When we last left our hero, she was shuffling away from the foreigner police office in Rakovnik, her tears of despair mixing with the cold rain that was pelting her and her friend. That was me, about three months ago. For those of you haven’t been following the story so far, I’d just been told that despite having called weeks in advance to ask what paperwork was needed for the application, my information was wrong, my paperwork was incomplete, and it was unlikely I’d be able to get everything together in time for the deadline.
Apologies for leaving it at such a cliffhanger. Life catches up with you sometimes and you forget that you have a blog. It’s time to finally summarize what happened after that.
The following Monday, the gracious, generous, kind-hearted friend accompanied me back to Kladno to obtain the necessary papers from the social and trade offices. As usual, the process at the social office was so easy I thought I might have dreamed it. The trade office (živnostenský úřad), however, was not so simple.
After you’ve visited the trade office once, the same person must handle your paperwork every time you return. In the case of a foreigner, this is relatively frequent, since visas expire and several papers must be filed each time. In my case, I had the office worker from hell in charge of my case.
The first time I visited this office, I took a Czech-speaking friend with me. The woman was kind, friendly, polite, and helpful. The second time, the friend was unavailable, so I brought a piece of paper with what I needed written on it in Czech and a phone to call a friend to translate if necessary. I might as well have showed up and demanded that the woman deal with me in Chinese, because she was extremely pissed off at my inability to immediately understand every word she spat out rapid-fire when she refused to speak slowly or simply. Eventually I got my friend on the phone and he told me that she basically just wanted to yell at me for not having a translator, and actually she didn’t need anything from me at all. Ever since then, I’ve always brought a translator, but she never forgave me for being foreign, and now every time I visit she tries to find a mistake in my paperwork that would give her the right to reject my application.
It was a different friend with me this time, and one who had never experienced the hate of this state worker before. After drilling me on the details of where I lived and what my job was and not managing to find any inconsistencies, she begrudgingly gave me the letter I needed for the foreigner police. She then pointed out that if I didn’t return in 3 weeks to claim the extension to my business license, she would throw out my file and I’d have to start over from scratch.
On the way out, I had to dissuade my friend from pissing on the building – only because a security guard was watching us.
The insurance receipt was easy enough, still tucked away in my insurance folder (you learn not to throw away anything with a stamp on it in this country, especially official receipts). As for the bank statement, it was easy to get, but they charged me 300 kc for the privilege of putting a stamp on it (see my earlier post on Stamps). Finally, without time to return to Rakovnik to submit my paperwork in person, I made color copies of all 4 items for myself and sent the originals, along with a letter from my boss explaining that I had only been working there for two months but they were very happy with me and expected me to continue working there for several years at my current rate of pay or higher (stamped with an official school stamp of course), to the foreigner police by registered mail.
Just before Christmas I asked my boss to call the office to make sure they had received the paperwork and that everything was in order. They had, they said, and everything looked okay, except (EXCEPT!!???) where was my insurance contract?
My boss and I both took deep breaths and calmly asked what in the hell they were talking about. No one had ever mentioned an insurance contract. They said the insurance card and the receipt were enough. They were very specific about that. The woman on the phone, exasperated, inquired how they were expected to make sure the insurance was sufficient if they didn’t have the contract to read through? The good news was that I could bring the contract when I came to pick up my temporary visa, no more than 1 week before the expiration of my current one (January 14), and everything else looked fine.
Finally, on Wednesday, 11 January, the kind friend accompanied me on one last trip to Rakovnik to get the temporary visa. The line was short and the process didn’t take long. After copying my insurance contract, the woman actually smiled a smile that wasn’t dipped in venom and said everything looks fine. She even returned the original insurance receipt I had mailed her. She put the glorious green stamp in my passport giving me 3 more months to live here legally and left me with the final step of going back to Kladno to pick up my extended business license.
The bus trip between these two cities is horrendously long, and we were grateful for the walk to the trade office to stretch our legs. Sitting in the hallway outside the office waiting our turn, both of us were on edge. I kept fidgeting and asking stupid questions, and he kept snapping at me to stop talking because I was making him even more tense. Finally we were called in. The mean lady at the desk was disappointed to see that I had successfully obtained the visa, but at this point there was nothing she could do. She handed me the new business license, stamped twice and signed by her, and said “that’s it” in a somewhat less than friendly way.
As we stood up, almost as an afterthought, she added, “you know, you don’t have to come to this office every time you need something done on your license. You can go to any trade office in the country. So if you work in Prague, you can just go to the office there.”
Both my friend and I stopped breathing for a moment and the air became slightly thicker as a fine mist of hate was expelled from our pores. She couldn’t have mentioned this sooner, say, on any of the seven or eight trips I had made here in the past couple years? Forcing robotic smiles, we thanked her for the information and practically ran out of the building.
On the way home, my friend was very angry with me for dragging him to Kladno unnecessarily. We argued for a bit as he insisted I should have done more research to find out I could go to any business office, while I assured him that I had done plenty of research and everyone had always told me I had to go to the office in my place of residence. It must have been a recent change. (Future research confirmed this – the change took place quite recently and in the past it was always necessary to go to your local office.) Finally he accepted my explanation, but despite our success, it was hard to be in a good mood after a day spent dealing with Czech state workers.
So that was almost exactly 3 months ago, and now is the time to renew my temporary visa since, surprise surprise, my long-term application has not yet been approved (and in fact I suspect no one has looked at it at all yet). What fresh hell awaits me this time around? Stay tuned for more updates soon!
Showing posts with label bureaucracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bureaucracy. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Czech Bureaucracy: Obtaining a Long-Stay Residence Permit (Part 3)
You and your friend both get up early and catch the 8:30 bus to Kladno. On the way, you show him all of your paperwork and the list of information the foreigner police had given over the phone, explaining everything so that he can answer any questions necessary later on. Then you try to chat about other things, but it’s hard to keep your mind off the situation. If things don’t go well today, there’s hardly any time left to fix it.
The first stop in Kladno is the social office. You walk into the office, your friend says who you are and what you need, and the woman grabs a document from a bin, asks you to sign it, and hands you your bezdlužnost. Step one: complete. God bless the women at the social office in Kladno.
In fact, let’s all just bow our heads and take a moment to appreciate these amazing ladies. If everyone in the Czech public service was like them, there would never be a problem with paperwork.
Thank you.
The second stop is the finance office. Your form is ready (oh thank god) and you need only sign for it. The woman at the desk is less than friendly and happy, but she doesn’t give you any trouble. You thank her very politely and are on your way.
So far it’s only taken about 30 minutes to get everything done. Unfortunately, you’ve just missed the 9:25 bus to Rakovnik and have a few hours to kill before the next one. Time to get some food and celebrate how smoothly everything has gone so far. Your stress levels have dropped considerably and you have a feeling today is going to go very well. Soon you’ll have your two-year residence card and everything will be okay.
After a nice early lunch and a leisurely stroll through the only nice part of Kladno, you make your way to the bus station and pass the long trip to Rakovnik with conversation completely unrelated to paperwork. It’s a nice day, you’ve got a good feeling, and this will all be over soon.
The police station is in the center of Rakovnik, just a few minutes’ walk from the bus station, but the foreigner police are located somewhat less conveniently. In fact, it’s about a 25-minute walk down a long road with no bus stops, located in a rusted metal building in an industrial park. The police officer at the front window tells you to go on in, and you enter the room where you will spend the rest of the day.
There are a lot more people in here than you expected. All of them appear to be either Vietnamese or Ukrainian. There are two open windows, and a cardboard box with numbers on slips of paper. You get number 32, and they’re already on 29. This should be relatively quick and painless.
An hour goes by. There are no toilets. Only one person is called. It’s not that they seem overwhelmingly busy. Everyone is just sitting around waiting. What are the people behind the window doing? One large woman is staring at a computer screen with a confused look on her face. Two others are chatting, partly about work, and partly about some social event they had both attended. A man walks into their office smiling and starts a friendly chat with one of the women that lasts for what feels like an eternity. Finally, they call number 31.
Your friend goes up to the window and asks if you’re waiting in the right place. Irritatedly, they say yes, now go and sit down. Simultaneously, you think you hear someone call 32, but you’re not sure. Your friend walks back to the window to ask the woman which number she had called. She’s just about ready to throw out number 32 and call 33 when he stops her and says you’re 32. Angry, she demands that you move a little quicker if you don’t want to lose your place.
It’s understandable, really. After all, you’ve only been waiting 90 minutes, and she had to stand at that window for nearly 30 seconds before you got there.
You join your friend at the window with your binder full of paperwork. There is a woman standing there with a smile on her face. It is the smile of a loan shark with a crowbar informing you you’re very late paying back your debt. The smile of a supervillain who has you and your loved ones dangling above a pit of starving wolves. This is the woman who will decide if your paperwork is acceptable or not.
The first problem is your application form. There are some fields left blank, such as “spouse” - since you don’t have one. She gruffly informs your translator that you must write “nemá” in each of these fields.
No problem, you say. Right away. So sorry for the mistake. You never stop smiling.
While you’re doing that, she rifles through the rest of the papers. “What’s this?” she says, as though she had discovered a dead rat right in the middle of the pile. She’s pointing at your work contract. Your friend explains that the work contract is part of your reason to stay in this country, along with your business license, and also proof of income, since it states your monthly salary. She stares at you for a moment as though he had just told her that YOU were the one leaving flaming bags of dog poo on her porch every Tuesday for the past six months, then sighs and shrugs. She’ll have to discuss it with her colleague. She walks away from the window into the office. You can plainly see and hear her chatting with another one of the women. They are not discussing your case. They laugh at some private joke, then she walks out of the office entirely.
Several minutes later she returns, a look of triumph on her face. No, they cannot accept your work contract as proof of income. You must also provide a bank statement demonstrating for AT LEAST the past three months that you are actually getting paid this amount.
But you only started the job two months ago.
Well, that’s not her problem, is it?
Anyway, the business license is completely unacceptable. It expires on the same day as your current visa. You tell her of course it does - they won’t extend it until you have a new visa. She looks at you again with a whole new expression of annoyance. Maybe she misheard - did you accidentally just tell her that shirt makes her look fat? You’re pretty sure you didn’t.
She takes a deep breath. It’s clear that she’s very tired of having to explain this to you. How is it that you haven’t psychically taken the information from her brain by now and saved her the trouble? But she’s a patient woman, and she manages to explain to you with almost complete calmness that you must first go to the business office in Kladno and apply to extend your license. They will give you a letter stating that you have applied for it, which you must then give to the foreigner police to prove that you’re really going to do it. Until they have that, there’s no way they can even consider your application.
But being the kind-hearted woman she is, she will look through the rest of your papers to make sure they’re all in order. The bezdlužnost from the finance office is fine. So is the one from the social office. But where is the proof you’ve paid your social insurance?
Well now you’re truly confused. Isn’t that what the bezdlužnost is? It’s a document stating that you don’t owe any money. If you don’t owe any money, then you must have paid your social insurance, right?
The woman reacts to this bit of logic as though you’d tried to prove that the Easter Bunny is real and living in a condo in southern France. She shakes it off like a blow to the head and repeats, you need a paper from the social office listing each and every payment you’ve made.
It is around this point that your friend turns to you and says, still smiling and in the calmest of tones, that this woman is not making any sense whatsoever (even in Czech), and that her attitude is making him want to punch a hole through the wall. You need to hurry up and finish as quickly as possible so he can go outside, scream, and smoke an entire pack of cigarettes.
I’m going to step back a moment now and simply summarize the rest of the encounter, because you’re getting the idea, and to continue to write it out in such detail might trigger an attack of PTSD. Of the documents you were told by phone to bring for your application, more than half of them are unacceptable and many are missing. Your lease is fine as proof of accommodation and the bezdlužnost papers are fine. Your application form is now okay. Your work contract will be considered as part of the application but you need the official bank statement. Your insurance card is good, but you also need to provide “proof of payment” for your insurance - meaning your receipt from the purchase. (The implication here is that people are going around forging insurance cards, but that it would be impossible to forge a receipt with a stamp on it.) Your business license is useless and you must go to Kladno to apply for the extension. You need to visit the social office and get a stamped paper listing all the social security payments you’ve made.
So the complete list, now, of what you still need, is:
1. letter from the business office declaring you have applied to extend your business license
2. official list of social security payments
3. receipt of payment for health insurance
4. stamped bank statement proving your income
You write this all out neatly on a piece of paper and show her, and she confirms that if you bring these four things, your application will be complete. Your friend politely asks how it’s possible that when you called weeks ago, they gave you completely different information. Her face turns angry and she insists that this is not possible - you must have called the wrong office, or misunderstood what you were told, because this office does not make mistakes.
Of course not.
Regarding the matter of temporary extension for your visa, there is another problem. Once your application is officially submitted in its entirety, they will give you a temporary visa extension for up to three months while they process you (and then you have to go to the business office to get a similar extension for your business license), but they won’t give you this until there are no more than seven days left on your visa. So you’ll have to come back again and spend another day here waiting in line just for that.
The biggest problem now is not that you will have to miss more work, but that you are rapidly running out of time. It’s only the middle of December, and you have until the last day of the month, but in a week and a half it will be Christmas and everything will be closed. You won’t have a chance to visit the business office in Kladno until Monday, and Christmas is the following weekend. If they say they require a week to process your request to extend your business license (as they typically do), or if the social office requires time to provide your list of payments, you’ll simply be out of luck. If you had known about these requirements, you would have had these documents already - but it doesn’t matter that you called them, asked what you needed, and they gave you the wrong information. It’s still on you to find a way to make this work. And let’s not even think about how you’re going to deal with this proof of income. It’s too much to process right now.
Appropriately enough, when you finally leave the office, the weather has changed from sunny and warm to pouring rain, strong winds, and near-freezing temperatures. Couldn’t make this stuff up.
This mess is so far from over.
The first stop in Kladno is the social office. You walk into the office, your friend says who you are and what you need, and the woman grabs a document from a bin, asks you to sign it, and hands you your bezdlužnost. Step one: complete. God bless the women at the social office in Kladno.
In fact, let’s all just bow our heads and take a moment to appreciate these amazing ladies. If everyone in the Czech public service was like them, there would never be a problem with paperwork.
Thank you.
The second stop is the finance office. Your form is ready (oh thank god) and you need only sign for it. The woman at the desk is less than friendly and happy, but she doesn’t give you any trouble. You thank her very politely and are on your way.
So far it’s only taken about 30 minutes to get everything done. Unfortunately, you’ve just missed the 9:25 bus to Rakovnik and have a few hours to kill before the next one. Time to get some food and celebrate how smoothly everything has gone so far. Your stress levels have dropped considerably and you have a feeling today is going to go very well. Soon you’ll have your two-year residence card and everything will be okay.
After a nice early lunch and a leisurely stroll through the only nice part of Kladno, you make your way to the bus station and pass the long trip to Rakovnik with conversation completely unrelated to paperwork. It’s a nice day, you’ve got a good feeling, and this will all be over soon.
The police station is in the center of Rakovnik, just a few minutes’ walk from the bus station, but the foreigner police are located somewhat less conveniently. In fact, it’s about a 25-minute walk down a long road with no bus stops, located in a rusted metal building in an industrial park. The police officer at the front window tells you to go on in, and you enter the room where you will spend the rest of the day.
There are a lot more people in here than you expected. All of them appear to be either Vietnamese or Ukrainian. There are two open windows, and a cardboard box with numbers on slips of paper. You get number 32, and they’re already on 29. This should be relatively quick and painless.
An hour goes by. There are no toilets. Only one person is called. It’s not that they seem overwhelmingly busy. Everyone is just sitting around waiting. What are the people behind the window doing? One large woman is staring at a computer screen with a confused look on her face. Two others are chatting, partly about work, and partly about some social event they had both attended. A man walks into their office smiling and starts a friendly chat with one of the women that lasts for what feels like an eternity. Finally, they call number 31.
Your friend goes up to the window and asks if you’re waiting in the right place. Irritatedly, they say yes, now go and sit down. Simultaneously, you think you hear someone call 32, but you’re not sure. Your friend walks back to the window to ask the woman which number she had called. She’s just about ready to throw out number 32 and call 33 when he stops her and says you’re 32. Angry, she demands that you move a little quicker if you don’t want to lose your place.
It’s understandable, really. After all, you’ve only been waiting 90 minutes, and she had to stand at that window for nearly 30 seconds before you got there.
You join your friend at the window with your binder full of paperwork. There is a woman standing there with a smile on her face. It is the smile of a loan shark with a crowbar informing you you’re very late paying back your debt. The smile of a supervillain who has you and your loved ones dangling above a pit of starving wolves. This is the woman who will decide if your paperwork is acceptable or not.
The first problem is your application form. There are some fields left blank, such as “spouse” - since you don’t have one. She gruffly informs your translator that you must write “nemá” in each of these fields.
No problem, you say. Right away. So sorry for the mistake. You never stop smiling.
While you’re doing that, she rifles through the rest of the papers. “What’s this?” she says, as though she had discovered a dead rat right in the middle of the pile. She’s pointing at your work contract. Your friend explains that the work contract is part of your reason to stay in this country, along with your business license, and also proof of income, since it states your monthly salary. She stares at you for a moment as though he had just told her that YOU were the one leaving flaming bags of dog poo on her porch every Tuesday for the past six months, then sighs and shrugs. She’ll have to discuss it with her colleague. She walks away from the window into the office. You can plainly see and hear her chatting with another one of the women. They are not discussing your case. They laugh at some private joke, then she walks out of the office entirely.
Several minutes later she returns, a look of triumph on her face. No, they cannot accept your work contract as proof of income. You must also provide a bank statement demonstrating for AT LEAST the past three months that you are actually getting paid this amount.
But you only started the job two months ago.
Well, that’s not her problem, is it?
Anyway, the business license is completely unacceptable. It expires on the same day as your current visa. You tell her of course it does - they won’t extend it until you have a new visa. She looks at you again with a whole new expression of annoyance. Maybe she misheard - did you accidentally just tell her that shirt makes her look fat? You’re pretty sure you didn’t.
She takes a deep breath. It’s clear that she’s very tired of having to explain this to you. How is it that you haven’t psychically taken the information from her brain by now and saved her the trouble? But she’s a patient woman, and she manages to explain to you with almost complete calmness that you must first go to the business office in Kladno and apply to extend your license. They will give you a letter stating that you have applied for it, which you must then give to the foreigner police to prove that you’re really going to do it. Until they have that, there’s no way they can even consider your application.
But being the kind-hearted woman she is, she will look through the rest of your papers to make sure they’re all in order. The bezdlužnost from the finance office is fine. So is the one from the social office. But where is the proof you’ve paid your social insurance?
Well now you’re truly confused. Isn’t that what the bezdlužnost is? It’s a document stating that you don’t owe any money. If you don’t owe any money, then you must have paid your social insurance, right?
The woman reacts to this bit of logic as though you’d tried to prove that the Easter Bunny is real and living in a condo in southern France. She shakes it off like a blow to the head and repeats, you need a paper from the social office listing each and every payment you’ve made.
It is around this point that your friend turns to you and says, still smiling and in the calmest of tones, that this woman is not making any sense whatsoever (even in Czech), and that her attitude is making him want to punch a hole through the wall. You need to hurry up and finish as quickly as possible so he can go outside, scream, and smoke an entire pack of cigarettes.
I’m going to step back a moment now and simply summarize the rest of the encounter, because you’re getting the idea, and to continue to write it out in such detail might trigger an attack of PTSD. Of the documents you were told by phone to bring for your application, more than half of them are unacceptable and many are missing. Your lease is fine as proof of accommodation and the bezdlužnost papers are fine. Your application form is now okay. Your work contract will be considered as part of the application but you need the official bank statement. Your insurance card is good, but you also need to provide “proof of payment” for your insurance - meaning your receipt from the purchase. (The implication here is that people are going around forging insurance cards, but that it would be impossible to forge a receipt with a stamp on it.) Your business license is useless and you must go to Kladno to apply for the extension. You need to visit the social office and get a stamped paper listing all the social security payments you’ve made.
So the complete list, now, of what you still need, is:
1. letter from the business office declaring you have applied to extend your business license
2. official list of social security payments
3. receipt of payment for health insurance
4. stamped bank statement proving your income
You write this all out neatly on a piece of paper and show her, and she confirms that if you bring these four things, your application will be complete. Your friend politely asks how it’s possible that when you called weeks ago, they gave you completely different information. Her face turns angry and she insists that this is not possible - you must have called the wrong office, or misunderstood what you were told, because this office does not make mistakes.
Of course not.
Regarding the matter of temporary extension for your visa, there is another problem. Once your application is officially submitted in its entirety, they will give you a temporary visa extension for up to three months while they process you (and then you have to go to the business office to get a similar extension for your business license), but they won’t give you this until there are no more than seven days left on your visa. So you’ll have to come back again and spend another day here waiting in line just for that.
The biggest problem now is not that you will have to miss more work, but that you are rapidly running out of time. It’s only the middle of December, and you have until the last day of the month, but in a week and a half it will be Christmas and everything will be closed. You won’t have a chance to visit the business office in Kladno until Monday, and Christmas is the following weekend. If they say they require a week to process your request to extend your business license (as they typically do), or if the social office requires time to provide your list of payments, you’ll simply be out of luck. If you had known about these requirements, you would have had these documents already - but it doesn’t matter that you called them, asked what you needed, and they gave you the wrong information. It’s still on you to find a way to make this work. And let’s not even think about how you’re going to deal with this proof of income. It’s too much to process right now.
Appropriately enough, when you finally leave the office, the weather has changed from sunny and warm to pouring rain, strong winds, and near-freezing temperatures. Couldn’t make this stuff up.
This mess is so far from over.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Czech Bureaucracy: Obtaining a Long-Stay Residence Permit (Part 2)
Over the next few days, you discuss the situation with your boss, who, having dealt with the government before, is fortunately very understanding and agrees to give you the day off the following Wednesday to retrieve the papers (assuming the offices have them ready in time) and go to the foreigner police in Rakovnik to submit your application at last. This time you take no risks, and employ a Czech friend to do the translation for you. They’re always nicer when you have a native speaker to do the talking.
On Monday, you plan to call both offices (neither of which are open on Tuesday) to check the status of your papers and make sure they’ll be ready in time. The finance office beats you to the punch, however, calling you at 11:00 and rattling off something very complicated-sounding that you are apparently expected to memorize instantly. You ask that they hold on for just a second and pass the phone off to a Czech-speaking colleague who is kind enough to write everything down for you.
She’s gone for a lot longer than you expect. Finally, ten minutes later, she returns with a piece of paper covered in numbers. The first number is 32 - the number of crowns that the finance office claims you owe and must pay before they will issue you the bezdlužnost.
But wait - how could you possibly owe them any money? You’ve only been in the country for four and a half months! You certainly don’t owe any taxes. Well, the woman on the phone had no idea why you owe the money, but until you pay it, they won’t give you the paper.
Lovely. At least it's only a very small amount. So how do you get them this money?
Well, you could go to the office in Kladno and give them the money in person. Of course, they close at 2 pm and it would be physically impossible to get there from here in time. The other option is to make a bank transfer (the other numbers on the paper are the information you need for this) - but it must be from the Czech National Bank, only one branch of which is located in Prague, and which closes at - you guessed it, 2 pm. Peachy.
You have your colleague, who graciously offers to cover for you while you leave a bit early to run to this bank, call the woman back to inform her you’ll be paying by bank transfer and confirm that your paper will be ready on Wednesday. She also tries to call the social office for you, but she encounters nothing but an impenetrable labyrinth of automatic systems, none of which offers any useful advice or, you know, a human being to speak to. You give up, cross your fingers and squeeze your thumbs hoping that all will be well, and rush out the door to the bank.
You make it 15 minutes before they close and have to go through a metal detector to get inside. You take a number and, after a few minutes of searching, manage to find the forms for making a payment to the finance office. The form is indecipherable, however, and even the Czechs waiting their turn are helping each other figure out what to write in each field. Fortunately, the average Czech citizen is considerably more friendly and helpful than most government workers, and one of them speaks enough English to help you out. You fill it in as best you can and pray to whichever gods might be listening that you’ve done it properly.
You watch each person approach the window and try to pay. Each of them is up there for a distressingly long time, and each has to answer questions and make adjustments to their paperwork. Finally, it’s your turn. You hand the woman the form and the money. She punches something into a computer then hands you a receipt. That’s it, she says.
That was suspiciously easy.
How sad is it that when something goes smoothly, your first instinct is to suspect that you've done something wrong?
Now there’s nothing left to do but wait until Wednesday and hope that everything goes well.
On Monday, you plan to call both offices (neither of which are open on Tuesday) to check the status of your papers and make sure they’ll be ready in time. The finance office beats you to the punch, however, calling you at 11:00 and rattling off something very complicated-sounding that you are apparently expected to memorize instantly. You ask that they hold on for just a second and pass the phone off to a Czech-speaking colleague who is kind enough to write everything down for you.
She’s gone for a lot longer than you expect. Finally, ten minutes later, she returns with a piece of paper covered in numbers. The first number is 32 - the number of crowns that the finance office claims you owe and must pay before they will issue you the bezdlužnost.
But wait - how could you possibly owe them any money? You’ve only been in the country for four and a half months! You certainly don’t owe any taxes. Well, the woman on the phone had no idea why you owe the money, but until you pay it, they won’t give you the paper.
Lovely. At least it's only a very small amount. So how do you get them this money?
Well, you could go to the office in Kladno and give them the money in person. Of course, they close at 2 pm and it would be physically impossible to get there from here in time. The other option is to make a bank transfer (the other numbers on the paper are the information you need for this) - but it must be from the Czech National Bank, only one branch of which is located in Prague, and which closes at - you guessed it, 2 pm. Peachy.
You have your colleague, who graciously offers to cover for you while you leave a bit early to run to this bank, call the woman back to inform her you’ll be paying by bank transfer and confirm that your paper will be ready on Wednesday. She also tries to call the social office for you, but she encounters nothing but an impenetrable labyrinth of automatic systems, none of which offers any useful advice or, you know, a human being to speak to. You give up, cross your fingers and squeeze your thumbs hoping that all will be well, and rush out the door to the bank.
You make it 15 minutes before they close and have to go through a metal detector to get inside. You take a number and, after a few minutes of searching, manage to find the forms for making a payment to the finance office. The form is indecipherable, however, and even the Czechs waiting their turn are helping each other figure out what to write in each field. Fortunately, the average Czech citizen is considerably more friendly and helpful than most government workers, and one of them speaks enough English to help you out. You fill it in as best you can and pray to whichever gods might be listening that you’ve done it properly.
You watch each person approach the window and try to pay. Each of them is up there for a distressingly long time, and each has to answer questions and make adjustments to their paperwork. Finally, it’s your turn. You hand the woman the form and the money. She punches something into a computer then hands you a receipt. That’s it, she says.
That was suspiciously easy.
How sad is it that when something goes smoothly, your first instinct is to suspect that you've done something wrong?
Now there’s nothing left to do but wait until Wednesday and hope that everything goes well.
Stamps
The trouble with making stamp ink from unicorn blood is that they are so commonly needed, but unicorn blood is so very rare. While it's true that only a drop of the blood is needed for each vat of ink, the price of even such a small amount is so high that it becomes astoundingly expensive to get even a single rubber-stamp on any official document.
In the government offices the cost is partially subsidized, of course, so the price is usually only about 100 kč, but in the private sector, such as banks, it can be much higher. For example, I myself was just yesterday in my friendly neighborhood branch of Raiffeisen, where my paychecks are deposited each month, and I needed an official printed bank statement for the foreigner police with a stamp on it to prove I hadn't forged it. I knew that such a service could hardly be free, what with the cost of that single sheet of paper, the power to run the printer, and the eighteen seconds that the clerk at the desk had to work to print it out for me, but I had forgotten to take into account the unicorn blood in the stamp. The woman told me that I could print one for free from my online banking page, but if I wanted that stamp, it was going to be 300 kč.
Alas, I don't see what other choice the bank had other than to charge me the full cost of the ink in that stamp - especially since she had to use it twice, stamping both sides of the paper.
Perhaps the solution is that the government stop mandating that all stamps contain traces of unicorn blood. No one likes the fees that banks have to charge for each small service rendered, least of all the bank owners themselves, but as long as this prohibitive regulation is enforced, what else can they do?
In the government offices the cost is partially subsidized, of course, so the price is usually only about 100 kč, but in the private sector, such as banks, it can be much higher. For example, I myself was just yesterday in my friendly neighborhood branch of Raiffeisen, where my paychecks are deposited each month, and I needed an official printed bank statement for the foreigner police with a stamp on it to prove I hadn't forged it. I knew that such a service could hardly be free, what with the cost of that single sheet of paper, the power to run the printer, and the eighteen seconds that the clerk at the desk had to work to print it out for me, but I had forgotten to take into account the unicorn blood in the stamp. The woman told me that I could print one for free from my online banking page, but if I wanted that stamp, it was going to be 300 kč.
Alas, I don't see what other choice the bank had other than to charge me the full cost of the ink in that stamp - especially since she had to use it twice, stamping both sides of the paper.
Perhaps the solution is that the government stop mandating that all stamps contain traces of unicorn blood. No one likes the fees that banks have to charge for each small service rendered, least of all the bank owners themselves, but as long as this prohibitive regulation is enforced, what else can they do?
Monday, December 19, 2011
Czech Bureaucracy: Obtaining a Long-Stay Residence Permit (Part I)
I’d like to take you on a journey through the intimidating, frustrating, and sometimes downright horrifying world of Czech bureaucracy. Even Czech citizens must deal with the government and public offices from time to time, and it’s not fun for anyone. But for a foreigner without EU citizenship, it can be an absolute nightmare.
Imagine for a moment that you are an American citizen trying to live long-term in the Czech Republic. You’re highly qualified in your field, which is in high demand in this country, and your job cannot effectively be done by Czech citizens. In short, this country has a real use for you, and it is in the best interests of the government to make it possible, even reasonably easy, for you to get legal permission to live and work here.
In a long and difficult journey which is too long to be fully described here, you managed to obtain your long-term work visa from the Czech government at a cost of many thousands of crowns, countless hours of running between various offices, even more hours of standing in line, and dozens of thank-you beers and seriously-worded I.O.U.s for your Czech friends who helped you with translation. They stuck that glorious green stamp in your passport which declares you LEGAL in the Czech Republic to live and to work using your Živnostenký List (business license). Now you have a work contract with a reputable school in Prague, you’ve been paying your social security each month, and you even have your name on the lease of a nice apartment in Kladno (a small city about 30 minutes outside Prague by bus). You’re even learning Czech and can hold a conversation with the natives as long as they speak slowly. Life is going well.
Of course, this visa only good for six months – just twice the length a tourist is allowed to stay with no visa at all. And it took you nearly six months to get it, including the preparation and the waiting time while they processed your papers. It was worth it, but that was about four months ago. There’s two months left now. That’s about sixty days. Should be plenty of time to gather the documents you need and submit your application for a two-year long-stay residence permit before the visa expires. And this time you don’t even have to leave the country – you can apply straight from your local foreigner police headquarters.
But you still need to gather the paperwork, and in order to do that, you need to first find out which paperwork you need. Time to do some research.
There’s no easy place to look for your answers. You might have a look at the web site for the MVCR – the ministry of the interior. Unlike most places in this country, they even have an English version of their web site and a listing of what you need to submit your application. Essentially, in addition to your passport and photos, you need three things:
1. Proof of accommodation
2. Proof of reason to stay
3. Proof of finance
Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But a quick check with others who have completed this process reveals that it is anything but simple. First of all, there are a wide range of documents which may or may not be accepted by the MVCR for each of these items. Second, there is a great deal of variance from person to person when it comes to which documents are accepted and which are not. It seems to depend on the mood of the person who happens to receive your application, and since Czechs are so keen to believe in fortune tellers, perhaps the position of the stars is also important.
A notarized lease ought to suffice for the first item, and your business license is your reason to stay, but proof of finance seems to be tricky. They won’t accept a bank statement, says one person. They need to see proof of regular income (so they know they’re guaranteed good tax income from you, and you don’t try to collect any of that social security you’ve been paying) so proof that you have plenty of money to fall back on won’t help. A credit card won’t do either. You can try to show them your work contract, but they tend not even to accept that. People make mention of government documents and tax records. Sounds complicated.
It looks like you’ll need more information. You’ve spent over a week just getting this far – sending out messages asking for help and waiting for the responses. The clock is ticking, and it’s time for more direct action. You call on a Czech speaker – your boss, in whose interest it is to get this residence permit approved – and have her directly call the foreigner police office in Rakovnik (the location you’ll need to deal with as a resident of Kladno) and ask them for a clear list of items you need to bring.
The man on the phone is neither friendly nor informative. He’s unsure about many of the answers you need to put on your application form, and he gives rather vague answers about the documents to bring. The words “probably” and “I guess” are used far too often for comfort. He does say that you need the notarized lease – but the notarization cannot be older than 180 days, so you’ll need to re-sign it. He says if you have a business license already, that will suffice. As for finance, they will need a Bezdlužnost (that’s a document certifying you don’t owe any money) from both the social (OSSZ) and finance offices, and also your Czech tax records from the previous year. You point out that you didn’t work here or pay taxes the previous year, and he says well, maybe you won’t need it then, try submitting the application without it. (Maybe? Try?) A second phone call a few days later provides a small addition to this – if you don’t have tax records, write an affidavit (in Czech of course) declaring that you didn’t work in Europe in the past and therefore no tax records exist, and sign it. That should be sufficient. (Should?) Also, you must submit your application with no less than 15 days remaining on your visa – that’s half a month less time than you expected you would have.
Well, it sounds a bit shaky, but at least you’ve got your information, and all of this is very doable. In fact, it sounds like you can do it all in one day, even taking into account the fact that these offices are only open a couple of days per week for a few hours each day (and you’ll have to miss an entire day of work each time you go visit them). Anyway, you have nearly three weeks remaining before the deadline.
It takes a week or so before you’re able to get the time off work on a Thursday and make your trip from Prague (where you work and spend most of your time) to Kladno (where you legally reside and where you must visit the social and finance offices). None of your friends are available to come translate, but you’re confident in your basic Czech and even prepare a small phrasebook containing various things you might need to say. Should there be an emergency, several friends have offered to translate by phone.
The first stop is the social office. You timidly approach the information desk and very politely explain what you need. A bezdlužnost, for the foreigner police. You also excuse your bad Czech. It seems that this is your lucky day, because the ladies working the desk here are very friendly and helpful. They don’t speak English, of course, but they speak slowly and use a bit of mime to indicate what you need to write on the form they give you. And it doesn’t even cost anything! While you’re writing, they make a photocopy of your passport. Finally, you sign the form, and they give your passport back and happily inform you that that’s it.
Wait, that’s it? What about the form? They ask you when you need it. You answer, as soon as possible – you were hoping you could get it today. After all, what could possibly be involved in looking up your records to make sure you don’t owe any money, then printing your debt-free status on a piece of paper with a stamp and signature?
No such luck. Like everything in the Czech Republic, this is going to take “about a week.” They’ll call you, they say, when it’s ready. And no, there’s nothing you can do to make this process go any faster.
Well, that’s a problem. You were hoping to go to the offices, get the papers, then go straight to the foreigner police and submit your application straight away. But what can you do? You thank them for their help and move along to the finance office.
Your luck seems to be dwindling now. You didn’t expect the woman at the counter to speak English, but she needn’t be so nasty about you not speaking perfect Czech. You explain what you need in the same words you used at the social office, but the gnarled old woman simply scowls at you and asks why you didn’t bring a translator if you can’t speak proper Czech. (Sadly, this is the rule rather than the exception. The ladies at the social office were truly extraordinary.) Finally you manage to get the form to apply for your bezdlužnost and do your best to fill it out. She grumbles that you filled in an area you didn’t need to, demands 100 crowns as a processing fee, and walks away without another word.
You’re already a few steps outside when you remember that you need to ask about the tax documents. You take a deep breath and timidly step back into the building. The angry woman who "helped" you before is gone, thank goodness, and a younger woman is now sitting at the window. You apologize for your bad Czech, read a prepared sentence from your notebook explaining your concern about tax records, and look at her hopefully. She stares back as though you had just tried to order a large pizza with extra spiders, and shrugs her shoulders. The tax people are here on Monday and Wednesday, she says. Come back next week.
Deep breath. You can do this.
Time to get out your phone. Nevermind that it costs you 7 crowns a minute to call someone, you need to get this sorted out. You get ahold of one of your friends, explain the situation, and hand the phone to the young woman, whose confusion seems only to be growing (for a few seconds, she looks at the phone as though you had asked her to swallow it). You listen attentively to her half of the conversation, but the only part you understand is “really I have no idea what on earth she needs.” Finally she smiles, understanding seeming to dawn, hangs up the phone, and hands it back. She writes three digits on a piece of paper and hands it to you. Go to that phone over there, she says, and call this number. No other explanation, but what else can you do?
You pick up the phone and dial the number. It rings eleven times before you give up and set down the receiver. You tell the woman that no one answered, and again, she shrugs her shoulders and says come back on Monday.
Well, it’s not possible to come back on Monday. You have work, and you’ll already have to take Wednesday off to come back and pick up these forms, and finally submit your application to the foreigner police. You’ll just have to hope that the affidavit will suffice.
Time to go back to Prague and regroup.
Imagine for a moment that you are an American citizen trying to live long-term in the Czech Republic. You’re highly qualified in your field, which is in high demand in this country, and your job cannot effectively be done by Czech citizens. In short, this country has a real use for you, and it is in the best interests of the government to make it possible, even reasonably easy, for you to get legal permission to live and work here.
In a long and difficult journey which is too long to be fully described here, you managed to obtain your long-term work visa from the Czech government at a cost of many thousands of crowns, countless hours of running between various offices, even more hours of standing in line, and dozens of thank-you beers and seriously-worded I.O.U.s for your Czech friends who helped you with translation. They stuck that glorious green stamp in your passport which declares you LEGAL in the Czech Republic to live and to work using your Živnostenký List (business license). Now you have a work contract with a reputable school in Prague, you’ve been paying your social security each month, and you even have your name on the lease of a nice apartment in Kladno (a small city about 30 minutes outside Prague by bus). You’re even learning Czech and can hold a conversation with the natives as long as they speak slowly. Life is going well.
Of course, this visa only good for six months – just twice the length a tourist is allowed to stay with no visa at all. And it took you nearly six months to get it, including the preparation and the waiting time while they processed your papers. It was worth it, but that was about four months ago. There’s two months left now. That’s about sixty days. Should be plenty of time to gather the documents you need and submit your application for a two-year long-stay residence permit before the visa expires. And this time you don’t even have to leave the country – you can apply straight from your local foreigner police headquarters.
But you still need to gather the paperwork, and in order to do that, you need to first find out which paperwork you need. Time to do some research.
There’s no easy place to look for your answers. You might have a look at the web site for the MVCR – the ministry of the interior. Unlike most places in this country, they even have an English version of their web site and a listing of what you need to submit your application. Essentially, in addition to your passport and photos, you need three things:
1. Proof of accommodation
2. Proof of reason to stay
3. Proof of finance
Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But a quick check with others who have completed this process reveals that it is anything but simple. First of all, there are a wide range of documents which may or may not be accepted by the MVCR for each of these items. Second, there is a great deal of variance from person to person when it comes to which documents are accepted and which are not. It seems to depend on the mood of the person who happens to receive your application, and since Czechs are so keen to believe in fortune tellers, perhaps the position of the stars is also important.
A notarized lease ought to suffice for the first item, and your business license is your reason to stay, but proof of finance seems to be tricky. They won’t accept a bank statement, says one person. They need to see proof of regular income (so they know they’re guaranteed good tax income from you, and you don’t try to collect any of that social security you’ve been paying) so proof that you have plenty of money to fall back on won’t help. A credit card won’t do either. You can try to show them your work contract, but they tend not even to accept that. People make mention of government documents and tax records. Sounds complicated.
It looks like you’ll need more information. You’ve spent over a week just getting this far – sending out messages asking for help and waiting for the responses. The clock is ticking, and it’s time for more direct action. You call on a Czech speaker – your boss, in whose interest it is to get this residence permit approved – and have her directly call the foreigner police office in Rakovnik (the location you’ll need to deal with as a resident of Kladno) and ask them for a clear list of items you need to bring.
The man on the phone is neither friendly nor informative. He’s unsure about many of the answers you need to put on your application form, and he gives rather vague answers about the documents to bring. The words “probably” and “I guess” are used far too often for comfort. He does say that you need the notarized lease – but the notarization cannot be older than 180 days, so you’ll need to re-sign it. He says if you have a business license already, that will suffice. As for finance, they will need a Bezdlužnost (that’s a document certifying you don’t owe any money) from both the social (OSSZ) and finance offices, and also your Czech tax records from the previous year. You point out that you didn’t work here or pay taxes the previous year, and he says well, maybe you won’t need it then, try submitting the application without it. (Maybe? Try?) A second phone call a few days later provides a small addition to this – if you don’t have tax records, write an affidavit (in Czech of course) declaring that you didn’t work in Europe in the past and therefore no tax records exist, and sign it. That should be sufficient. (Should?) Also, you must submit your application with no less than 15 days remaining on your visa – that’s half a month less time than you expected you would have.
Well, it sounds a bit shaky, but at least you’ve got your information, and all of this is very doable. In fact, it sounds like you can do it all in one day, even taking into account the fact that these offices are only open a couple of days per week for a few hours each day (and you’ll have to miss an entire day of work each time you go visit them). Anyway, you have nearly three weeks remaining before the deadline.
It takes a week or so before you’re able to get the time off work on a Thursday and make your trip from Prague (where you work and spend most of your time) to Kladno (where you legally reside and where you must visit the social and finance offices). None of your friends are available to come translate, but you’re confident in your basic Czech and even prepare a small phrasebook containing various things you might need to say. Should there be an emergency, several friends have offered to translate by phone.
The first stop is the social office. You timidly approach the information desk and very politely explain what you need. A bezdlužnost, for the foreigner police. You also excuse your bad Czech. It seems that this is your lucky day, because the ladies working the desk here are very friendly and helpful. They don’t speak English, of course, but they speak slowly and use a bit of mime to indicate what you need to write on the form they give you. And it doesn’t even cost anything! While you’re writing, they make a photocopy of your passport. Finally, you sign the form, and they give your passport back and happily inform you that that’s it.
Wait, that’s it? What about the form? They ask you when you need it. You answer, as soon as possible – you were hoping you could get it today. After all, what could possibly be involved in looking up your records to make sure you don’t owe any money, then printing your debt-free status on a piece of paper with a stamp and signature?
No such luck. Like everything in the Czech Republic, this is going to take “about a week.” They’ll call you, they say, when it’s ready. And no, there’s nothing you can do to make this process go any faster.
Well, that’s a problem. You were hoping to go to the offices, get the papers, then go straight to the foreigner police and submit your application straight away. But what can you do? You thank them for their help and move along to the finance office.
Your luck seems to be dwindling now. You didn’t expect the woman at the counter to speak English, but she needn’t be so nasty about you not speaking perfect Czech. You explain what you need in the same words you used at the social office, but the gnarled old woman simply scowls at you and asks why you didn’t bring a translator if you can’t speak proper Czech. (Sadly, this is the rule rather than the exception. The ladies at the social office were truly extraordinary.) Finally you manage to get the form to apply for your bezdlužnost and do your best to fill it out. She grumbles that you filled in an area you didn’t need to, demands 100 crowns as a processing fee, and walks away without another word.
You’re already a few steps outside when you remember that you need to ask about the tax documents. You take a deep breath and timidly step back into the building. The angry woman who "helped" you before is gone, thank goodness, and a younger woman is now sitting at the window. You apologize for your bad Czech, read a prepared sentence from your notebook explaining your concern about tax records, and look at her hopefully. She stares back as though you had just tried to order a large pizza with extra spiders, and shrugs her shoulders. The tax people are here on Monday and Wednesday, she says. Come back next week.
Deep breath. You can do this.
Time to get out your phone. Nevermind that it costs you 7 crowns a minute to call someone, you need to get this sorted out. You get ahold of one of your friends, explain the situation, and hand the phone to the young woman, whose confusion seems only to be growing (for a few seconds, she looks at the phone as though you had asked her to swallow it). You listen attentively to her half of the conversation, but the only part you understand is “really I have no idea what on earth she needs.” Finally she smiles, understanding seeming to dawn, hangs up the phone, and hands it back. She writes three digits on a piece of paper and hands it to you. Go to that phone over there, she says, and call this number. No other explanation, but what else can you do?
You pick up the phone and dial the number. It rings eleven times before you give up and set down the receiver. You tell the woman that no one answered, and again, she shrugs her shoulders and says come back on Monday.
Well, it’s not possible to come back on Monday. You have work, and you’ll already have to take Wednesday off to come back and pick up these forms, and finally submit your application to the foreigner police. You’ll just have to hope that the affidavit will suffice.
Time to go back to Prague and regroup.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)