Visa limbo

Well, I've spent the last week or so fretting about whether and how to get my visa renewed (without going to the bother of getting myself a new job, of course!); and now, at last, it is - supposedly - taken care of.

Except that I'm not completely confident that the opinion I've just received from my visa agent is correct. Her view seems to be that my visa is valid for as long as my Work Permit is valid (seemingly, the end of June), and that my Work Permit will not be cancelled merely because I have left the employment on which it was originally based. She tells me therefore that I do not have to bother about getting a replacement visa & working permit for another 4 months or so.

Well, that's nice - because it was going to cost me a pot of money. However, this is not what she'd told me in our discussions over the phone earlier this week (but I make allowances for possible misunderstanding there; even Chinese who speak extremely good English tend to get very easily flummoxed on the phone). Nor is it what I've repeatedly been told in the past, when faced with a similar situation. Nor indeed was it the advice that I received from my former employer (although the Chinese office manager who was consulted on the point admitted that she didn't really know). So, anxieties remain.

What my agent seems to be telling me now is that your visa (and your related 'Foreign Expert Certificate' or 'Aliens' Working Permit') may be revoked if your employment is terminated due to some delinquency on your part - and if your employer chooses to bring this to the attention of the authorities. This fairly frequently does happen in cases where a teacher parts company from a language school before the end of the contracted period.... and then finds himself hounded out of the country. However, I am assured that it is not a standard and automatic procedure - and, since my old employer is playing nice and is quite prepared to attest that our parting was amicable and "by mutual agreement", I should have no problems. Shouldn't have. We shall see.

I'll probably be on tenterhooks for the next 4 or 5 months until I can finally get a new visa that is not in any way tied to the former employer. And there's an additional worry attached to the timing there: it's getting increasingly tricky to obtain visas here in Beijing, as the police get more and more skittish about Olympic security concerns; indeed, there are worrying rumours (they seem unbelievable - but this is China) that no visas are going to be issued for the Olympic month of August at all (other than tourist visas, that is - which you can't obtain inside China). What an intriguing year lies ahead of us! Interesting times, indeed, interesting times.