Which countries, if any, offer on-arrival work visas?

Question

After seeing this question I began wondering - are there countries that say, Aussies or Kiwis (or anyone else) can get a work visa on arrival, or while in the country?

The best I've found is this:

http://www.anyworkanywhere.com/whvchart.html

which indicates availability of working holiday programs, but for several of them (Argentina for example) you are required to apply to Wellington (in my case) before being accepted.

Chile, on the other hand, you can't get one on arrival, but you can apply for one while being a tourist in the country.

So a chart or definitive source of countries where you can basically wander in and start working (legally) would be the ideal answer for this :D

Answer 1

Work visas aren't going to be given on arrival anywhere (I'd be highly surprised if they did). You'd be dealing with a lot of issues regarding taxation, potentially taking jobs away from local people, and benefits (or the lack thereof) - and Governments are starting to get really finicky about actual work visas as it is. Getting work visas, even working-holiday ones, involve an intense process that can be time-consuming and costly.

Most of the time getting some sort of work visa involves being sponsored by a specific company, and you're not really allowed to work anywhere else outside the scope of your visa. Having it be obtained on arrival would make this nearly impossible to do.

The closest thing I can think of is that when you come to Australia on an international student visa, after about a week or so post enrolment you can "upgrade" the visa to give you working rights (and even then they're greatly limited).

Just today I watched an episode of Border Security (Aussie TV show about customs) where two men on tourist visas were sent back to Portugal because they were found to have working documents on them, and the officials didn't accept the story of "I wanted to come to Australia to check it out first and see if I want to move here, the work documents were in case I do decide to return".

Answer 2

There's precisely one case that I'm aware of: if you're a citizen of a country that has signed the Svalbard Treaty -- and you probably are, since signatories include most all of Europe, the US, Canada, India, China, Japan, Australia etc -- you are "allowed to become residents and to have access to Svalbard including the right to fish, hunt or undertake any kind of maritime, industrial, mining or trade activity", which includes working in any capacity.

Of course, there's a catch: Svalbard (Spitsbergen) lies at 74-81 deg N, a two-hour flight north of Norway, so it's pretty cold up there, and the population is under 3,000, which obviously means rather limited opportunities to actually find work. That said, it's a fairly big tourist destination so casual work is fairly easy to find in the summer season, but in winter there isn't much to do unless you're a coal miner. Or much to see, for that matter, since the polar night (=no sun) lasts from October to February!

Also, in order to get to Svalbard in the first place, you may need a Norwegian tourist visa so you can transit through to Longyearbyen.

Answer 3

I've obtained several distinct work visas in Germany, all were post arrival visas. I'm an American citizen, who visited as a visiting professor, but I thought most visa waiver partners qualify under most jobs that grant work visas.

You might find other German speaking or Scandinavian countries follow this rule as well, but always check with the consulate, maybe not all visa waver partners qualify.

There is a slim chance of obtaining a post arrival authorization to work in one European country that shall remain nameless, but only under exceptional situations, and not reliably.

A priori, I'd expect Brazil offers your nationality exactly the same work visa options as your nation offers Brazilians.

Answer 4

A seeming oasis of paperwork-free work possibilities is Georgia, a country not yet well established in the minds of travellers and tourists from the west, located between Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Black Sea.

Now it doesn't answer the letter of your question but I believe it answers the spirit. If not to the original asker then certainly to other who find this question by searching the Internet for instance.

So Georgia doesn't grant work visas on arrival and in fact I'm still not sure if they even have work visas specifically despite asking many locals and people working here and searching government websites. But most nationalities can visit without a visa and, despite the assumption-based answers to the question I once asked on this site, everyone is able to work here.

If you're from a rich / western country you can even stay for 360 days! Other countries may only be granted 90 days but a quick visa run to Turkey or Armenia will sort that out.

Basically you get an on-arrival tourist visa (passport stamp) but are allowed to work on a tourist visa!