A new integration center has opened in Prague, helping foreigners adapt
"Prague is a great place to live. This is confirmed by a number of studies, both in terms of citizen satisfaction with living conditions and in terms of safety. Prague is an attractive destination, which is why it is necessary for the local administration to take steps towards establishing communication with newcomers. It is desirable that there be a desire to help foreigners and prevent unpleasant situations in which they may find themselves when they start living in a completely foreign environment," believes Jan Dobrovsky, head of Expat Center Prague.
All Czech integration centers, according to him, are interconnected and work not duplicating but complementing each other and combining efforts.
"About 200 thousand foreigners live in Prague, a significant part are students and entrepreneurs, and this important target group needs to be worked with," Dobrovsky is confident.
Since 2001, the number of foreigners living in the Czech Republic has been steadily growing. According to the InfoCizinci.cz portal, by the end of 2017, there were more than half a million foreign citizens in the country, with 53.7% of them having permanent residence (Czech: trvalý pobyt). According to the latest data from the Czech Statistical Office, by the end of 2018, almost 567 thousand foreigners lived in the Czech Republic, including those who were granted asylum for various reasons, with 51.3% having permanent residence.
The vast majority of foreign citizens in the Czech Republic are Ukrainians, Slovaks, and Vietnamese; followed by Germans, Russians, and Poles. According to the latest data from 2019, the population of the Czech Republic is 10.65 million people. Among the main reasons for moving to the Czech Republic, experts cite personal reasons, as well as employment and study at universities.
"Usually it is just about ordinary human needs, most often concerning personal life: questions about reuniting spouses or relatives, difficulties with maternity leave – these questions are heard most often. Next in popularity are work-related questions: both those concerning visas and those related, say, to obtaining a permit for individual entrepreneurship. Thus, our center addresses issues in both spheres of immigrants' lives, both work and personal," reports Jan Dobrovsky.
According to Barbora Machova, an employee of another Prague consultation center – the Center for Integration of Foreigners (Czech: Centrum pro integraci cizinců), clients increasingly turn to them for advice on obtaining a work card (Czech: zaměstnanecká karta).
An issue that causes many problems is also the extension of the residence permit. However, in this case, it is enough to carefully approach the collection of all documents that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic requests from the foreigner, and strictly meet the deadlines for submitting documents, Machova believes.
As a rule, specialists at integration centers do not deal with complex legal issues. "We try to redirect clients to appropriate specialists – we do not delve into the depths of jurisprudence, as these are usually very complex situations. Our center Expat Center Prague started with a basic set of services for newcomers, but in the future we will expand their range based on client requests. So for now we do not provide legal consultations, but perhaps after some time we will start doing that too," says Dobrovsky.
Currently, employees of Expat Center Prague are planning various educational events – seminars and master classes aimed at accelerating the acclimatization of "beginning Praguers" and supporting those who already run businesses here. The main focus will be on visa issues. The organizers do not plan to conduct language courses, believing that there are already many offers on the local education market.