A new immigration law took effect on January 1, 2000, in the Czech Republic. As the Czech Ministry of Internal Affairs spokeswoman Maria Masarikova told AP, this law is aimed at reducing the flow of immigrants from Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, and Asian countries who work illegally in the Czech Republic. Ms. Masarikova said all these countries had been timely informed about such measures. But representatives of the Ukrainian and Bulgarian embassies deny this.
Now Czech border guards demand visitors produce ready cash, 1000 krona ($30) for each day of stay. In addition, tourists must display two photos and give a written pledge to stay in the country only as long as is stipulated by the voucher, otherwise they will be denied entry into the Czech Republic next time. However, taking into account tourists’ ignorance of the new measures, nobody has so far been turned out: the authorities decided to postpone tough measures to February 1. It is also unclear how the Czechs will go about ousting our illegal workmen numbering an estimated 150,000.
“In 1999, 21,000 foreigners were banned from staying in the Czech Republic. Half of them were citizens of Ukraine,” Czech Ambassador to Ukraine Jozef Vrabec (right in the photo) said at a press conference at the Czech Embassy in Kyiv. In his words, the conditions of illegal residents deportation are to tighten up to some extent from February on. After the Czech authorities have identified the circumstances under which the unwanted guests came to the country, their places of residence, and the names of their employers, the “guests” will be kept in a transit lounge. Then they will get their passports with a visa bearing the day of their departure from that country. Failure to leave the country on the due date refers these people to the category of recidivists who can be deported and barred from reentry for three years.
Ambassador Vrabec did not deny the Czech official information that trains and buses carrying the foreigners from the country will be escorted by armed police.
Rumors about a new emigration law in the Czech Republic had been spreading in Transcarpathia for a long time, but there were fresh debates after the law came into force on January 1 this year, The Day’s Vasyl ZUBACH reports from Uzhhorod.
Chairman of the oblast cultural and education organization Matytsia Slovianska and chief engineer at the Institute of Electronic Physics of Ukraine, Yosyp Hainish, told The Day, “In any case, this is a restriction of the usually quite broad external contacts our oblast has maintained. In general, this will have a negative effect on the relations between Ukraine and the Czech Republic. In truth, it is not the Czech side itself that devised this: it is the pressure of the West which needs an additional barrier against migration. This will also adversely affect the employment of Transcarpathians. Now the Czech government is taking measures to evict our Ostarbeiteren This will cut down the overall well-being of the populace. If we are heading for a unified Europe, we need more opportunities for contacts and cultural exchange.
Representative of the Transcarpathian League of Nationalities, head of the biochemistry and pharmacology department at Uzhhorod University, Ivan Turianytsia, expressed a different opinion: “The law is undoubtedly right. Why should the Czech authorities receive Ukrainian citizens whom their own state fails to protect? The Czech Republic is defending itself because Ukraine’s official bodies do not establish the status of Ukrainians in the overall European context. Hence the necessity of an official barrier against the unlawful inflow. Ukraine should guarantee that alien countries will only receive people who will represent their own country with dignity and not become lawbreakers. But now all Ukrainians are forced to break the law. The passport does not protect our citizen, one cannot be legally employed with it unless one does it through an intermediary.”
