Visa Talk
A conversation that two people born in the EU would never have…
Russian citizens know very well how difficult it is to acquire a visa to go abroad. Undoubtedly, the number of visa-free countries has increased considerably over the years. Nevertheless, the list of countries where a visa is still required remains formidable. To gather a ton of required documents just for a short trip abroad is a nightmare! No wonder, that a work visa or a student visa literally means “bureaucratic hell”. Even after fulfilling all the requirements and getting the priceless stamp in your passport, your adventures do not end there.
Having lived in the country of my citizenship, I didn’t think much of the restrictions that foreigners face on the regular basis. I don’t mean the basic limitations in voting or having access to public funds. What I mean is those little daily situations that citizens don’t even find themselves in. For example, I am not obliged to justify my presence in Russia anyhow. As a citizen, I can visit my homeland whenever I want – no reason needed. Foreigners constantly need to prove that they still have the right to remain in the chosen country. They need to demonstrate that they are still studying, and still working, that they haven’t moved, and if they have, they have already reported it. Then don’t get too surprised when the evidence that they actually have reported it will also be requested. Like asking your fellow department isn’t an option… Sometimes these checks go far beyond common sense. In December 2015 I returned to Moscow so I could renew my visa. While I was waiting, I received an email from the Home Office (a minstrel department, responsible for immigration, security, and law and order), stating that based on their data my visa was about to expire and evidently I needed to go home. The fact that I had been at home for longer than a month by then hadn’t been spotted by anyone, apparently. After that incident, Russian bureaucratic issues stopped bothering me so much.
As a citizen, I can switch jobs whenever I want to. I can even switch the field of my profession. If I was tired of being a teacher, and I was lucky enough to get a position in consultancy, all I would need to transfer was the appropriate documentation. However, as a foreigner, my visa would literally be tied up to my current employer. Transferring from one job to another would mean getting a completely new visa. So, your new employer would have to apply to become your sponsor for your new visa. If we put aside the issues of time consumption and the general complexity of the system, we would still be left with yet another dilemma: not every employer can become your sponsor. Only big international companies have the right and the means to hire foreigners. That means, that if your dream has been working for a little national firm, you can forget about your visa. Unfortunately, your choices are limited from the start.
Remember what I said about changing fields in your profession? As a foreigner, you would come across all sorts of limitations if you decide in its favour. First of all, different fields often require different visas. What’s even more peculiar is that not every level of your job entitles you to a visa. Working as an assistant just won’t help you. If you thought that foreign employees’ lives were complicated, let’s talk about the situation that employers find themselves in! If they want to hire a wonderfully talented and very promising foreign citizen, they are burdened to prove that no one in the UK and or the EU could fulfill the requirement for the position. Basically, they need to prove that hiring a foreigner is an absolute necessity. On top of that, they need to pay a huge fee to become a visa sponsor and have to go through all sorts of checks every now and then.
Now when we discussed how easy it is to get a visa for work, let’s push it a little bit further! With a regular Tier 2 (General) Visa that allows you to work in the UK, you can be many things but a musician. You can play gigs from time to time and post your music online, but you can’t really make a proper career out of it. Because you will need a special visa – Tier 5. But I had just received an offer from a British music company that agreed to become my sponsor? That must solve all my issues, right? Why would I need to bother with working visa, if I could solely focus on my music? Before that I combined my studies along with a part-time paralegal position at a law firm. With a Tier 2 “Music” Visa I would have to forget about mixing two careers together. However, it was exactly what I had always wanted for myself – to be a professional musician, so I was up for a challenge. Obviously, it wasn’t a smart choice from financial perspective: I would have had to say goodbye to the stable income. Nevertheless, I had always been of an adventurous nature and blindly believed that things will work out. And I was ready to make sacrifices. Unfortunately, thoughts of how I would make the ends meet lost became irrelevant all too soon. The lawyers of Jelli Records brought bad news: as a small national business, the company wouldn’t be able to become my visa sponsor. All negotiations about long-term development deal had to be put to one side.
Thus, I couldn’t properly be signed as a new artist. However, nothing prevented the company from acting as my manager while I was in England to help me find a bigger label. So, the deal was done! In November 2015 the long-awaited official statement about my cooperation with Jelli Records was released. My very first music contract I signed just hours before my departure to Moscow. My current visa was expiring, and it was time to go back and renew it.
In Russian we have a proverb that says “There wouldn’t have been happiness, if there hadn’t been some unhappiness”. Something like a blessing in disguise. And this is exactly what happened to me. Last summer, in between my festivals’ hunt, law internships and exams, there was little to no time to write my dissertation. During those three months I considerably raised my music profile and managed to get an internship that turned into a part-time job. And if running after two hares is hard, chasing three is simply impossible.
The firm I worked for got a big project, so my hours at work increased. I already had a lot of music commitments. Thus, my dissertation came third in my list of priorities and that was clearly not enough to write it properly. It was obvious, that I would have to postpone the deadline for submission. My family was left furious and my coursemates puzzled. Nevertheless, what seemed like a big failure in summer, turned out to be my big advantage. When it was clear that my music visa arrangement didn’t work out, and the paralegal position wouldn’t provide a visa on its own, I changed my mind about that “failure”. Now I call it a calculated step on the way to my big goal. A step that provided me with half a year more to find a more long term solution to my visa issue.
Rock-Vector, N12 (32) 29.03.2016
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