Czech State stops extending work permits for foreigners

9. 3. 2010 / Milan Daniel

He adds that circa 1400 people will be dealt with individually: "We will look differently to a foreigner who has been living here with his family for an extended time, than to those who have no ties here and is working at our local company for a short period". Milan Daniel commends Mr Klimpl's intentions, but believes that he won't keep a tragedy from emerging.

The author informs that, besides those foreigners from "third" countries -- considered "second category" -- there are dozens of thousands of foreigners from so-called "first category" countries (meaning from the European Union -- mainly Slovaks, Poles, but even Bulgarians, Romanians and others). But these will not be affected by the protective measure.

"In the case of foreigners from the so-called second category it is though indisputable that it will touch a lot of human destinies", Daniel warns. And continues: "Workers from assembly lines for foreign-owned companies, whose presence in the Czech Republic was motivated not only by the country's geographical position in the center of Europe, but the possibility of finding cheap labour as well, will be the most affected."

"If those companies will be forced to adapt to this new situation, where they lose those flexible, undemanding and trained highly productive work force, though, we can reasonably predict that they will want to move their enterprises elsewhere", continues the author. "A measure that is supposed to help lower Czech national citizen's unemployment rates then would reach the opposite", Daniel complains.

The author predicts that some of those foreigners affected by the new policy of not prolonging their stay will actually move from being employed somewhere to having their own business (possibly as a result of the economic crises, in the Pardubice area there was an increase in 2009 in the number of new businesses: 55%, taking Pardubice alone it is even higher, 79%) -- some illegal, like marihuana growing, which would be aided by a flood of newly unemployed cheap labour.

Daniel argues that this is all not just a consequence of the crisis, putting part of the blame in the economic policies of the Czech State in the 1990s, including the focus on bringing foreign-owned assembly line factories at the expense of the development of the local industry, having as a consequence even the stealing of the country's economic potential.

"The [Czech] State now tells foreigners that they are superfluous and are taking the work from the locals. It sends them home -- last year with some pocket money, this year without scrupples", attacks Daniel. Then he warns that the situation of this country, taken over by foreign capital, will not get better. He predicts that the Employment Bureau will be sending to those assembly line jobs, emptied of foreigners, just people with low working ethics, people on the verge of retirement age, mothers with young kids waiting for them at home. Their productivity would be much lower than that of immigrants -- who came here to make money, so as to support their families. And Daniel concludes that the "reaction of the company owners can be easily guessed".

Vytisknout