Finally!! I'm legal again. I received a phone call from the Interior Ministry that my new long-term visa was ready and I went to pick it up this past Monday. I've been legal all along but now I have proof.
Czech bureaucracy is an odd thing. The clerk showed me that I'm legal in the system until 2013. However, the new visa sticker in my passport is only valid until this December. Apparently, I will get a phone call in October to return to the Interior Ministry for a biometric identity card.
I'm actually glad to be getting the ID card so that I don't always have to carry my passport around. What I don't know is if I will get a new visa sticker for my passport when I get my ID card. Since I'm not an EU citizen I don't want to have any problems traveling in and out of the Schengen Zone. I'm not sure if this ID card will work outside of the ČR. When I flew from England to Germany earlier this year, the officials in Hannover held my passport for 5 minutes. They took a magnifying glass to my visa to verify that that it was legitimate. I guess they were confused by an American passport with a Czech EU visa. Who knows?
I don't know why I had to provide the government with a new photograph because they used the same picture I gave them last year. This visa, and my temporary visa, also included my Czech birth number. But at this point I don't care. I'm just happy to be legal for another 2 years.
great job! i've been waiting for mine since April with no end in sight. was it a text msg from the Ministry? or an actual phone call?
ReplyDeleteHi Eulcedes,
ReplyDeleteI was waiting from April as well. I received a telephone call and the person read from an English language script. Best of luck to you!
Christopher