E.U.'s expanding borderless zone spells trouble for U.S. expats

[peejay 327]

E.U.'s expanding borderless zone spells trouble for U.S. expats

By Jeffrey White

Fri Dec 21, 3:00 AM ET

Seven years ago, Robert Hanawalt ditched a sales career in Washington to move to Prague, where he quickly realized that he could live indefinitely without official paperwork.

He taught English illegally for four years on 90-day tourist visas. The trick? Quick trips over the border, which reset the clock with a fresh passport stamp.

"I did that," Mr. Hanawalt says. "But after the first few times I thought, 'Why even bother? Nobody is checking these things.' "

But as nine countries, including the Czech Republic, join the European Union's borderless Schengen zone Friday, Brussels is now ordering member states to get tough on visa policy.

That could spell trouble for an unlikely class of illegal immigrants: American expats. Attracted by English teaching jobs, the low cost of living, and societies just waking up to the possibilities of Western tourism, thousands are estimated to be living and working illegally in central and eastern Europe.

Prague quickly became an expatriate magnet. Today, 5,000 Americans are registered with the US Embassy here, though there's no official tally of the total number of Americans living in the Czech Republic. Local media estimate it to be nearly 20,000.

Brussels is taking aim at such visa riders. Now, Americans and Canadians can initially travel visa-free to Schengen countries for up to 90 days. But if at the end of that time they want to stay, they must go somewhere outside the zone – Ukraine or Montenegro, for example – to apply for a long-term visa.

Many expats are wondering what to do now, having set down roots here.

"There is definitely some panic about Schengen," says Evan Rail, a travel writer who has lived in Prague for eight years, but has been "riding a tourist visa" for the last two.

Hanawalt has gotten a valid residency permit and runs a business helping other Americans in Prague negotiate the country's immigration bureaucracy and get legal themselves. Mark Wright, who has been teaching English illegally in Prague for two years, found another teaching job at a language school that says it will help him obtain a visa.

Other Americans are applying for Czech business licenses, another avenue to obtaining a residency visa. But some are taking their chances.

"Unfortunately one can't go up to a government official and ask exactly how much harder it will be to live here illegally in the new year," says Mr. Wright. "It's possible enforcement might not change at all, and I know some expats who are banking on it."

The Czech interior ministry is promising increased enforcement. Spokesman Vladimir Repka wrote in an e-mail this week that in 2007 more than 4,000 people were deported for visa violations, though he did not know how many were Americans.

Schengen's expansion is affecting others as well. Ukrainians, long accustomed to unfettered travel to Poland, now need a visa even for day trips. Slovenia is closing down unmanned footbridges along its border with Croatia.

Not every American in Prague is greeting Schengen coldly. "As someone living here legally, I think it's only fair that some of the permanent tourists here be made to do the same thing," says Mark Anderson, who moved here six years ago and started his own cleaning business.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20071221/wl_cs...P5mnFBs8pGve8UF

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

I see nativism and fascism is creeping across Europe as well.

Brussels should do the right thing, the moral thing, and grant amnesty to American illegals!

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I see nativism and fascism is creeping across Europe as well.

Brussels should do the right thing, the moral thing, and grant amnesty to American illegals!

Nativism has always been alive and well in ole' Europe. Fascism, I don't know why people think it's fascist for a country (or region) to regulate it's immigration as it sees fit. Must be an Indian thing to see it that way...

[Ban Hammer 14,271]

I see nativism and fascism is creeping across Europe as well.

Brussels should do the right thing, the moral thing, and grant amnesty to American illegals!

taps fingers - i'm waiting for some of our "workers without borders cheerleaders" to come say something in defense of the americans. but i doubt it will happen.........

[Fandango 1,440]

I see nativism and fascism is creeping across Europe as well.

Brussels should do the right thing, the moral thing, and grant amnesty to American illegals!

Nativism has always been alive and well in ole' Europe. Fascism, I don't know why people think it's fascist for a country (or region) to regulate it's immigration as it sees fit. Must be an Indian thing to see it that way...

Makes a nice quote to make the person feel morally superior!

'you're such a facist!'

[HAL 9000 96]

I look at it more as a matter of choice. Americans, for the most part, really don't have to worry about spending a year looking for a low paying job in their own country, right?

Spend time in Prague or wherever else in Europe, and stay because "you like it" does not quite cover what I would consider a parallel of necessity between well-to-do Americans and not so well-to-do illegals in Arizona. That's just me though. Then again, we as Americans also have the relative solvency to be able to qualify for European visas that in some cases allow us to work legally.

*solvency = $$

[peejay 327]

I look at it more as a matter of choice. Americans, for the most part, really don't have to worry about spending a year looking for a low paying job in their own country, right?

Spend time in Prague or wherever else in Europe, and stay because "you like it" does not quite cover what I would consider a parallel of necessity between well-to-do Americans and not so well-to-do illegals in Arizona. That's just me though. Then again, we as Americans also have the relative solvency to be able to qualify for European visas that in some cases allow us to work legally.

*solvency = $$

It's not just Latinos. There are few options for Eastern Europeans such as Belarus. They get deported from E.U. countries regularly too. Not to mention they rarely are given visas in the first place to the USA or the E.U.

The USA is way behind the rest of the industrialized First World democratic welfare states by tolerating and rewarding mass illegal immigration. That needs to change.

Edited December 24, 2007 by peejay

[HAL 9000 96]

I look at it more as a matter of choice. Americans, for the most part, really don't have to worry about spending a year looking for a low paying job in their own country, right?

Spend time in Prague or wherever else in Europe, and stay because "you like it" does not quite cover what I would consider a parallel of necessity between well-to-do Americans and not so well-to-do illegals in Arizona. That's just me though. Then again, we as Americans also have the relative solvency to be able to qualify for European visas that in some cases allow us to work legally.

*solvency = $$

It's not just Latinos. There are few options for Eastern Europeans such as Belarus. They get deported from E.U. countries regularly too. Not to mention they rarely are given visas in the first place to the USA or the E.U.

The USA is way behind the rest of the industrialized First World democratic welfare states by tolerating and rewarding mass illegal immigration. That needs to change.

Of course, I'm not making the case exclusive to one particular geographical region. Interestingly, Spain offers regular visas to Latin Americans for university studies and immigration (based on Spanish Heritage, and even migration). And some in Spain do react similarly to the anti-immigrant crowd does here in the USA. With the added connotation that these folks' logos tend to be Nazi in design. They even have laws (that they enforce) that completely counteract this openness to these kinds of legal immigration that we in the USA do not have. Economics 101.

Again, interestingly, USC that go to Europe to play the expat game, do so having a $tarting off point that others do not. Hence, the parallel is not very stable to that of folks from countries that do not enjoy the level of solvency we do.