No Stay Permit This Year in Poland

I have worked in Poland legally for 4 years, getting my temporary stay permit yearly. Actually, when I began teaching I also had to have a work permit or a special lecturer permit (1st year).

Then I decided to move to Warsaw on a promise from a school to teach Business English for a particular wage and specific number of hours. Well, I took the promise at face value and spent a lot of energy and money making the move. It set me back most of what I had left in my account.

When I started working the company paid me 60% of the wages promised and gave me a little less than half the hours agreed upon. As it turned out, I was just getting by from month to month. I did not have enough money to apply for a new stay permit. The year got worse with that company until I quit when they were simply not paying me my wages over 6 weeks. I quickly and cheaply shuffled my things back to the smaller town I had been living in, to move back in with my fiance.

We were at the bottom of the barrel during the Summer and had to beg my family for help, hers hates me (it's a race thing mentioned elsewhere on the forum about non-Poles [search for "family hates my American girlfriend" or something like that). So we survived until October, when my teaching jobs here in this smaller city started.

We realized we were in a worse situation with the legal status, since I couldn't just apply for permission to stay. I was here illegally. We'd have to get me out of the Schengen (Hitler) Zone and back in. That meant NOT crossing the Polish border into Ukrainia. I'd have to take a bus to Romania or Zagreb. When we checked the prices it was more expensive than the stay permit and we'd have to come up with the money for the stay permit on top of that. So it was an impossibility syndrome.

I worked all year under the table and now am in exactly the same boat. Pay here and hours in this smaller city are small. I am struggling with Internet work to get together the finances and am faced with asking for money from the family again in order to make the bus trip to Romania or Zagreb, cross my fingers on the border patrol, and then pay for the permission to stay.

We also are ready to get married here in Poland in the Church, but that adds to the problem as well. I must be legal. We must have money for the wedding and reception, i.t.d...

So these last 2 years have been messed up royally, due to trusting a Polish company. It isn't my first experience with the Polish version of "trust me". There is no sense of self-honor about one's word here, or it is quite rare to find it.

Anyway, I want to get this all cleared up. So I will take a bus to Romania or Zagreb, praying to be invisible to the guards. Then I'll come back in on a tourist visa ticking away the 90 days. I must then apply for the permission to stay, which I may get refused anyway. There is the discrepancy between the stamps (or lack of them) in my passport and my Permissions to Stay - the missing two years. I am engaged to my Polish fiance, but then again, I am taking her for her word. Who knows how good that is.

I doubt indicating that I am engaged to be married will help the situation at all.

What are your thoughts on the matter? Any other ideas?

[I realize the hypocrisy between the generalization that there is a tendency for Poles to not keep their word and the criticism about racial bias against non-Poles by Poles. My complaint is an extremely practical one, though, whereas the racial bias is simply an impulse against what is not similar to you. Promise and don't do what you promise, then no one can do business with you without getting hurt. This makes them angry and unwilling to do business with you in the future. It applies to other aspects of life, like engagement as well.]

Crossing the border will not help you in the slightest now that you have overstayed your permit by a year. In fact leaving Poland might well be the worst thing you can do: when you try to come back in you may well be refused entry and banned from Schengen (for at least one year). Although if you do want to try it, there's nothing stopping you from going to Ukraine (it is not part of the Schengen zone).


Get married. Go on honeymoon. While there, lose your passport and pray that the new one doesn't trigger anything in the immigration computer. If it does, you'll probably get a free trip home and your wife can join you there.

BTW, would you care to name the school in Warsaw, it can be by PM if you want; I might be able to help you with them.

My thoughts? Pretty simple - I can tell you that on both the Croatian (EU border) and Romanian borders, they're scrutinising passports very carefully at the minute. You're not going to be able to get away with a visa run there - the Hungarians are treating the Romanian border as if it's a non-EU border for passport control purposes. Likewise, the countries surrounding Croatia are being very strict at the minute - I was stuck in a 2 hour queue just to leave Slovenia a few weeks ago.

By making such a run, you've got no guarantee of success - in fact, the chance of failure is quite high. Despite what's said online, the national border police are making quite a concentrated effort to deny re-entry to obvious border-runners- and do you really want to be stuck on the Romanian/Croatian border with a refusal from the Schengen space?


First rule of business : do nothing without a contract. Applies everywhere in the world.

Sorry to say, but as a non-EU citizen, you have certain responsibilities - and no-one to blame but yourself for not applying for a residence permit. As Harry says - the best bet is to get out of the EU alltogether, stay out for 6 months, then get a new passport and come back in. Even then - there may be some questions asked about what you've been doing between your stays in Poland.

That is most certainly a given. But what can we suggest that might help the bloke. What's your knowledge about the idea of a short break in Lwow involving accidentally dropping his passport into the river there or having his pocket picked and thus losing his passport? That's a bit of a long-shot (and would most probably necessitate a trip to Kiev), but might it get him back in with a nice clean passport and 90 days to get legal?

The problem is that he'll get picked up on at the Polish border on exit - they are doing such strong checks at the minute (I've crossed 5 times in the last year) that I'm not convinced that he'll actually manage to leave without being picked up on. If I was to recommend it at all, I'd suggest leaving on the sleeper train from Wrocław-Lwów - the exit check wasn't *very* thorough (though still - all passports got scanned in the little handheld reader they have) compared to the other ways I crossed.

Probably the best piece of advice I can think of would be to simply 'lose' his passport in Poland - and pray that he doesn't get picked up in the meantime. He should be able to exit Scbengen (not from Poland, though) on a fresh passport - and for safety sake, it would be best to stay out for 90 days (preferably in a non-EU country, to avoid suspicion).

The problem I can see is that they're going to ask questions when he applies for a new residence permit - and if he's been paying tax in the meantime, it could get very tricky for him.

I actually think it might be easiest to simply own up to what he's done - sure, he'll probably get deported for a year - but then he can come back to Poland with a clean-slate, rather than having to worry about what they might find out in the future.

But from the tone of his post - does he even want to stay here?

You've certainly got a point there, I had my passport given the once-over a couple of times last week and I hadn't even crossed the border, was just near it!


I don't see why he would 'get picked up' in the meantime. How often have you been required by police to show them your passport? The only times it has ever happened to me was when they were visiting my apartment (to check that I lived there) as part of the residency permit application process.

Personally I'd be thinking that now is a very good time to go and teach English in Thailand for a few months.

[edit]Or better yet, do nine months in Korea and save some cash for the wedding etc.

Why not Krakow - Lwów

He most likely won't get deported but will be given seven days to get his affairs in order and leave the country, and a one-year ban on coming back of course.

Zoran: seriously, think about a year in Korea getting cash together for wedding and married life.

It's nuts - I've seen them in the mountains near the Ukrainian border too, they had been wild camping there for a while from the looks of things. It's definitely not worth the risk, I think - I don't know what's brought on such strong measures (especially as countries like Spain and France appear not to give a ****) - I can only assume that Poland/Slovakia/Hungary are doing the dirty work for the Western EU countries.


Well - I suppose if he reports his passport as lost/stolen, then it shouldn't be a problem anyway (he'll have the police report to back this up). Mind you - the border guards in theory can check your passport anywhere in the country at any time. I've seen them quite a few times inland - never been stopped, though. The weirdest control I saw was a bunch of Ukrainians being stopped on their way to the border at Medyka - that didn't make any sense!


If he's got the papers, he'd be laughing. Even Thailand is a way to save some decent cash - I have a friend there that's getting about $400 a week and has living costs of about $120 - not a bad way to put away some cash.

Delph, have you ever been to Ukraine through slovakia at Vyšné Nemecké – Užhorod. I have never travelled this way before looks like a scenic route.