days as wage-slaves like the rest of us.
My poor friend Pivero clearly has no "la recherche du temps purdu"( to use the old translation). I pity him.
Phillip David Haskett
Houston
[19:26 02/06/2008] : It's always interesting how my fellow letter writer manages to add a few words ("those darned backpacker slackers"), changing the whole meaning of someone else's letter, merely so he can make an inane comment about something that was only said in his own mind.

I'm sure Pivero was referring to those people who come to Prague, take jobs as teachers, and promise to stay until the end of a semester. Then, when they decide to move "on to the next party town", they simply leave with no warning. This leaves both the school AND the student in a bad position. As a teacher of many years, I've had to take over for several "slackers" in the middle of a class. It is, frankly, all too common.

No one cares if some kids want to extend their "wanderjahr". But, kids who take a job with no intention of fulfilling the commitment they make deserve to get tossed out of Schengen zone.
Paul Margulies
Praha 7
[11:16 05/06/2008] : I think I didn't make myself clear.
I've got nothing against someone taking a sabbatical to go and see the world. I've done it and it was a great experience.
The problem here is that many of these backpackers don't take the job seriously enough.
I worked for two years at a languages school, and I know people who have worked or studied at other languages schools, so I know what I'm talking about.
It's always the backpackers who whine the most and who cause the most trouble. It is because of them that teachers who do take the job as a job and not as a convenient source of cash to pay for their partying (nothing wrong with partying, I love doing it, at weekends) have to work more for the same rates.
But it's not entirely their fault. A big part of the blame is also on the schools that will employ pretty much any native speaker that has finished a TEFL course.
Actually, now that I think of it, the more of them the better. I'm a freelance teacher and they make it easier for me to get clients.
Pivero
Prague
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