working in Varanasi

Rastafeyd

Hello,

My wife and I were wondering if it is hard to find work in varanasi. We are not picky any job would be ok. We are both Americans and will be in varanasi at the end of June and will be staying for about a year or longer. so any info in work you could give us would be great.

We're looking to make just enough a month to not draw down our bank accounts too much. Are there many opportunities for experienced english teachers or tutors?

Thanks.

wonderwomanusa

Your chances are somewhat slimmer than if a travelling Indian person wanted to work in wherever-in-America-you-are-from.

If you think the work and immigration laws in the US are tough, wait until you hear about those in India.

Use WORK for a search and see what you come up with in the way of previous discussions.

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dzibead

Briefly, you can't work in India legally unless you have an employment visa, which requires that you already have an actual job offer, which you have accepted, before the visa is issued - and ordinarily the visa has to be issued to you while you are still in your home country. You can't "convert" a tourist visa to an employment visa after you've entered India.

As for teaching English, India is quite different from other Asian and South Asian countries in that there are already plenty of people there who are, for all practical purposes, native speakers of the language, so apart from "accent coaches" in call centers (which you won't find in Varanasi) I suspect there are very few job opportunities for foreigners in that field. And, again, you'd already have to have a firm job offer in order to get an employment visa to work in this field anyway.

In short, your prospects for finding legal employment in Varanasi are slim at best, and, more realistically, are probably non-existent.

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delhiwala

Dear Rastafeyd, dzibead has summed up the situation very well !

But There is a little ray of hope. Varanasi has many big publishers of Indology books, may be you can get an opportunity in their proof reading department....

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dzibead

One other question comes to mind re: your plans. Do you intend to enter India on tourist visas? You say you intend to stay in Varanasi for about a year or longer, but a person entering India on a tourist visa cannot stay in India for more than 180 days at a time.

Even if you obtain a longer-term visa (i.e., one with an over-all term of more than 6 months), you still cannot stay in India for more than 180 days on one visit. You have to leave the country and return. Americans are eligible for longer term, multiple entry tourist visas (in fact, Americans are eligible to obtain multiple entry ten-year tourist visas but they're expensive), but even with these longer term visas, no single visit to the country can exceed 180 days at a stretch. You must still leave the country at least every 180 days, even if the over-all term of the visa is longer.

The advantage of a longer term visa is that you can turn around and immediately re-enter the country without having to apply for a whole new visa. But I have heard that India only issues the ten-year visas to Americans who apply from within the United States, so if you plan to come directly from China to India, you probably won't be able to get one of the longer term visas anyway (unless you already got one before leaving the U.S. to go to China!)

Moreover, if you are issued only a six month visa (and in fact you might be issued only a shorter one, e.g., three months), if you then make a "visa run" to a neighboring country to apply for a new visa when your first visa is about to expire, India might not issue you another back-to-back tourist visa allowing you to return immediately. The website for the Indian High Commission in Kathmandu, which was formerly a popular place for making a "visa run," now expressly says they won't issue back to back tourist visas. In any event, even if they agree to issue you another tourist visa, since you are applying from outside your home country, it will probably take at least a week to ten days for the Indian authorities to process the application. It's not a quick turn-around like it is when you apply for the visa from within the U.S.

I think you've been assuming that you can just show up in India and hang around, possibly working a little, for an extended period of time, but it's really not that casual and easy.

Rastafeyd

I was only trying to get a feel for India since each county is different in this regard. I posted in Varanasi because I was hoping for information specific to working in Varanasi, not greater India.

I've done my research with regards to the visa situation. And while you are right that an Indian consulate will not grant a foreigner in China more than a 6 month visa, it is possible to send you're passport back to your home country, which we did. Considering we are both Americans, and the U.S. and India have a bilateral agreement providing as long as 10 year visas with 6-month long stays then it is quite possible to not have to deal with applying for a new visa again and again. Also, Bangladesh is another country that provides 5 year long visas with 1 month long stays. Meaning it is entirely possible to get visas for both countries and hope back and forth without ever having to deal with another Indian consulate outside of getting the first visa.

What about just one-on-one tutoring? The government can't very well keep tabs on something as neglible as that. As long as one's price was quite low would locals, and parents not prefer a teacher with a certain accent? Thanks in advance.

dzibead

Well, it sounds as if you're in good shape on the visa front, although I don't know how you were allowed to be in China without your passport in your possession, if you sent it back to the U.S. to have the Indian visa application processed. But if it worked, it worked.

Even private tutoring for money counts as employment and is illegal if you are on a tourist visa. Could you "get away with it"? Maybe ... but IM frowns on people asking for or giving advice on how to break the law. Seriously. You might think that's priggish, but that's the way it is.

Also, if you are working illegally, you put yourself at risk of being extorted or worse. You don't know your way around the culture, or who you could "trust", so is the (probably very modest) amount of money you could earn doing this worth the risk? Anyway, although I've only been to Varanasi as a tourist, it really didn't strike me as the kind of place where there's a big demand for English tutors with American accents. Except for call center employees, Indians who speak English have their own accent and don't care about trying to sound American, anymore than an Australian or an Irishman would. It really is very different from China or Japan in that regard.

Rastafeyd

My not knowing the culture or the country is why I'm asking in advance on this board in the first place. What country's have in the books and what is done in practice are usually two entirely different stories.

I'd like to note that I'm not directly applying for employment through IndiaMike, nor asking how to find employment. However, I am trying to get a feel for what the situation on the ground will be like. Obviously, had I not mentioned I was coming on a certain visa someone would have answered my question anyway. In fact, it's probably already answered somewhere. As far as priggish goes, I'm not all that interested in such because asking questions about working in a country as opposed to actually working in a country illegally are quite different. How do you know what is illegal unless you ask? I'm sure you didn't learn about India's laws by reading them directly from legislation, but from asking questions and just being around and chatting.

Even if you're in China and you want a visa from an embassy in Beijing, but live in a city far away you simply put it in the mail addressed to a visa service. Why go through the expense of paying to go in person? Obviously there is always a certain risk, but as long as there is an alternative if something happens to the passport, who cares? As long as you have a photocopy of your passport information page and your visa information, no one cares. If anything because when sending abroad you can use International carries, it's a bit safer to send it abroad then to actually send it through domestic mail.

I don't mean to come off priggish or anything. I'm not asking for advice on breaking the law, just the real situation as opposed to what you might read on an embassy website. Still, I feel obliged for all the useful information you've already provided. Still, I'll just let the thread end here unless you've got some more useful tidbits to add. However, I'd prefer this not become a back and forth on IM policies. Thanks again.

dzibead

That makes sense, but that's also why I was pointing out the risks you could expose yourself to if you do something illegal. Maybe in some countries the authorities can't be bothered, but the Indian police are notorious about extorting people who are in a vulnerable position, which you would be if they got a whiff that you were illegally employed, and even your private employers would not necessarily be above exploiting you if you are working illegally.

The reason I pointed out that IM frowns on giving or seeking advice on how to break the law is that after you were told you can't legally work while in India on a tourist visa, you followed up with a comment that, in effect, solicited advice on whether it could be done "under the table." There's no problem with asking a question to find out whether something is possible, but once you're told it's illegal, then it get's a little trickier when you ask follow-up questions re: how to circumvent the law. (And, for what it's worth, in fact I did learn that it's illegal to work in India on a tourist visa from reading Indian government websites and legislation, not from chatting.) Whether the thread will now die is beyond your control (or mine). Threads here tend to take on a life of their own and often end up going in some surprising directions, as you'll find if hang around longer and poke around a bit (e.g., check out the thread "Blonds - to dye or not to dye" ).

Rastafeyd

I could see how my follow up question on 1 on 1 tutoring would seem like a question on getting around the law, but in China there is a difference between employment, as in working for a company and employment as in working for an individual, say doing private tutoring. One is most obviously illegal, the second is a major gray area. I tutor the children of police officers and government officials even though they know I am student on a student visa. My question about the 1 on 1 tutoring wasn't a question asking how to work under the table, it was asking whether 1 on 1 tutoring was fell in this gray area since for the most part a fairly neglible sum of money is earned from it. The Chinese government does not demand taxes from its citizens or anyone in the country if they make less than 4000RMB a month, hence if you make little or nothing they don't care. I should have explained the situation better. Hopefully, you will see that my question wasn't a solicitation on how to circumvent Indian law.

LilBoy BigTown

I think this is dragging on a bit here.

To put it simply, although it is illegal to work on a tourist visa, if you could find a prospective student who is willing to hire you for your services, and you both have a good enough understanding, you will be fine.

Just make sure you don't bring it up in discussions with anyone you don't know very well.

I don't think the police, or the immigration officials in India are out to nab foreigners working illegally. That would actually mean they are 'earning' their wages, and they certainly much prefer being paid for doing nothing.

AwayFromHome

Ehmm.

I know you do not mean to encourage illegal employment, but this may be taken the wrong way by new IMers.

It is illegal to do what the OP is trying to do; if OP gets caught there will be consequences, most of them not pleasant.
Plus, OP will be depriving some local of legal employment.
India has a bad case of unemployment.

Cayle

I don't know what you are talking about. Everyone always stays on topic around here.

Back on topic, I'd not simply make that assumption. One never knows what goes on in the mind of an Indian bureaucrat. His mind is broken down into three zones, covering sex, corruption and bureaucratic voodoo. I distinctly the RTO (regional transport) obsessing over my FRO status (no problems) and my employment status (WTF does this have with my ability to drive safely) when I got my driver’s license. The OP may not need a driver’s license, but he’ll need a cell phone, or an X or Y or whatever.

It will come up.

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Strayoff

hi rasta -

a lot of people's replies have been discouraging, but as someone who's worked several ESL-related jobs in India, i can tell you that they're quite plentiful and easy to find. there aren't many available for perusal on the internet, but if you go to the city of your choice and ask around at schools, call centers, and especially IELTS training centers, there's a fairly good chance you'll be offered a job on the spot if you have experience (and, sometimes, if you don't).

there is one caveat - working on a tourist visa is wide open invitation to be taken advantage of by an unscrupulous company. the one we (my husband and i) most recently worked for used our tourist visas (despite our taking the job upon the promise of them securing a business visa which never materialized) as a constant source of manipulation and abuse. be sure to get a good feel for the company with whom you propose to work, and always keep a cache of your own funds on hand should you need to leave a situation in a hurry.

good luck!

dzibead

Yes, well you were working illegally so of course you were vulnerable to abuse, as I cautioned Fastfeyd, above. In any event, the appropriate visa you should have had is an employment visa, not a business visa - and you have to have it before you start working. Moreover, to get one requires that you first have a written contract with the employer, proof of which has to be submitted with the visa application. So if the outfit you were working for told you they were going to get you a business visa, they either didn't know what they were talking about -- or didn't care.