The arbitrary application by authorities of immigration laws, rules, and regulations make it difficult for foreigners to legalize their stay in.
Receiving a business visa, work permit or temporary resident status is no easy task for foreigners. To navigate through Ukraine’s knotty legal system, hiring out a lawyer for a few hundred dollars may be the simplest solution.
Foreigners crossing Ukraine’s border in recent months have run into unpleasant surprise: an Hr 850 fine for alleged visa violations. Both foreign journalists and other expatriates are also facing growing troubles to legally reside in Ukraine.
Often as not, problems stem from changes to interpretation or implementation, rather than the rules themselves. This makes reliable legal advice all the more important.
Ukraine’s visa policy is unclear at best, with fluid legislation and interpretations. Yet the series of changes that started in May has taken the confusion to a higher level.
Two-year visas for foreign journalists, for example, are no longer being recognized by border services as permitting stays of more than 90 days in any 180-day period. Meanwhile, conflicting standards put long-term foreign residents at risk of fines, or even being barred from re-entry.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, which is responsible for the accreditation of the foreign media, has claimed this is an unexpected result of the decree, and is working to solve the issue.
Yet the problem is not limited to foreign journalists. Pawel, a Pole working in Ukraine who asked not to reveal his last name for fear of additional administrative hurdles, recounted his problems. He said that during a recent trip home border guards refused to recognize a recently obtained five-year visa.
Oksana Lapii, a manager with the human capital department at the international auditing company Ernst & Young, said that visas are only recognized as grounds to enter Ukraine, not to reside in the nation. In order to prolong residency without applying for work and residency permits, one must register with the immigration office OVIR.
Yet the interpretations over whether this can extend the potential period of stay until the end of the visa’s validity vary among state institutions and even specific officers, Lapii noted.
According to the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, registration with OVIR within the first 87 days of a foreigner’s stay in Ukraine allows one to reside an additional 90 days in Ukraine. After that, however, the individual must leave for 90 days until a new 180 day period begins. Any exit from Ukraine immediately cancels the registration.
To reside in Ukraine for more than 90 days, the main option is to apply for a work permit and subsequent residency permit, said the Kyiv office of the international law firm Noerr.
This is not an easy path, though. For starters, Ukrainian employers wanting to hire foreigners have to examine the national market and submit a report to the Employment Center showing that no Ukrainians could be found to fill the position.
In practice, this takes around a month, said Anastasiya Grynenko from Noerr. This is followed by some two months of criminal background checks, proving one’s qualifications and translating all relevant materials. The official cost of being considered is 400 euros.
Once armed with the work permit, the foreigner must travel outside of Ukraine to apply for a long-term visa, only to come back and apply to the housing administration ZHEK. The latter is often difficult as landlords do not want to register foreigners, Grynenko said, as this would increase utility bills and might arouse the interest of tax authorities.
Documents have to be filed on the employer side as well, Grynenko explained. These include a further OVIR application and a document showing that an employee has been appointed to work with the company’s foreign employees. Obtaining the temporary residence permit takes one to three weeks in practice, she said.
But even then success may be short-lived. A residency permit expires on the same date as the work permit, meaning that two months earlier you have to start the process anew (albeit with some simplifications).
On a positive note, since Dec. 25 families of foreigners officially employed and residing in Ukraine can also obtain temporary resident permits to stay longer than 90 days.
An alternative explanation to the current imbroglio is that the differing interpretations are exploited to solicit bribes from foreigners. Indeed, Kyiv Post reporters have themselves witnessed cases in which border officials suggested money for the fines be left with them, not paid officially into a government bank account with a receipt provided. Their selling point was that the legal way takes too long and “you may miss your flight.”
That’s a bad idea. According to Noerr, paying a bribe can lead to an Hr 4,250-12,750 fine and two to five years in prison.
Yet trying to prove you are in the right can be surprisingly frustrating. Printouts of cabinet resolutions can always be countered by the argument that a newer resolution has been issued, said Danylo Spolsky, a Canadian who regularly travels back and forth. “You just cannot win,” he said.
Thus, every border crossing becomes a gamble. “Even if you read the rules correctly, you never know what will happen on the border,” Lapii said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Jakub Parusinski can be reached at [email protected].
