The Decision to Flee Came Suddenly

Or maybe not. Maybe I had planned it all along…

It all started on Wednesday, March 18th. I came home from class to find my roommate looking worried. “Ian’s in jail,” he said. Ian was his good friend. The Friday before, Ian had mentioned getting a letter from the foreign police. He said that he had talked to the woman that is in charge of the visa stuff for our company (Ian and I worked at the same language school), and she had told him not to worry, and that they would go on Wednesday morning to get it sorted out. Now, it was Wednesday, and, apparently, it hadn’t been sorted, because Ian was sitting in a jail cell.

After being held for 12 hours without food or water, they released him – but not before giving him 14 days to leave the Schengen zone (continental Europe) and putting a stamp in his passport expelling him for a year therefrom. Turns out, Ian’s offense was overstaying his 90 day tourist visa. They knew this because he had applied for a work visa.

Upon hearing this, I immediately thought, “Uh oh… This applies to me… I may be leaving sooner than I had anticipated…”

A quick word about the visa process for Americans here:

It’s very complicated…

Americans generally come to Europe on 90 day tourist visas. If you intend to study or work, you need a student or work visa. When I came here, I intended to both study and work. If someone had asked me about this at customs, I would have had to lie: “No, I’m just a tourist.” Otherwise, they wouldn’t let me in without the appropriate visa. Technically, this whole adventure has been illegal.

In order to get the work visa, you need an employer to sponsor you. You also need to have housing lined up. The above-board process is to get a job and housing while outside the country, apply for a visa, wait about 3 months, get the visa, come here, and start working. No one does this. It’s impossible. Instead, people come here, find a job and housing, and then apply for their visas – from outside the country. I went to Germany. This makes it look like you’re not actually living and working in the country in which you are illegally living and working. This trick has always worked, and has always been overlooked by the authorities – until, apparently, about a month and a half ago.

When I started working for my company, I immediately got in touch with the woman who handles visas for them. I gave her all my visa paperwork about a month before my tourist visa was set to expire. I told her that I didn’t want to be illegal, and I wanted to apply before I was. She said she couldn’t do the application in time, and that it didn’t matter if I was over my tourist visa. No one had ever been denied a visa coming from our company. Ever.

Back to the story… The night Ian was let out of jail, I heard from someone else who had been waiting for a visa. He had been denied – along with 25 other people from our company. Some people were denied because they had overstayed their tourist visas. Others were denied for seemingly no reason at all.

Trying to gather as much information as I could, I found out that, because of the financial crisis, starting in March, the EU began cracking down on illegals. They’re going after people who come from the east (Ukraine, Russia, Mongolia, Thailand, etc), work here illegally, and then send the money they make back to their home country – taking it out of the local economy. Because of this, the authorities have become very strict about who they issue visas to, and have started looking very carefully at visa applications. I think the woman who was doing all our visas was very loosey-goosey about the applications. Because they had been so relaxed in the past, she would let things slip. But now, because of the crackdown, everything must be done exactly by the book, and all her applications are being scrutinized. She doesn’t work there anymore.

Well, well, well… Well, what about my visa? The people who had been denied had all applied before me. I still needed to wait to hear. So, I waited, anticipating bad news. I finally heard about two weeks ago. One of the women from my company went to the foreign police office to inquire about the status of my visa on my behalf. After pulling some strings, she was able to talk to someone very high up, who told her that I had been denied. And that I would probably be getting a letter in the mail – one that says to come on down to the foreign police office for a little chat.

As great a story as it would be to get arrested, interrogated, and expelled from the country, I think I’d prefer to take my chances with voluntary escape. Hopefully I won’t have any problems at the airport…

This post certainly makes the whole thing sound more dramatic than it actually is. For the most part, I’m actually fine with the situation. The two bad things about it:

1. Prague was just warming up and getting beautiful (and overrun with tourists…). Luckily I got to experience some of this before going.

2. Despite my leaving before they get a chance to interrogate me, the Czech foreign police may still decide to expel me from the Schengen zone for a year or so. This would screw up any trips I would plan to take to… well… Europe. And, if I decide to go to Spain in the fall, I might have trouble getting a visa/entering the country. Not much I can do about this though… I know they’ll expel me for sure if I go talk to them… Seems safer to just leave before they have the opportunity…

So… that’s that. My flight’s tomorrow. Nashledanou, Praha…

See y’all soon.