Contract Killer

It is now the start of what should have been my second week of work at the new school. I am not at the new school. I am still in Korea and I am still being blocked by the most insane law I've encountered since becoming an ESL teacher. My expired foreign expert certificate remains un-cancelled by my former employers, Huasheng. This is blocking my prospective employers from processing a NEW work visa for me.

The question, "Why would an expired certificate need to be cancelled?" is the first thing one would ask. The explanation of the foreign expert certificate, (FEC), and what it is might help. What it is is a glowing example of the unnecessary paperwork China seems to be in love with. It's a piece of paper that basically says you have a skill that is marketable in China and there aren't many Chinese people with that skill that you might be taking a job away from. I speak English fluently and have a degree to prove it. Chinese people in general don't speak English fluently. Why we require a paper that states this is anybody's guess. But this is not the most ludicrous thing about the situation. Not by far.

Acquiring the FEC is part of the process of getting a legal Z work visa in China. It is one of several certificates that are required. A residence permit, a work permit, an FEC, a medical check, a negative criminal record check verified by a Chinese embassy in your country, a copy of your degree verified by the embassy in your country, a couple pics and some other application forms that contain the same information on the other forms. When you have all of this ready, then you can submit a request to the government and they approve or deny your request to work in China. After that, you get a temporary Z visa with which your employer can get the actual documents listed above once you've arrived and started work in China.

So, again, why does it need to be cancelled? If I get all the other stuff, why can't the new employer cancel the old FEC while obtaining the new one? The new Z visa doesn't even require the old FEC to be cancelled technically.

What happened was my new school started processing the new work visa and were told that my old FEC was not cancelled. I told them that I had repeatedly asked the old employer to cancel it but they wouldn't do so because then they would have to pay me and they just didn't want to pay my final salary. In order to cancel the FEC, they need a sort of "end of contract" contract. They told me many many times to sign one of these and I refused. I refused because it contained the clause, "All dealings with (my former employer), are now completed and no more money is owed." Or something to that effect. I said that obviously I can't sign this until that was the case and it wasn't the case. They still owed me money. So I made it clear they would pay me first and then I would sign.

They just harassed me to try to get me to sign but refused to do what they should do and what the document says they have done. Even if I had signed, it wouldn't have guaranteed that Huasheng would have cancelled the FEC, however. All I would have gotten would have been their PROMISE to cancel. And their promise is worth less than nothing. That had become abundantly clear long before that point.

So we were at an impasse. I decided to just apply for a new job and let the certificate expire. My future employer, (Donna, the person who interviewed me), assured me that this would work. Well it hasn't worked. For some reason expiration is not enough. It needs to be cancelled. It gets stupider.

Victoria U., my prospective employer, has told me that it is ILLEGAL for Huasheng to refuse to cancel the FEC. They heard this from their visa department. So if it's illegal, how do we force them to cancel it? Well even though they say they are eager to get me working for them, they are not eager enough to look into this problem. I spent money going to the hospital to get a physical, going to Beijing to be fingerprinted, getting the criminal record check and stamped degree, and leaving the country so as to facilitate the Z-visa processing. The school told me this would all be reimbursed, but I was the one who paid for it all. It was over 1000 bucks not to mention the time and hassle.

Now Victoria U. is leaving it up to me to solve the FEC issue, FROM KOREA, and wishing me well. They have said nothing about sharing the expense that I endured after signing the contract, becoming their employee and being promised payment for the visa legwork. I don't think they'll pay me anything. And the expensive documents remain in their possession.

I have asked a couple people who I worked with at TUST to help me out by phoning around and finding out how to cancel the FEC. Another girl nicknamed Doris, who was the person working for Huasheng who was charged with convincing me to sign the end of contract contract, is also looking into things for me. She wasn't paid for working for Huasheng either and successfully went to a Labour office who forced Huasheng to pay her. She asked the office if they could get MY money back as well and they said they could. However, I was worried at the time about someone finding out about my working for Huasheng on a business visa before we got my Z visa.

I explained all of this to the representatives of Victoria U. back in December and January and said that it might be a good idea to get some of this stuff done in January just in case we have trouble with the new visa laws. Well I've been told that this problem we are having IS related to one of the new visa laws. They DID inform someone at the university where VU is located in Shenyang, Liaoning University, that my former employer was blocking me and that person called them. The result was who ever they reached, (probably the compulsive liar, Mr. Liu), telling them how I had wronged Huasheng and quit in the middle of my contract to work for another school. And I guess that same story is the one that was told to whatever office is not cancelling my expired FEC.

So, Huasheng, a company that has cheated me out of about 15-20 thousand bucks that I would have made working with them; a company who COMPLETELY changed my contract half way through causing me to quit, then threatened to have me booted out of China the next day and have my bad name and bad things published about me in the newspaper; a company who, through their shady dealings, lost the contract they had signed me on for, were unable to find me other work for the months of July and August, then in September illegally farmed me out to another school without signing the proper documents; THIS company is now able to block me from earning an entire year of wages by doing some more lying to the proper people. (Consult the "Ow My Ass" post for the details)

I have no idea if I'll be able to get this situation resolved even with the help of all the good people who are trying to get it straight. I'm losing hope to tell you the truth. And even if I hear that the FEC was cancelled this week, I don't know if there's enough time to still get hired on at VU.

So this looks to be another Lincoln International School situation. If you remember, that was the place I moved to and then found that their major investor, (who was Chinese), was busted for business fraud and they withdrew their offer of a year's work to me.

And before that was the Wall Street Indonesia fiasco where I was brought over on a business visa and told I would work there for a year, but shortly after starting work I had to be let go due to a government crackdown on Wall Street for bringing workers over on business visas instead of the proper work visas.

So this appears to be the third time in about 4 years that I've signed on for a year of work and had it taken away for some reason. And if you go back to 2010, there was the contract I signed with Dongshin University that I had to eat due to new visa laws in Korea.

A person is unlucky if this happens once to them. Twice is an absolute travesty! Four times and you are some kind of phenomenon! Four times in 8 years? Once every two fucking years?!?! There's no word for that. So 100 won for the person who can suggest the best name for what it is that I do better than most. Maybe better than anyone. Until I hear a better suggestion, I think I'll call myself a contract killer.