Job Discussion Forums

Sashadroogie · Posted: Tue Aug 27, 2013 3:18 pm Post subject: Come to Russia!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKGjG_ZhF-A

teacher X · Posted: Tue Aug 27, 2013 4:09 pm Post subject:

Beautiful video.

On a rather humorous and unrelated note, two teachers were supposed to start work at our school a couple of days ago. It turns out that they (a couple) didn't seem to think that they would need a visa. Despite being sent the visa invitation and relevant visa documents, they just didn't seem to put two and two together and take any of it to the embassy to get the visa processed.
So they flew all the way from Australia, got to passport control and were sent straight back to Oz.

So they wont be enjoying any of these sights any time soon.

Apparently there are people out there who seem to think that Russia is a visa free country (and don't think to check)

Sashadroogie · Posted: Tue Aug 27, 2013 4:45 pm Post subject:

That's quite a sad tale. Comic, but still sad too.

Not that the school could be held responsible, but they did issue instructions to the effect that the teachers needed to go to an embassy, didn't they? Schools do not always understand how to explain basic procedures. Getting a couple of Russian language documents wouldn't mean much to novices.

Real question is why on Earth nobody in the Australia airport checked them before boarding. My visa is always inspected by the airline, several times, before I can board.

teacher X · Posted: Tue Aug 27, 2013 5:48 pm Post subject:

They didn't take a direct flight, so I guess since their first ticket was to somewhere in Asia, they weren't checked to see if they had a Russian visa. What I also found strange was that they were forced to return to Australia. Our school advised them to fly to the Ukraine or Latvia where they could apply for a visa (we were even going to send over one of the admin staff to sort it out for them). But apparently this wasn't an option and the Russian immigration staff told them that they could only return to Oz.

I don't know what emails were exchanged between the school and the teachers, but obviously it wasn't made clear enough that they would need to use the visa documents to obtain a visa.

Although I would place most of the blame on the teachers themselves. You need to check this shit out yourself and not just rely on some Russian with questionable English skills. Whilst the admin in question has pretty good English ability, some things can and do get lost in translation.

The teacher's reasoning was that since he didn't need a visa to go to Germany, he didn't think he need one to get into Russia. That's some pretty poor reasoning. An expensive 4 hour stay in Russia. Sorry, correction...An expensive 4 hour stay in a Russian airport (since they technically didn't make it onto Russian soil)

Sashadroogie · Posted: Tue Aug 27, 2013 6:31 pm Post subject:

Yes, all very true. Still, the school lost out somewhat too. It is so, so easy to avoid these types of kerfuffles. Is this the first time they tried to recruit from abroad?

teacher X · Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 6:47 am Post subject:

maruss · Joined: 18 Mar 2003 Posts: 1145 Location: Cyprus

from the mid-1990's until 2004 when Cyprus joined the E.U. it had a reciprocal visa-waiver agreement with Russia and I took advantage of this a number of times for short visits as I have both Cypriot and British passports. But other countries which have this are few and tend to be former SU. members such as Ukraine etc. There is usually a maximum three month stay period and employment was also prohibited for both Cypriots and Russians.....needless to say, a lot of Russians mis-used it and overstayed here, often finding casual jobs illegally etc! Ukraine also allows visa free travel for holiday visits of up to 90 days for a number of western nations but are now cracking down on overstays and other abuse so be careful!

I cannot see many western countries allowing visa-free travel for Russians n the near future, despite recent media hype about it-it would be very risky, given the nature of Putins regime and the fact that many younger people are understandably eager to go abroad and work and have honest intentions.

Sashadroogie · Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 12:05 pm Post subject:

teacher X · Posted: Wed Sep 11, 2013 6:35 pm Post subject:

I forgot to add, not only were they not allowed to transit to another country and were sent straight back to Oz (under their own funds) but they were also banned from entering Russia for 5 years.

A little on the extreme side?