Job Discussion Forums

[jmbenne3]

This question is for all the Chinese immigration law experts.

I recently found out that I am currently working (illegally) on a business visa in China and my employer is threatening to cancel the visa if I decide to work somewhere else. My current employer obtained a business visa through a third party here in China with some relationship with a company in Australia. As far as the government is concerned, I represent an Australian education company doing business in China. I also found out that I do not have a work permit that ties me down to the school I�m currently at.

Can my employer (or his friends with the Australian connection) cancel my business visa, thus forcing me to leave the country in 7 days?

How would I know that my visa was cancelled?

Is there any way I can avoid leaving the country and re-entering on a tourist visa if my business visa is cancelled?

JM

[Voldermort]

As you are already aware, working on an F visa is illegal. Legaly the school cannot do anything to change that visa since they have no part in you obtaining it. But as we know, this is China and things work a little differently here.

If your school has powerful enough friends within the PSB, they can have them create a criminal record for you. If the 'crime' was severe enough they can have you deported and banned from China. This can and has happened.

My advice, if you are thinking of leaving your school, don't let them know. Pack up and start again in another province. If you want to stay in the same city be careful not to piss off the wrong people.

[brsmith15]

Dear JM,

You may be in deep doo-doo. You have some choices and one is to find a school that will employ you under rather shaded conditions and, as the last poster said, if that school has the proper guanqi, they may be able to get you reinstated.

I had a similar situation in which a school I'd been at -- Telfort in Shanghai -- tried their best to get me blacklisted even though I'd been there almost 4 years and was told I was the very best teacher they had. The Dragon Lady that's been put in charge, surnamed Qian, does her level best to screw everyone and anyone she can with the owner's blessing.

I had to leave the country and re-enter which you might have to do if all else fails.

[Roger]

Unwise to accept a job like this. BUt you can walk out and leave them for good; the arm of the law doesn't reach very far if the employer himself was involved in the scheme. They could give you problems in their home turf but not beyond.

[jmbenne3]

I was present at the immigration office at the time my F Visa was obtained. We went with our school's headmaster and a representative with the Australian school and I got a good idea of the level of collective guanqi between the two groups. We were prepped for an interview with the PSB and were supposed to say we worked for the Aussie school. But when we went to the back of a long line, the guy from the foreign school whipped out his cell phone and made a call. Shortly thereafter, a lady PSB officer came out to greet us, chatted with the guy who made the call and took our papers along with a silk sachet presumably filled with money, probably the 6000RMB for the cost of two visas. I have heard that other schools have to pay 10000RMB for two visas. I imagine that the Aussie school processes a lot of visas.

How much guanqi is that?

If I leave, do I need to relocate to another town like Voldermort said?

I'm currently looking for other jobs and was recently told that I could stay and work in here in Tianjin and solve the F Visa cancellation problem if I go back to the immigration office and change my business visa to a tourist visa. A ninety-day visa would be enough me since I'm only planning on staying another three months.

I'm not asking if what I'm doing is legal...I've given up on being a legal worker here in China and accepted things the way they are. There's been plenty discussion about the ethics of working illegally on this forum and I am not trying to reignite the debate.

I am asking, however about the risk of what I'm doing. I want to stay in China as long as I can because besides the working environment, I enjoy learning the language and experiencing the culture. If I change my F Visa to a L Visa, is my fate simply determined by the competing guanqis of my former employer�s friend and my new employer? Or is it too risky to evaluate and therefore in order to err on the side of avoiding problems, should I just move to another province?

I�m so glad to have found this forum and thank all of you for your expert advice.