Sky Gidge

    skygidge@icloud.com

    WILLIAM had just begun teaching a class in a small training center in Shekou when two undercover police officers approached him.

    “This guy came up and asked me to leave the room. He told me he was with the police and I had to follow him to the police station,” said William, 32, who is from outside Toronto, Canada. In front of nine students and their parents, William packed up his laptop before following the officers to the station where he was held for 17 hours. After an immigration officer took his passport, he was released.

    When William first came to China in 2012, he never expected to end up sitting in a police station, but like many teachers in Shenzhen, William had been teaching on a business visa instead of the legally required residence permit, sometimes called a work permit or Z visa. His first employer had promised him the proper visa but never delivered.

    “They promised that after two months they could get me a work visa,” said William, explaining that he asked his first Chinese employer over several months to upgrade his visa to a legal work visa. “They just kept up making up excuses.”

    William’s story may be the norm in Shenzhen, where an estimated 70 to 80 percent of foreign teachers are working on the wrong visa, according to three different people who are familiar with the situation and declined to be named.

    “It’s hard to find a good training center that will give you a proper work visa,” said William.

    Shenzhen’s proximity to Hong Kong, the shady English training industry and foreigners’ general ignorance of Chinese law have combined to create a private teaching industry, where teaching on the wrong visa is normal and encouraged. (Continued on P3)

    To teach legally in China, a foreigner needs to hold a residence permit, must have a bachelor’s degree and have two years or more teaching related experience.

    The process to get a residence permit can be done by a training center that has been approved by a district’s Municipal Education Bureau, according to a spokesperson from Shenzhen’s Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Administration.

    The approval process can be complex and time consuming. Training centers must operate for at least one year before they get approved to employ foreign teachers. For most small training centers, where a foreign teacher is the main way they attract students, this isn’t possible.

    “They would need to have a proper company, a registration address for the school; it has to be a legal entity,” said Fabian Knopf, a Senior Associate at Dezan Shira, a consulting group specializing in foreign business in Asia.

    This hasn’t stopped training centers in Shenzhen from employing foreigners off the books.

    By not officially employing foreigners, training centers get the benefit of the increased business and prestige a foreign employee brings without the legal costs.

    “They can avoid paying taxes,” said Knopf. “It’s all about reducing costs.”

    Unlike foreigners holding a residence permit, foreigners holding a business visa are required to leave the country regularly. In a city further away from Hong Kong, this would discourage remaining in China for work, but at Shenzhen’s Futian Checkpoint a foreigner can “enter and exit” by passing into the Hong Kong territory in as little as thirty minutes.

    Unscrupulous training center owners have seized on this. After contacting four employers who posted advertisements looking for foreign teachers on a popular Shenzhen job website, every single employer said that working on a business visa was legal or “not a problem.”

    “It’s misinformation; it’s ignorance... I don’t think anyone is out to break the law,” said Knopf. “[The teachers] don’t understand it’s illegal.”

    In fact, many new teachers are lured to Shenzhen by agencies, middlemen and training centers that lie to foreigners about the laws in Shenzhen.

    “They told me that they were going to put me on a work visa when I got to China,” said Tom, a 25-year-old university graduate from Bristol, England. “Once I got here, that wasn’t the case. I mentioned it and they told me it was perfectly legal.

    Tom found his job through a Shenzhen-based job agency that had a phone number in the UK and a Facebook page advertising teaching jobs in China. After arriving in China, Tom found himself being contracted out to private training centers for a promised monthly paycheck of 4000 yuan ($US660).

    Training centers that illegally employ foreigners can face a fine of up to 100,000 yuan, and foreigners caught teaching on a business visa face a fine of up to 10,000 yuan, along with possible detention and deportation. (source???according to Chinese law or local law? or who said this?)

    Like William, if a foreigner is involved in a legal case they can have their passport taken until the legal case is resolved.

    Since the raid about two weeks ago, William hasn’t received his passport back and has been told not to leave Shenzhen.

    “The person who owns the training center hid the money from the parents,” William said. “I am stuck in the middle of an investigation and they can’t give me my passport until they close it… I’m still trying to get a hold of the guy to see what’s going on.”