I spent this morning at the stadhuis – the city administrative centre – trying to find out what had happened to my immigration file. You see, my resident’s permit expires in a week, and my renewal application was filed on August 19th, when my work permit was renewed.
Now, when you live in the United States – as I have for 17 of the last 25 years – you must never let your papers expire for any reason. Being a non-citizen on US territory without up-to-date papers is a very serious matter, one that leads to enormous fines if and when your papers get back into order. Overstaying your visa, or being in the US without valid papers for some other reason, means that you can be subjected to indefinite detention without access to legal counsel or any right to speedy processing by the courts. Even being a white guy with fluent English and an American wife won’t necessarily help you. Being illegally in America – even before 9/11 – meant being without effective civil rights, and post-9/11 even the smallest violation can lead directly to detention.
Naturally, I expected the land of the Vlaams Blok to be just as touchy about paperwork. Being a week away from expired papers is therefore a matter of considerable concern for me, so I took the morning off work to sit in the Buitenlander Dienst, waiting for them to call my number. It is theoretically possible to check on the status of my file by telephone, but in fact the language barriers can make it quite difficult. It is usually better to go in person and wait.
Furthermore, I live in a Flemish college town, and the school year is starting up. At the end of September, there will be roughly a thousand internationals of various kinds trying to regularise their papers. The first time I went through this process, when I came here as a graduate student, I had to wait more than 24 hours just to get to the front desk. So, I was concerned that if I waited any longer, I would have to take several days off to get my papers renewed.
Today for the first time, I mananged to get through my dealings with the stadhuis entirely in Dutch – a small but significant victory for me – but otherwise the entire proceeding was a waste of my time. Belgian immigration authorities had not yet finished processing my application, and I will have to wait until they send me a letter telling me that I’ve been approved to stay for another year.
So, trying not to sound too panicky, I reminded the civil servant who told me to wait for confirmation by mail that my papers were about to expire. She said, “So? It doesn’t make any difference if your papers are expired unless you’re planning to leave the country, and besides, you’re Canadian, you can come and go from Belgium as you please as long as you have your passport. Your work permit is in order, and if anyone asks you, your resident’s permit is in process. If you need something from the police, just give them your dossier number and they can see your file here.”
So, here’s one reason to love Belgium: No one arrests you just because you have expired papers. As an immigrant, there is less fuss and less paperwork involved in living in Belgium than in the US or Canada.
Unless, of course, you’re foolish enough to want to work here as a free-lancer, which requires compliance with a whole bunch of new administrative rules (as of July 1) that no one in Belgium, least of all the people at our maison communale, seems to understand.
Essentially, he has to prove to the Belgian authorities’ satisfaction that he is qualified to perform the sort of work that he has been doing for the past 30 years. Otherwise, even though he’s an Irish citizen and thus theoretically entitled to live and work anywhere in the EU, he could be forced to leave the country.
I should add that he already has a VAT number, and is signed up with the relevant social insurance scheme. But that’s not enough, apparently. He’s already provided tax records for the past 5 years, but that’s not enough to prove that he’s capable of being self-employed; now they require a translated, certified, and legalized copy of his *%(# high school diploma,
On the other hand, when we went to the authorities this morning to beg for a further extension of his temporary residence permit, they told us not to worry about the fact that it expires on September 7. Nonetheless, all this bureaucracy just so he can be self-employed — and thus have the privilege of paying Belgian taxes, which he has been doing scrupulously thus far — has turned the concept of free circulation of goods and services into a cruel joke.
That’s scandalous. EU rules specifically forbid throwing an EU citizen out even if they’re unemployed. The only time they can refuse to renew your resident’s permit on public policy grounds is at the time of initial application. The worst thing they can do to you is make you renew your papers annually instead of every five years. They can only throw you out if you’re considered too broke to live without public assistance or you become a threat to the public.
An EU citizen can even live and work in an EU country without applying for a resident’s permit at all, and they still don’t have the right to throw you out. All they can do is make you pay a fine. The only grounds I can think of to make trouble at all is when you need a permit of some kind to exercise your trade. Then, they can force you to get a local permit under local rules.
Go take a look at http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/citizens/en/be/0108017.htm
I think the people at your maison communale have no friggin’ clue.
Ah, no that’s not quite true. They can refuse to renew your permit if you’ve been unemployed for more than a year. I suppose that it’s proving employment when you’re self-employed that is the cause of your present mess.
>Naturally, I expected the land of the Vlaams >Blok to be just as touchy about paperwork.
I suppose they are more concerned about people speaking French. When I visited a Flemish friend in Leuven two years ago she asked me to speak English when walking on the streets to avoid any possibility of troubles with Flemish “nationalists”, even though, having met in Paris, we had always spoken French when on our own.
On the other hand, I suppose it’s a good thing that the European (administrative) Capital is located right in the middle of that mess. That way, people working there will never forget the EU’s “raisons d’?tre”.
Any news yet on if and when Detroux is to be brought to trial?
Tobias, I do hear plenty of French on the streets of Leuven. Much of the elderly population is francophone, and the new language laws haven’t changed the places they choose to shop or the caf?s that they drink in – or the language they use in them. Also, there are a fair number of Brussels Flemish at the university. But if you don’t know Dutch and you go into a shop, it’s better to use English.
Bob – I actually have gone out of my way not to know or care about the Dutroux trial. Last I heard, it was planned for 2004, maybe.
Scott: yes, that is the crux of the matter. The piece of paper being demanded by the commune is in lieu of the “attestation patronale” that my partner would be able to provide if only he had a “normal” job.
Anyway, we’ll go through the motions, but as we’ve discussed elsewhere, we’re starting to think it might just be simpler to move to the UK, which does seem quite a bit more entrepreneur-friendly. And, thanks to the convoluted history of the Emerald Isle, the fact that his mum was born in Belfast might entitle him to British citizenship in addition to the Irish citizenship he’s already claimed.
Besides, even if he gets his status straightened out, there’s still the matter of getting *me* legalized, which is, as they say, “pas ?vident.” But as you say, I am still far better off than a Belgian who has “overstayed” his permission to remain in the U.S. following a layoff… the worst they can do is kick me out, and as far as I know, Belgium is not currently sending visa violators to gulags located on tropical islands and holding them incommunicado.
(Note to any Belgian immigration officials who might be reading this: I’m a *tourist*. Honest.)
Vaara, when I moved to the UK 7 years ago (I am Dutch) nobody asked me or told me to get any kind of permit. The only form I ever had to fill in was for a National Insurance number, and only because my employer needed it.
I still remember going to the police to ask if I needed to register somewhere, and they looked at me like I was some kind of nutter, and politely told me not to bother. Compared to Belgium, the UK looks to me to have a much saner approach
“I actually have gone out of my way not to know or care about the Dutroux trial. Last I heard, it was planned for 2004, maybe.”
The exceedingly tardy progression in bringing Dutroux to trial is but one of many reasons Brits have become increasingly cautious about ever closer political integration in Europe when our starting point is this from Magna Carta of 1215:
“39. No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” – quoted from text at: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/magna-carta.html
Any readers who feel in need of some updating on what’s behind the protracted course of bringing Dutroux to justice might try this suitably sanitised account on the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/1944428.stm
Bob – Dutroux is in prision right now after having been found guilty on other offenses, particularly a five years sentence for a prision escape in 1998. nor is the account you cite terribly santised. Rumours of high level cover-ups and corruption have revolved around every high profile murder in Belgium since the “Bende van Nijvel” affaire in the 80’s.
I think you’re the first person I’ve encountered to see a violation of Dutroux’ human rights in this situation, as opposed to seeing it as a sign of the incompetence of the Belgian police and prosecutors.
Scott – By occasional reports on news in Britain, more than a few Belgians believe there is a cover-up but forget Dutroux. Two days before Christmas in 1998 a minor item in the BBC radio mid morning news caught my attention.
The Belgium supreme court had upheld the conviction on corruption charges of Willy Claes, previously secretary-general of NATO and before that the socialist deputy prime minister of Belgium so I started to dig a little with google and in electronic encyclopaedia. It was another party funding scandal, perhaps rather along the lines of what became Kohlgate in Germany. One thing that emerged was that a socialist Belgian MP who had blown a whistle on it was found dead, murdered. Claes was not implicated but as far as I can tell no one has been arrested for the murder.
All that started a regular interest in the scale of political corruption in western Europe. More digging led to more discoveries. Unlike American media which plays up political scandals, in Europe the scandals tend to get buried away as minor news items and get quickly forgotten. Those who become aware of the large and growing scale of political corruption in Europe tend to become increasingly wary of ever closer political integration. The Eurostat scandal in the EU Commission is yet another new chapter in this long running saga.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Edmund Burke – at: http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Edmund_Burke/
Bob: Magna Carta is an English legal construct, not a UK one. In case you’d forgotten, Scotland has an entirely different legal system (based on Roman law, not Common law) that doesn’t include Habeas Corpus — there is, however, a provision in law that charges must be brought and a trial must ensue within a year and a day of arrest, or not at all. (Compare to the >1 year period many remand prisoners face in England and Wales after being hastily charged but before they get their day in court.)
There’s more than one way to guard the rights of the accused, and the English/American system is not automatically the best way.
My American wife’s visa application is still on the desk of the Luxembourgish Minster of Justice, last we heard. We’ve only been here two years now. Though Luxembourg is a place where they send six cops to arrest a shoplifter (fact: I was standing there when it happened)
so then, can anyone tell me how much time I have to extend my residence visa after the old one expires? I cannot find this information anywhere and the stadhuis only says “well do it as soon as possible of course”. (After losing my residence card in NYC in August and having applied for a new one–which will include my extension for year 2 of my studies–twice fruitlessly because the bureaucrats have screwed it up the application each time, I now have to apply a 3rd time. I am hoping I can wait until January as I am sure you can understand I am not really enthusiastic to jump right on this AGAIN…)
I am very grateful to anyone possessing the information!