Law: low-salaried foreigner can’t get Estonian residency permit
15 September 2009 11:00
Online | Editor: Kertu Kalmus, Photo: Arno Mikkor
Regardless of the absurd situation, Adam is trying to preserve positivity and confirms that he doesn’t want to live elsewhere like in Estonia. Due to a legal provision which came into effect during summer, a foreigner working in Estonia has to earn a salary of over EEK 15,000 in order to maintain their residency permit.
A foreigner living and working in Estonia for a year and a half turned to Päevaleht: when going to the Citizenship and Migration Board to extend his residency permit, he was told that due to a new legal provision, he no longer is qualified worthy of a residency permit.
“The fact that I speak Estonian fluently isn’t taken at all into consideration. I’m a project manager in a chain of cafes and also work as a translator. I don’t have the hope at all that I could anytime in the next ten years earn so large a salary in a year, as my current employer has said that they can’t pay such a large sum,” explained Adam Cullen to Päevaleht concerning the situation.
“I understand that the country is suffering from unemployment, however the fact that such a law quietly starts to come into effect and clear out Estonian residents is clean discrimination,” said Cullen in indignation.
For now he still has a few months time in order to find a solution to the problem, though by November at the latest he has to be clear on how he plans to stay in Estonia, as the deadline for his residency permit is over in February and the entire process takes a long time.
Cullen said that there are a few options for extending his residency permit, though at the same time they’re not worth discussing. “I would have to either get married or create my own company,” said Cullen and added that at the moment he is hoping to actually open his own firm, however large personal capital is required for this and he would likely have to also take out a loan from a bank.
According to Cullen, he has however excluded the possibility that he could go quite elsewhere to search for happiness, as he likes Estonia for that too much. “I want to live here in Estonia; that’s why I came here. I don’t wish to live somewhere else in Europe where it could probably be easier to get a residency permit. For me, that’s not at all an option,” he stated. “Somehow, a possibility to stay here has to be found,” Cullen said, certain.
Monthly salary has to be over EEK 15 thousand
Citizenship and Migration Board press representative Maimo-Lii Paloveer explained to Päevaleht Online that the legal provision on foreigners came into effect in mid-June of this year, through which the requirement for employers paying income to foreigners with a temporary residency permit became valid.
“By the named condition, an employer is obligated to pay foreigners an income, the size of which is at least equal the average yearly salary last released by Statistics Estonia with a coefficient of 1.24 times,” explained Paloveer.
Latest figures show the average salary to be EEK 12,716, which means that a foreigner should have to earn a salary of at least EEK 15,000 in order to have a residency permit in Estonia.
According to the law on foreigners, the Migration Board will refuse extension of a residency permit for employment or will recognize it as invalid if a foreigner has not fulfilled the requirements in question or those consequent of other laws, or if the certainly designated working condition in the residency permit has changed.
“As such, if an employer has not paid an individual the salary required by the law on foreigners, then there is grounds for recognizing the residency permit as invalid, as conditions arising from the law have not been fulfilled,” said Paloveer, confirming acknowledgement of a residency permit as invalid as actually incredibly easy.
(still working on translating the last portion of the article..)
