Common myths on jobs abroad

Common myths on jobs abroad

• You can always trust job offers abroad from friends, relatives.

If a well-paid waitress’s, dancer’s, builder’s, cleaner’s, babysitter’s, home worker’s or a model’s job is offered, and the person who offers the job, assures that he/she has done such job before or knows someone who has already done a similar job, it does not still mean that the proposal is trustworthy and that you are secured from not finding yourself in a dangerous situation. Trafficking victims often confess that they believed the proposal because it was made by a person whom they knew before.
When a job is offered and language skills or other skills are not necessary in destination country, then more likely we deal with illegal or suspicious work.

• If the organization offers job in the newspaper, then it means that we deal with legal work.

In fact if the company offers job through mass media, does not speak about the fact that job is legal and you can believe such a proposal. While selling advertising columns, the newspaper does not conduct a security check on the companies ordering advertising. Consequently illegal and legal based proposals can be placed side by side in the newspaper, so the job seeker himself should be able to distinguish them.

• It is easy to earn a lot of money abroad.

In fact, they don’t very often pay for the conducted job abroad at all and make you work more than it was agreed in advance. In any case illegal activities lead to the fact that the “employer” starts to manipulate his “employee”, exploit him and pays as little as it is possible.

• It is possible to obtain a short-term job by a tourist visa and without a work permit abroad.

As a rule, before starting a job abroad, it is necessary to get a residence permit, work visa and an official work permit. The most reliable source of information about employment opportunities is the respective embassy or consulate in that certain country.

• Working contract may be signed abroad.

In any case, it is necessary to demand a signed agreement in a written form not orally and it should be in the language the speaker uses. It is preferable to sign the contract before going abroad. The working contract may be required to obtain a work permit.

• The employer needs the employee’s passport. In order to draft a working contract and for getting a work permit.

In fact, the employer does not need employee’s passport, the employer also does not have any right to keep his employee’s passport by himself. Only official entities have right to request a passport.

• Employees have right to resign from an agreed work if it is not relevant to them.

Those people who are in debt towards the reseller or the “employer”, stay without passports, become vulnerable, fall into dependence, it becomes easy to manipulate them, and that is why it is not so easy for them to interrupt the activities that they do not like.

Material was prepared referring to the information sources of “Prevention of Human Trafficking. Methodology of work with young people” book of Tallinn office of International Organization for Migration (IOM).

http://www.iom.ee/avaldatud_materjalid/iom_teachers_manual__trafficking_rus.pdf