Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Gollum]

Is it the responsibility of the recruiter or the school to make sure you get your E-2 properly handled? Or any other visa addition, etc.? Or do you consider it the employee's (your) responsibility?

I am working for a summer camp next week. I insisted that I wanted the addition to my E-2 so it was all legal and such. The recruiter (FT Union) said that it was no problem. Somehow between either them or the camp people, an "It's OK to work the camp" letter was sent to my school boss via fax. She signed that and it was all OK on that end.

The recruiter then called my school to remind them to call me and set up a time to go get the immigration paperwork done. The school called me, and we set a time to do it on Tuesday. When I arrived, however, the school was not ready. I waited around for an hour and then was asked to come back the next day at 9am and the director and another employee would go with me to immigrations.

The next day at 9am, the director was there, but the other employee had accidentally "slept in" and was late. The director said she was too busy to go herself. I insisted that we needed to get going soon, because it's a long trek to immigrations from the Seongnam area, and I knew the folks at immigrations would take lunch. At 10am, she sent another employee with me. Of course, by the time we got there and took a number, it was almost lunchtime. We waited through the hour lunch break immigration takes (the close shop for that hour) and then eventually got it approved. We gave immigrations a bunch of paperwork, my ARC card and my passport. They gave me the receipt, and told me it's OK to start work there on Monday even though my card will not be ready yet.

Basically, through this whole thing, I was telling the director that in the past, a recruiter handled all of this for the school. I told her that this is what I thought they are paid to do.

There is another guy, in fact, who is being sent to Japan for his E-2, but he has no blue paper! I told him DO NOT GO, or he'd just waste his time and money. Apparently the camp people didn't know the difference (I have no idea if he was hired through the recruiter or not -- I will find out and update here).

What bugs me about all of this is that any newbee just getting an E-2 would have just ended up working here thinking they are legal, when in fact, they wouldn't be.

Again, I don't know yet if this guy is going through a recruiter, but it makes me wonder how much responsibility lies with the recruiter for getting the E-2 processed for someone?

As for my "visa addition" I feel like it wouldn't have gotten done if I wasn't persistent. I also know that my recruiter wasn't the one going to the immigrations office to get it done. The school was apparently doing that, however the school didn't "have it together", so the ball would have been dropped.

So whose responsibility is it?

[prosodic]

In my opinion, it's ultimately the school's responsibility. If immigration audits or raids the place, it's the school and not the recruiter that gets in trouble.

Part of it may depend on how much the recruiter is paid. If it's just a small fee for advertising and checking qualifications, then the school probably isn't expecting the recruiter to handle any of the visa paperwork. As the recruiter's fee gets larger, the school probably expects more. Still, it's ultimately the school's responsibility to make sure the visa is taken care of even if the school handles it through a third party.

I'm sure that Chronic will get around to posting on this thread to give us the recruiter's perspective.

[Gollum]

Well, I am not going to work for that place now. I got totally paranoid because the place was so disorganized.

I agree with your post, by the way.

I am hoping for Chronic's reply, too.