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Czechs halt visas in Vietnam

Illegal activities, weak job market cited in Cabinet's decision

By Stephan Delbos
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
November 19th, 2008 issue

In response to growing complaints of illegal activities such as counterfeiting associated with Vietnamese-held visas, the Cabinet last week ordered the Czech Embassy in Hanoi to stop issuing visas until the end of the year.
The number of Vietnamese workers with legal permits in the Czech Republic rose from 2,322 last September to 18,000 year on year. Meanwhile, an export-dependent Czech economy, battling a predicted recession in Western Europe, is expected to see an increase in unemployment over the next year. The majority of jobs lost will be in industries that typically employ a high number of foreign workers, such as the auto and construction industries. Citing fears that more visas in a time of fewer jobs will lead workers into the gray market of working illegally and increase organized crime, Interior Minister Ivan Langer proposed the temporary ban, which goes into effect immediately.
“We must begin to take precautions to ensure security in the country,” Langer said.
Local Vietnamese support groups say that a ban on visas does not address the issue of organized crime, but while some have spoken out against the ban, no sweeping public protests are expected.
“The Vietnamese are scared to protest for fear that when their families apply for visas in the future, they will be turned down without reason,” said Marcel Winter of the Czech-Vietnamese Society.
Winter estimates that there are 5,000 Vietnamese living and working in Prague and its vicinity. Vietnamese workers compose the third-largest immigrant group in the Czech Republic, after Slovaks and Ukrainians. Though Winter admitted there are approximately 10,000–50,000 illegal Vietnamese immigrants in the Czech Republic, he stressed that it is not always the immigrants who are at fault.
“Many Vietnamese have been brought here by insolvent Czech and Vietnamese recruitment agencies that deliberately cheated Czech employers by supplying them with unqualified workers whom the companies had to let go in their trial periods,” he said.
Those against the ban say such a measure not only ignores the thousands of Vietnamese immigrants who legally work in all sectors, from retail to construction, but limits others like them from coming to work in the country.
“Everyone knows that the number of illegal Vietnamese workers in the Czech Republic is minimal compared to the number of [legal workers],” said Nguyen Trung Ha, spokesman for the Union of Vietnamese in the Czech Republic. “To me personally, this measure that the Czech government decided to take is only their means of dealing with their own problems of incompetence for ensuring an efficient and smooth operation for the issuing of visas.”

Stephan Delbos can be reached at sdelbos@praguepost.com


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