Job Discussion Forums

[spiral78]

Ask for Terry Prosser's contact info at TEFLWorldwide, and ask him specifically about non-EU member citizens working legally in the countries you mention.

The implication is 'under the table.' Many, many people do it, but there are risks. That's the reality.

[chiquitita]

Just a question that's related to this thread. I'm non-EU but my husband is Dutch. We live in the Netherlands at the moment and I legally work here. If we were to move to Italy would I be able to work there? My logic (!) says yes, but does anyone know about the reality of it? Spiral, I'm sure I've read somewhere that you're married to an EU-er and have worked in a number of EU member countries. Apologies if I have this wrong. Any help on this one?

[spiral78]

Unfortunately EU hiring privileges don't extend to spouses. I've got 'spouse of EU citizen' stamped in my passport, but it doesn't help. However, aren't you eligible to become a dual Dutch/US citizen? THAT would do the trick for you.

[chiquitita]

Hi Spiral

Thanks for your reply. If I become a dual citizen, it won't be Dutch/US...I'm Australian

We have to live in the Netherlands for a number of years for that to happen anyway and we don't really plan on staying that long.

Can I pry and ask how you have worked in so many EU countries? Do you have a passport from an EU member state? If this is too personal or you don't want to answer, I totally understand.

[spiral78]

PM sent

[EnglishProfessor]

I have probably read more threads and posts on Americans working illegally in Italy or Western Europe for that matter than I care to mention. I tend to go "overboard" when it comes to research, so I have researched it plenty.
I will give others some advice on what I am doing to work towards getting to Italy and you can determine for yourself if it is your path to take. I am doing it the old fashioned way, I am contacting each school privately and consulting with them and pleading my circumstances. For the most part I am being received well and by warm people! The one's who can't be bothered simply don't reply to my emails, but.....there are schools that will reply! Regardless of what others discuss on here and tell you, Italy is not a whole lot different from other non-native speaking countries....they are still in very short supply of Native English Teachers and they will try to help you!
I have a committment from one school that if I take the initiative to apply for a student visa at my local Italian Embassy (which isn't local, I have to spend a $300 roundtrip airfare to go there), that they assure me there is a position waiting for me! They were even willing to go as far as enroll me in their school in foreign language studies so I can get the Student Visa approved. I was advised they have an immediate need for an additional 100 students by August 30th and they are not getting the response from the Brits they had hoped for. It appears that many Brits are doing the S. Korea thing like many Americans because of the relative high paying salary (and I may end up there myself anyways). So, you really can't make your own assessment until you have done the homework yourself and contacted these schools.
I contacted over 15 schools by email, 9 of them didn't even bother to respond, 3 responded saying they couldn't help me....sorry, and there were 3 that did respond suggesting they would hire me if I showed up at their door ready to work. Of those three, one suggested that the best chance is to get my Student Visa first and like others suggested is a possibility, change it to a work visa later on. I don't know for a fact if that is really even possible, but what would us Americans have to to lose? The worse case is you continue to work under the table!
In summary, those who have some extra cash handy (I only have about $10,000 U.S. Dollars, not sure how long I can survive with that), and those who are willing to take a bold risk, fly over there and hunt for the work, they will get work, no doubt about that. Is there risk? You betcha! You could work there six months, hate it and have no recourse if the school hates you and fires you without notice. So, best advice I think anyways.....Open up a "Euros" Off shore Checking Account (they call it a Current Account in Britain) with "Lloyds Bank of London" (don't bother with the rest of them unless you have a minimum balance of 5,000 sterling), stash your small pittance of a salary you'll make in Italy under the table into your account and save what you can for a rainy day. I figure if I can keep between 6-8,000 Euros in my account at all time, then I'm self-insuring myself should my Italian school can me for no good reason and I'm on the street looking for work. As well, this will help cover a little bit of medical costs I may incur.
So, there's my take. Of course, I am still doing my research, so if anybody would like to contribute valuable insight (not idle gossip or hearsay) that would great! I think there's a little Satin in all of us that tends to enjoy making others squirm and feeling like they have the upper hand by providing pure noneness or completely non validated claims or have never even heard it from the horses mouth. We all desire the same goals, let's try to exchange constructive advice that could help our fellow teachers get to where they want to be.

I await your first hand facts and apparent wisdom......

David

[Jetgirly]

The post above me sure paints a lovely picture of teaching illegally, especially considering the poster hasn't even left home yet!

Something you MUST consider is that in Italy, the police will not help you without first seeing your immigration documents. If your house gets robbed and you go to the police, BEFORE they take down any information about the robbery they will ask to see your "residencia" (sorry, I might have Spanglished that), which is the address registration that you can only obtain with proof that you can legally be in the country for the duration of the apartment contract. Ladies, weirdo next door breaks into your home in the middle of the night and rapes you, and you can bet they'll ask to see your permesso before they ask what he looks like. Lucky for me, I was living in Italy legally when I needed the assistance of the police, so AFTER they checked all my immigration documents they helped me. I don't know what would have happened if I'd been there illegally, but I'm sure it wouldn't have been good.

[EnglishProfessor]

That is exactly my point! All the nice folks on here who I believe have "good intentions at heart", but tend to sling the red paint around carelessly. Like I mentioned, there is no doubt an element of risk you must accept if you choose to go to Italy and work under the table. As far as the Police walking around asking to see everbody's "papers"....hmmm, if that really happens on a day to day basis, then I may truthfully rethink my decision because then it doesn't really sound like a very friendly place to stay. We don't have local Police asking every Mexican on the street here to see their papers, especially in their home of all places!
I certainly don't feel I'm painting a rosey picture, I just think we don't need to paint such as ugly picture merely to feed the little devil inside of us....tee hee


I'll stick by my original comments.....

[Teacher in Rome]

On another thread somewhere, someone mentioned the difference between coming here for a few months / a year, and trying to live here permanently. I'm not saying that working illegally is a good thing - far from it - but you have more chance of not being detected if you live and work here for a few months. If you're thinking of settling permanently, then you've got to be legal.

Be wary of what schools tell you in emails. Until you're actually here with a contract in hand (unlikely if you're illegal) they can tell you anything they think you want to hear. To be honest, they can still do that even if you do have a contract, and you're unlikely to get very far in a court even if you wanted to pursue legal action.

By far the best option of coming over and working is the student visa option. It allows you to work 20 hours a week, but you must be enrolled in a university programme. Try University of Perugia (which has a foreigner's programme) and there's also something in Rome. Oh, and you have to go and study at the Uni too - they check up! One positive aspect is that studying in Italian universities is cheap, because in Italy the whole idea of most higher education is that it's open to all. If you do ever get legal, you'll also find you get practically free health care as well - such is the paradise that is Europe... But that's another point already debated in another thread!

[spiral78]

The professor's post is a nicer way of saying what an earlier poster has already said succinctly - if you can't give me good news, don't bother responding at all.

Those of us on the forum can ONLY give general advice based on our experience, and the experiences of other teachers we know. If you want the straight scoop, you can get that only from legal sources.

My friend went to Rome on a student visa in her last year of an MA program. After finishing, she spend four years in Rome working illegally as she tried every possible route to navigate the legalities. She speaks fluent Italian (works as a translator, in fact) and knows the country and culture well. She was highly motivated and energetic in her search, and really wanted things to work out. Finally she tired of the constant insecurity and gave it up. If there were ever a good candidate to somehow find a way to make it work, she was it.

This was a few years ago and laws change. I am not citing this experience to say that there is 100% no way for anyone ever to find a way.

But it is fair to say that the chance is slight, the risks are real, and anyone who is going to try will be better off to go with a realistic outlook of his/her chances.

[EnglishProfessor]

I appreciate the "constructive" advice Spiral. I don't have a problem with the general consensus, as this is the reality of previous experience which we need to go on to make such decisions. The word I received directly from the Consulate General in San Francisco was this:

-I can go to Italy on a student visa and "legally" work up to 20 hours per week with no problem. I received directly from one school that was no problem as their actual "classroom" instruction time was around 22 hours per week. The remainder of the hours can be classified as "teacher preparation" time and can be classified officially as "unpaid" time and therefore would not get us into trouble! That sounds like to me like a "legal" way of working in Italy to me.
-I can apply to have that student visa converted to a "work visa"
**Note: Will the work visa be approved? It depends on the grounds of the request. If you can provide enough adequate University education coupled with a position a particular area has a need for, than it can be approved generally.
-I'm not sure why your friend did not apply to convert her student visa to a work visa while she was still a student? If she was so knowledgable in Italian red tape, surely she should have known of this "possible" option. This would have legalized her at least for the remainder of a contract in any given year.

Quite frankly, the newspaper articles I read on a different website (I think many here have seen them) scare me. They were a few articles written by some Brit staff that were in Italy and paint a horrible picture of living conditions in Italy that I'm having serious second thoughts about Italy right now. They claim the wages are so horrific that you can't even barely squeek out your rent and basic food stuffs. If that really is how bad living conditions are in Italy, it doesn't sound like a very good choice for "anybody"! If Brits are heading to Italy and accepting those kind of wages, shame on them! That only creates a precedence that feeds on itself and we'll never change it if we simply swallow and accept it. Now I've heard directly from schools in Italy that this tide is changing! Brits and other native EU member country english teachers are heading to South Korea and China to take some of the market that americans are having been taking advantage of for several years now and that is creating a vacuum in Italy. If we continue to let Italy wallow in it and send the right message, than the schools will eventually have to start sharing more of the pie!

On another topic, I looked into buying an english school on the coast of Italy and so I've seen the books already, it's sad what "HUGE" profits the owner of the schools are making and how little they are sharing with the teachers! So I got to thinking, if I can't beat the system, why not join it! If there is an English chap out there with a little bit of spare cash they wish to invest with, I know of a school owner who is very eager to sell to a small group of investors who are desiring to continue to grow the school and invest in keeping it, not running it into the ground then. They are very seriously about finding "great owners" who are teachers themselves, as the owners are locals in the town and desire to keep the school very much alive and thriving. Send me IM about your situation. If we have got a few people together, it could be a great opportunity for us! I'm seriously looking into it and may travel there in a few weeks to meet the owner. I'll be making a new post of this little venture under a more suitable thread, but I wanted to throw that out there while we were still talking about Italy.

If you look around you, there is always more than one way to skin a cat! If you can't get the owners to pay a better wage.......buy the school and be one of the owners!

Let me know. Looking for serious folks only though.

Take care,

David

[spiral78]

My friend did apply to have her student visa converted, but it was denied, even considering that she had potential work contract in hand, translation skills, and all that other stuff.

The tightness of the requirements really vary depending on all kinds of factors. I was turned down flat by the Dutch government back in 2001 when a university there petitioned for an exception to the EU-only hiring laws in my case. But the same uni has now successfully got me a work permit (true, my qualifications are stronger now, but it's also a timing issue.

What will be the requirements for you to study on your student visa? 20 hours a week of work is really full-time, as you know. To actually study on top of that will be pretty exhausting.

And, yeah, wages in Italy (like most of Europe) are pretty much subsistence level unless you move up the ladder, or get qualified for international schools or universities. Even then, you need local contacts and language skills, in most cases, because openings are relatively rare.

In any case, it will be interesting to know how things work out for you.

[sparks]

International schools seem to be the way to go. In Rome there is one called the American Overseas School (or something like that) which seems to have mostly U.S. citizens working for it. Like any major city in Europe there are numerous international schools which employ subject teachers from English speaking countries and often the States for it's educational ideals of free-thinking and constructivist approach to teaching. Check into it, they usually always pay well and will do all of your paperwork. Of course you may need to step up your qualifications a bit.

[Henry_Cowell]

Wouldn't an English professor have alternatives to working in Italy illegally? Even English professors in the U.S. go to Italy legally to lecture, teach or do research. Why not try for one of those gigs?

[spiral78]

Legal gigs in international schools and universities exist everywhere. But they're highly desirable, require significant qualifications and experience, and openings are RARE.

I know, I have one. Took me nearly 7 years, extensive local contacts, and 10 years experience + MA to land it. And I consider myself seriously lucky.


No, I'm not in Italy - sorry, don't wish to mislead anyone. But in a different western European country where the laws are equally stringent.