Tackling the big VISA issue: initiatives and goals

 Dear all,

in these months there is a disturbing issue in our community: the timings and the procedures for renewing the visa, a vital element in our lives in Israel.

The good news is that we did not forget about you, and we are aware of the discomfort, the frustration and the shocking experiences that many of us are encountering and sharing, especially after the last update from the Visa office. As of now, one should send their visa application 3 months in advance!

This means, other than the ridiculous waiting time, that the new visa will be activated by the day of the payment of the fees, which inevitably will happen before the natural end of the previous visa. Consequently, the next visa will probably be shortened, and again the next renewal will happen three months in advance.

 Other than that, it is not clear how the things are handled in between the Visa office and the Ministry of Interior, and there is disappointment also from our side: we fought all of this time to get the Visa procedure to be done on campus, as it happens in other many universities, and now that we got it, instead of having a smoother bureaucracy and less loss of time, we are showered with the opposite.

Additionally, enraged feelings came up when we got to know that in the other universities in Israel (Technion and Haifa university, Weizmann, Hebrew university, Ariel university) handle the whole visa process on campus and withing a few weeks.

This situation is no longer tolerable for all of us. We want our rights and safety to be protected by the TAU International School. The big question is how to tackle the problem in a constructive and efficient manner.

As you might have noticed, people took individual and group initiatives, and we - as volunteers and Int. Researchers representatives - are very glad and supportive of all of these. What we are worried about it is the message that we want to deliver to the TAU Int. school, and its level of "aggressivity" given the big frustration and the seemingly powerless situation of us.

Whoever wants to take up initiatives like that should be very careful on the steps to take, especially when they are doing it in the name of the whole community and while facing a big, powerful institution.

Three amazing colleagues of us (Pavel, Ekaterina, Dilorom) were the first to take public action on the VISA issue, and they composed a letter to be addressed to the TAU int. office. We came along and we offered our support, because united we are better than divided. And this issue is definitely something to solve with big number of supporters.

Again, how to do that? It's amazing to have good intentions, but we need also a plan, communication and democratic decision making, especially when we are acting on the behalf of the community. 

We met, we sat together and we came up with an amazing initiative. Pavel, Ekaterina and Dilorom are the leaders, and we support their action since we found a common ground on which we can work.

For the sake of the clarity, our democratic principles, and the justice we want to obtain, we want to share the plan of action we are designing. We want you people to get familiar with our action and we would like you to trust us, so here we share what we are doing and how we can reach all of you with this initiative.

step one: the survey

Firstly, we need to gather information to prepare a strong case and the arguments to expose to the International school. We are preparing a simple, ANONYMOUS survey to get to know your status, your personal experience and your proposal. We will keep it anonymous because we don't want the TAU institutional bodies to turn directly to you, and second, by collecting this information, we will make sure to filter it only and exclusively for the sake of politeness towards the Int. School representatives. We expect people to be angry and to express their feelings in the survey, but then the information must be carefully handled to be used to reinforce our complaint. We are dealing with an institutional body, and the powers equilibrium is in their favor.

HERE there is the link to the Survey

--> we will collect the emails of the people willing to support this initiative, so that when we send the email to the Int. school, we will have (hopefully) a strong number of people who signed, agreed and want to be involved, to show that the problem is systematic and there is a common sentiment. 

step two: the researchers' gathering

Once we got the information, we listened to all of the people's opinion (at least the ones who want to participate) and figured out the core topics, we will invite all of you to a meeting (in person and online for the ones who can't be there) to discuss the final letter to present to the International school, who is willing to come to have a confrontation with the Int. school representatives, and other topics that might arise. The goal is to have a common ground for everyone, clarify the doubts, take into account initiatives etc, as a democratic and equal community we advocate for.

UPDATE: the meeting happened on May 13th and the attendants approved the text and the intentions of the letter.

step three: request for a meeting with the TAU int. school directors

We will write a brief email stating our demands and frustration with the VISA process and we will request to have a meeting with Daphna and Maureen, the two directors of the TAU International school. The goal is to have a Q&A session, where possibly the two representatives will answer our concerns and elucidate the whole process for the VISA, step by step. We want to understand where is the bottleneck.

step four: publishing of the summary of the meeting

We expect the International School representatives to  sit with a few of us (typically they prefer having small meetings), so after the meeting we will share the summary and we will give updates in case their answers come later.

step five: what's next

According to what we got, we will figure out what to do if the things don't go as expected or if our concerns have not been addressed.