Czech MFA figured out how to speed up the issuance of long-term visas
As the portal Vinegret.cz notes, in the bill that the Senate will consider in the near future, the ministry proposes to delegate part of the work on processing visa applications to third-party agencies. They would schedule appointments for foreigners, check the correctness of filling out forms, monitor the completeness of the set of documents and other formalities. The consulates themselves would focus exclusively on reviewing applications, which includes conducting interviews, sending inquiries to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of the Interior, as well as affixing ready visas.
This division of labor should increase the speed of processing applications and their number. Service and visa centers in many countries have been working successfully according to a similar scheme for a long time. However, they only handle short-term Schengen visas. According to the Czech MFA, their creation helped reduce application processing times to 3-5 working days, while the law allows 15 days for this.
To delegate authority to third-party companies for long-term visas as well, it is necessary to change the existing legislation. The Chamber of Commerce of the Czech Republic hopes that senators will adopt this provision and it will take effect as soon as possible, since Czech enterprises currently lack about 150,000 employees.
If the amendment remains in the law and it is adopted, the MFA will launch a pilot project in one of the countries. Experts recommend doing this in Russia, Ukraine, India or China. Most likely, the ministry will use the services of the leader in this segment – the agency VFS Global. It is assumed that initially the innovation will affect only work and student visas.
According to a representative of the Chamber of Commerce, Miroslav Diro, the problem with long-term visas is most acute in Ukraine. Even the abolition of the criticized VisaPoint system for work visas did not help here.