So in today's episode of Kult America
we are going to answer the most frequent question that I receive,
"how to move to Poland"
Alright, I just want to put this out there that I am absolutely not a lawyer
I went through the immigration process over ten years ago, so I believe that much has changed,
but I will let you know what I know and you can consider it, I don't know, enlightened gossip, maybe,
but you should definitely do some legal research on the topic if you're serious about moving here.
And I will start with a very simple premise, you cannot legally work in this country on a
tourist visa, you need to obtain the appropriate credentials to work and earn in this country,
so it's essentially, uh, two most basic ways that I've heard of, again you have to consult a lawyer for more details,
is that you can enter Poland on a workers visa provided by an employer who wants to have you here or
once in Poland you can apply for your
residency card based on the premise that you will have a job contract.
Now one thing that's pretty important to point out
is that most employers in Poland are not just handing out long term job contracts to people,
so can actually be a little bit challenging. So in my case, I actually
initially applied to become a resident of this country on the basis that I would study the culture and language
for one year time and when I received the privilege to live here, kind of built in was the fact that I could legally work.
It's kind of a vicious circle because most employers would actually like to have you,
but they wouldn't like to make the type of commitment that would give you the
possibility to have the work visa or be a legal resident in the country,
yet to be a legal resident or to get the work permit you have to have a job,
so you kind of have to figure your way into that crazy loop.
Uh, it is possible if you're motivated enough.
"Ryan, how do I find a job in Poland without knowing the Polish language?"
Well first thing is that you shouldn't come here
unless you have an ambition to learn the Polish language.
You need it to communicate with people on a daily basis and to actually be a part of the society here.
However, some people aren't very good at language.
My Polish is not perfect. That's for sure, and, uh,
you will be in luck because actually there are international corporations that will hire you.
There are companies that provide outsourcing solutions for American companies,
for British companies, for Chinese companies, and English is kind of a core language inside of the
corporation.
Alternatively, you could always use your language skills
to teach other, give other people contact with English, and
that is a really really good way to get a start, meet people and have a basic foundation here.
So the trick is if you don't speak Polish you should at least know English,
and you could get some grounding here. But definitely go to Polish class and learn.
"How can I become a resident of the Republic of Poland?"
Well, when I was doing it there were several means. You could take on
residency here if you were student. You could become a resident if you had a job,
if you had a wife or a husband. If at the time, I believe, even if you were a notable working artist
you could become a resident of Poland.
I don't believe that that is the case today, but certainly the easiest and, uh,
smoothest options I think are to be a student, to get married, or to simply have a job.
But there are I think like seven or eight other options definitely look into it.
So how to get Polish citizenship,
I've heard of a few ways. One way, probably the easiest way,
is through ancestry. So if your mother or your father
was Polish and still holds Polish citizenship before the age of 18.
I guess it's a very very easy thing to get
kind of the same way that my children born here in Poland were able to
take on American citizenship, even though the younger one
has never even been inside of the United States.
So that's just basically a transfer of citizenship, no problem. You can ultimately
receive the citizenship through being married, but you have to achieve permanent residence status
in the first place before you apply it, so again I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think that the guarantee of
citizenship is is built into
marriage by any means. You have to achieve it by being a resident of the country long enough.
And from what I've heard the, uh, Polish government can, uh, bestow Polish citizenship upon people
who have done amazing things for the country or who maybe lost their Polish citizenship due to war
or deplacement, things of that nature.
"Should Americans have a visa to come to Poland?"
So you can come to Poland for 90 days from the United States of America on a tourist visa.
After that you have to extend your stay.
It's a pretty simple and painless procedure, but to become a resident is much more involved.
Actually when I did it, I don't know if it's the same today,
it was kind of a nightmare because they had a lot of requirements. I had to demonstrate
that I had income in Poland and the only way to do that was to have a bank account in Poland
with funds in the bank account, but I couldn't open the
bank account then because I didn't have the residential status here.
So it was again a vicious circle I had to be registered to an apartment,
but no landlord wants to register you to the apartment, that's the first thing. The second thing is they also start
asking questions about your residential status.
So it's, it's a lot of vicious circles.
It's pretty hard to get into, but once you get over that hump and into the system,
and you kind of learn how it works, and you can keep things moving forward
ultimately to achieve permanent residence in the country, if that's your goal.
"How can I assimilate in Poland?"
I think that the fastest way is to become a part of the community here,
so engage with people, get to know people,
do things with people, go to school here, learn how
the Polish systems work, learn how the healthcare system works, learn how the tax system works.
You can learn a lot of lessons in those Polish institutions for how to kind of navigate the
complexities of Polish society. One of the things that I like to think I've
mastered, or at least I'm working on mastering, is the art of small talk. If you go into a Polish
bureaucratic office, a government office,
with the expectation to get something done, right.
You should have in the back of your mind that something might be messed up in your form.
Even just slightly, right. You might have written the wrong number somewhere,
you might have been missing a stamp somewhere, and you really need your immigration
documentary, or tax documents, or your postal documents to go through.
Well, you have two options you can go in there and
aggressively assert yourself,
which is not going to get you very far, that's for sure, or
you can talk to the older lady on the other side
of the glass about the weather.
Next thing you know she's finding the mistakes
in the documents and she's giving you an opportunity to correct them without going to the back of the line,
your forms go through, and everything in life is good. And that's the beauty of
assimilation, that's the beauty of actually really taking the time to discover the intricate parts of another culture.
So "what is the best destination a foreigner should visit when they go to Poland for the first time?"
I think that Krakow is just charming beyond words, and if you want to have
infatuation with a city, with a country, I think Krakow is a great first destination.
And I'm not the only one who feels that way.
"How can I start to learn Polish language?"
Definitely free yourself of the notion that it's one of the world's hardest languages
and focus on the fact that once you learn to use it, you'll be able to communicate
with some of the world's best people. And that was really my motivating factor.
I started back when I lived in Chicago I was 18, it was a year 2000,
and I worked in a shop at the time called Sport Mart. It was like a seven story
complex of sporting goods. I worked on the level which sold skis,
and many many Polish people would come there to buy skis and I would always ask them
"what part of Poland are you from?" I would ask them to teach me a word in Polish.
They thought that I was totally crazy. I was really really excited to meet them,
people who worked for the airlines and rich people, painters, from all walks of life and in that time
I also did something a little bit sneaky. We had a policy, at Sport Mart, that you had a half-hour lunch break,
and then a 15-minute break that you would take like on your floor, if it was slow.
And then the sneaky bit is that during the 15-minute break I would actually go into this little office
that was on the merchandizing floor and I would have in one ear my earphone,
and in front of me in the book with a Polish language. And I would basically stay there
until a manager would come. Sometimes I could stay for 2 hours, even 3 hours, on the clock, not doing any work
actually just learning Polish phrases and, uh,
when a manager would come I'd be like,
"Oh yeah, well my 15-minute break is going to finish up in about 10 minutes," and they say, "Okay yeah, that's cool,
you know do your schoolwork or whatever", and I really learned a lot of very basic things there.
At the same time,
I listened to a lot of Polish music, especially the band Myslovitz, which is one of my favorite bands.
And I wanted to understand their lyrics more in depth, so emerging yourself into the culture,
having a motivation to speak with the people I think would be the thing to push you into the mode of learning,
and then once you're in that sphere the rest comes naturally,
but it's an ongoing process, and I'm learning all the time, every day I try to learn new words.
Right now when I watch Netflix I have, uh, Polish subtitles, so I'm hearing the English,
but I'm also seeing many many new words, and it's very very helpful, but consistency,
I will be learning probably for the rest of my life, but if you have the will, you have the way.
"So I've seen a thing on Facebook called, 'We are Slavs', what is that?"
Soon, I'm very happy to announce on Kult America we will have two new formats.
One will be called "We are Slavs" and we will be
exploring Poland and the neighboring countries to find out what legacy of Slavic culture exists today in 2017.
What makes this part of Europe so unique. The second one, which I haven't really
formulated a concrete title for will be about the PRL times here
in Poland and we will actually take a trip back in time
to see what it was to live in communist Poland.
If you have any ideas for Kult America
please write them in the comment section below.
We need a lot of new ideas for our new formats we're going to be going full on the season
I'm really really excited. Actually, there will only be videos about Poland and
Slavic countries for the next half a year. I'm really going to focus in and hone in on my
passion what I love, and that is the country of Poland, the Kult America viewers, and
life here in this country.
So please subscribe to Kult America
and get ready because the rest of
2017 is going to be very very special
I really hope that you guys enjoyed today's video
and this whole topic and, sometimes even debate, really got me to thinking that I want to have
a much closer,
actual relationship with some of the people out there
who care about what we're doing in Kult America.
So with that in mind I decided to open a Patreon community
where for a very symbolic amount of money you can join our secret Facebook page
you get a lot of behind-the-scenes content, plans, uh,
well you'll see all the details if you click the link,
but what's most important is that you know our name.
I would actually like to know your name.
Above that, if you're interested in moving to Poland
there's actually going to be some really interesting
content in that Patreon page at a higher reward level,
but all the same. Check it out. Let's connect.
Let's build this channel together,
and hopefully get to the next level as a community,
whereas Kult America is not just mine,
but it can be ours.
Peace.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét