Legal migration to France and Poland: opportunities and configurations

Legal migration to France and Poland: opportunities and configurations

On 14th of October one-day workshop “Legal migration to France and Poland: opportunities and configurations” for journalists covering the issues of migration was held in Yerevan’s Erebuni Plaza Hotel. The workshop was carried out in the framework of “Migration compass” public awareness campaign by the Media Initiatives Center.
At the opening of the workshop, manager of the Center Lusine Grigoryan presented www.migrationcompass.am website, where through interview, question-answers and manuals format, information on migration issues, particularly on legal routes for was introduced. The website also provides information in the form of PSAs and through useful links of local and international organizations etc.
Further, Lusine introduced the experts from France and Poland who later made their presentations.

France

In the first part of theworkshop, an expert from France Immigration Integration Office (OFFI) Helen Harari, made her presentation on “Labor migration to France”
Harari introduced the procedures and processes of labor migration necessary to be considered by the migrant leaving to France.
Of significant mention in Harari’s presentations were 10 procedures to be realized in the process of labor migration. Basically these procedures refer to the residency card getting process the undertaking of which is connected with the migrant’s profession.

According to the expert, advantage is given to holders of residency card called “talent” card (in the documents for residency permit it is marked just like that – “He is a talent”).
The residency cards in France are the following:

• Residence card “Skills and talents”
• Residence card ““Working trip”
• EU blue card is for high-skilled workers – Residence card marked as “Art and culture profession”
• Residence card marked as “Seasonal worker”
• VLS-TS marked as “Fellow-researcher”
• VLS-TS log-term visa, which frees from the right to residence permit
• VLS-TS marked as “intern”
• VLS-TS marked as young professional
• VLS-TS marked as “working stuff ” or “temporary worker”
• VLS-TS “temporary worker” seconded worker, marked as outofintergroupmobilit

Helen Harari’s full presentation is available with the following link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9UN0mSlsfcsQXIxRUgtUFhWNnFxRFNNbDlHY3l4RmQ2eElj/view?pli=1

Afterwards, the Head of OFII program, French expert, Iva Zhakopovich, presented her speech on the processes of “The Acceptance and Integration policy in France”.
After the speeches of the experts and questions-answers with the journalists, it became clear that during 2013 year France accepted 109,000 legal migrants: the number of migrants from Armenia was 1.407 people. Only one of them applied to get a permission to work while the others already had refugee status or family connections. The 75 percent of the total number of the legal migrants applied with the total family reunion grounds, 9% received refugee status and only 6% came to France with labor contract. Zhakopovich also mentioned that migrants often leave unsolved many organizational issues in their country later facing with many serious problems in France .
The legal migration process is realized in two stages, moreover, the preparation of documents should be started already in Armenia.

First of all, before leaving the country, the Armenian migrant should apply to the Embassy and submit for visa application.

After submitting the application, the migrant takes two test exams to check his French language knowledge, and the knowledge of France’s national history and values. In the event of the applicant’s non-sufficient educational level the applicant is obliged to learn the course ones more – 48 hours of French language course and 2 hours of French history and values.

After the trainings migrants are given certificates, which is followed by one-year integration contract signing. This contract is signed after each sixths months.

Iva Zhakopovihch’s full presentation is available with the following link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9UN0mSlsfcsLWRRckE4NWhGdXFqLWtRNjNBZ0lMTVVaUzBB/view?pli=1

Poland
In the second part of workshop presentations about labor migration were made by Polish experts, who introduced procedures of labor migrations to Poland.
“Labor migration to Poland” was presented by the representative of Department of Labor of the Polish Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, Alexandra Lange. As Lange noted there are not many Armenian migrants in Poland at the moment. Overall in 2013 there have been 448 Armenians who obtained work permission in Poland and during 2014 already 648 Armenians left their country to Poland.
The Armenians migrated to Poland mainly engage in agriculture, trade and house-keeping.
In her presentation Lange also talked about Poland’s trade market problems, which are the high level of unemloyment among youth, the long-term nature of unemployment, regional differences in unemployment levels, labor supply and structural discrepancies, etc.
“Today the number of Armenian migrants to Poland increases, since in 2014 Armenia joined the agreement regarding the simplified procedure on short-term work in Poland. The simplified procedure supposes that migrants can stay in Poland without work permission up to six months”, -writes Armenpress’ correspondent.
Lange also presented the rules of labor migration to Poland. According to the rules:

• The third-country citizen in Poland must have valid residence and working permission to have the right to work.
• Work permission is given by the competent regional Head (so-called voevoda) by employer’s request
• From the 1st of May, 2014, the third-country citizen can apply for temporary residence and work permission to the competent regional Head (voevoda) (> 3 months) through the combined procedure.

You can find Alexandra Lange’s full presentation through following link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9UN0mSlsfcsS2c5dHZjSzVnUXpxbG1jM25Na1ZoWC03TXl3/view?pli=1

Workshop was concluded by the representative from Office for Foreigners of Poland Status Legalization Department, Tomash Tsitrinovich’s presentation – “Legal migration process and opportunities in Poland”.
Tsitrinovich shared information with present journalists about the media sources and governmental agencies where one can get reliable information about labor migration, the procedures of getting visa and work permit in Poland.

You can find Tomash Tsitrinovich’s full presentation through the following link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9UN0mSlsfcsaDdWZmlLeElUT2VLSDhvcU1mWWtRZmt4OEtF/view?pli=1

All photos of workshopare available on our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.962121807134556.1073741843.815159858497419&type=3

Experts’ presentations to be found on our website in “Presentations” rubric:
http://antitrafficking.am/%D6%80%D5%AB%D5%B6%D5%A1%D5%AF%D5%A1%D5%B6-%D5%B4%D5%AB%D5%A3%D6%80%D5%A1%D6%81%D5%AB%D5%A1-%D5%A4%D5%A5%D5%BA%D5%AB-%D6%86%D6%80%D5%A1%D5%B6%D5%BD%D5%AB%D5%A1-%D6%87-%D5%AC%D5%A5%D5%B0%D5%A1%D5%BD/

Anna Tavaqalyan
“Development of Anti-trafficking Information Platform in Armenia” project’s journalist