Russia This Fall

Hi, I'm hoping to go to Russia this fall and have some questions about how best to go about it. I have dual citizenship, Canadian and British, is there one that's easier to travel on? At the moment I'm living in Ireland but I'll be going back to Canada for the summer. The thing that I'm worried about is that I'll likely be working in a really remote area from the end of June to almost the end of August - no incoming mail, fax machine, scanner or phone other than Skype. I've taken an online TEFL course but have heard that they don't go too far in getting you a job and that work visas are very difficult and time consuming to get. Is this true and if so, would a student visa (if I take some courses there) or a business visa be better? Can I work on these and is it likely that I will be able to find work? When can I apply for visas - would it be too early if I did it in June, if I was planning to leave in mid September? I wouldn't be able to get to a consulate until the start of September, and even then it would be much better if there was a way to do it without going to one considering the cost of airfare in Canada. I know that you can pay more to get it processed faster so if I had the invitation before I went would I have enough time to get it all set up then? Any help with any of these questions would be greatly appreciated! I'm sure I have more, I just can't think of them right now.

Hi Fiona!

How are you?

In Russia you can't work officially without a working visa (note: business visa also doesn't permit you to work) or a residence permit! You can however work unofficially and it's pretty easy to find such jobs but you can't really do that until you get there. Being a native English speaker you'll probably find it easy to find students to tutor privately! There's thousands doing it and it's not that difficult to get into and you can expect to earn about 1000rub per hour (90 minutes usually) in big cities(Moscow and Piter).

If you have a british passport I'd recommend doing it with that especially since you are living in Ireland. Are you in the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland? Basically you do it all online and just need to send your passport and documents (if you don't have documents for a visa, you can easily get them online for tourist visas up to a max of 30 days or a business visa for 90 days max). You can either send the documents and have your passport returned by mail or if you go to mainland UK you can go in person to collect your documents either at the visa processing centre in Edinburgh Scotland or in London.

A student visa can also be complicated depending on the courses you're going to attend and the institution and amount of time you need it for. When you apply for a student visa 9 out of 10 times you'll be issued a 90 day visa (single entry, meaning once you're in Russia you can't leave and re-enter) and then after 90 days if your course is going to be longer the institution can extend it for a fee(not that expensive, maybe about 40 pounds, possibly less). After it is extended it'll become multi-entry allowing you to leave and re-enter as much as you want.

As for registration: You're obliged to register your visa within 7 days in Russia and if you travel to other cities/towns/regions for more than 7 days you're also required to re-register. I wouldn't worry too much about this because if you travel on a student visa the institution will register it for you, if you go on a tourist visa - your hotel will register it(or you can register it yourself at the offices of the agency who provided the invitation) and the latter also applies for business visas. You MUST inform them of the dates you plan to leave the country and inform them if these dates change because the visa must be 'de-registered' however this is usually done automatically based on the dates you say you will leave on hence why it's important to inform them if your leaving date changes.

It all sounds very complicated and painstaking but in effect it's not actually that bad. It takes about one day when you're in Russia and after that you don't need to think about it any more :)