Cecilia Minges is a happy Shanghai worker. A few days ago she signed a one-year contract of employment with a firm. What is making her truly happy though is that her new company's human resources department is working with her to ensure she will get a work visa, enabling her to live and work legally in the city. For the US Florida native, who has had two years experience in PR in her native country, this is really good news.
 
"If I have a work visa, I don't need to go abroad frequently to renew my visa and I can stay in Shanghai for a longer time," Minges said. "But most importantly, I don't need to worry that I will become one of the many people working illegally in Shanghai."
 
Some of her friends from different countries are working without proper visas and are worried that they will be caught in a new campaign targeting foreigners. The campaign aims to crack down on foreigners who try to enter, stay or work in China illegally. Some expats who have work or are looking for work on tourist visas could find themselves in hot water. The campaign will swoop on foreigners who don't have a work visa because their employers have not provided one or because they want to avoid paying tax. They face being discovered, fined and possibly deported.
 
Public anger

The campaign follows two highly publicized incidents. In May a three-minute video of a British man sexually assaulting a young Chinese woman in Beijing spread through the Internet. Over the following four days the clip was seen by more than 3 million people. Then a week later, a Russian musician, a cellist with the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, was filmed harassing a woman on a train from Shenyang to Beijing. This clip found its way to Sina Weibo, the country's largest microblog.
 
The incidents roused public anger and the authorities decided to crack down on foreigners involved in criminal or improper behavior. Over the past 12 years, the number of foreigners entering and leaving China has increased 10 percent every year and now about 50 million foreigners arrive and leave China every year, according to a CCTV report. But some stay here without proper employment or means of support and a few take up crime.
 
In May, the Beijing municipal government said that over the following three months, it would crack down upon foreigners behaving illegally. And the Ministry of Public Security is drafting new laws to curb people trying to illegally enter, reside or work in China.

One of Minges' friends taught English at a city school until recently but has left Shanghai because of the crackdown. "The school kept telling her that it would help her apply for a work visa, but after her working there a year, it was still just a promise. After the crackdown started, my friend was concerned that she might be one of the people working here illegally, and she decided to go back to her home in London," Minges said.
 
When a Chinese company wants to hire a foreigner, it has to apply to the local labor authorities for a foreigner's work permit and then send the permit as well as a letter of invitation to the intended employee who can then apply for a work visa when he or she comes to China. After a foreigner arrives in China he or she has to go through the formalities of obtaining employment and residence permits.
 
The city's regulations say that only expats who have certificates like a foreign expert's certificate can be exempted from needing to apply for work permits, as distinct from work visas which are compulsory. Foreigners looking for work are also required to have a certain level of expertise, a good formal education and at least two years of experience related to the work they will be doing in China.
 
Student concerns
 
The campaign is also targeting another bunch of workers who are often employed illegally - international students who want to stay in the city after they finish their studies.
 
Alex Nutton is a 23-year-old British exchange student studying Chinese at Fudan University. Although he does not plan to live in Shanghai forever, he wants to stay here for a while after he graduates next year. "I would like to stay here for two or three years after I've graduated, if I can find a decent job. It's mainly about getting more experience when I'm young." But the experience of one of his friends has given him concerns that he might not be able to obtain a proper visa to work in Shanghai. "She is working for a city firm. She was eager to acquire a work visa but she did not get it until she had worked there for six months."
 
Chai Xiaoping is a labor law expert with the Shanghai Shenbang Law Firm and he confirmed that no foreigners can work in China without work permits and work visas.
 
"If you don't get a permit to work here, your work and the wages could interfere with the way the labor market works here. The fine is not very great, but expats can be ordered to leave the country within a set period if the situation is serious," Chai told the Global Times. "As well any companies employing foreigners illegally face a fine of between 5,000 yuan ($786.5) and 50,000 yuan, and then will have to pay the cost of deporting the illegal employee to his or her home country.
 
"If foreigners try to enter China without an official visa or certificate, the fine ranges from 1,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan and they can be detained for from three to 10 days; if foreigners stay in China longer than their visa allows, they face a fine of 500 yuan for every day they stay after the visa has expired," he said.
 
The laws and regulations governing foreigners coming to China and being employed here have not been revised for some time. The laws governing entry and exit for foreigners were introduced in 1986 and 10 years later, the labor and public security authorities introduced regulations governing foreigners working in China.
 
Chai said that detailed rules and regulations for employing foreigners in Shanghai were drawn up in 1998. But, like the national-level laws and regulations, they have not been updated much. "They are far from realistic."

More and more foreign students have been coming to Shanghai to study in recent years. From 1999 to 2009, the number of international students in the city increased 11 times, from 3,388 to 38,510, according to the Shanghai-based Youth Daily. The city's middle- and long-term plan for education reform and development estimates that by 2020 there will be 150,000 international students in Shanghai accounting for 15 percent of all the students in the city's universities and colleges.
 
The Shanghai committee of Jiu San Society (one of China's eight officially recognized political parties) recently conducted a survey asking international students whether they wanted to work here after graduation. "Seventy-three percent of the respondents loved Shanghai more after they came here than before they came, and 27 percent planned to stay to work," the survey's supervisor, Zhang Xiaopeng, said.
 
A teacher surnamed Xu with the International Students' Office of Tongji University said: "These international students who want to work in China have a deep interest in Chinese culture and want to grasp some of the many job opportunities which have resulted because of China's rapid development in recent years. But if they don't have two years of work experience before coming to Shanghai to study, it is hard for them to get a work visa."
 
Since 1996 when Shanghai first allowed foreigners to work here, the number of foreign workers increased 13 times over the following 13 years, reaching 68,648 at the end of 2008. Most of the foreign workers come from countries like Japan, the US, South Korea and Singapore, according to the Shanghai Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau.

Saving money

Wen Tian (not his real name) works in the human resources department of a city firm. "If a work visa is about to expire, foreign workers don't need to go abroad to renew it - they just have to hand the relevant documents to the labor authorities," he said.
 
His company is at present going through the formalities to obtain a work visa for a foreign employee. "He is from the US. If he gets a tourist visa and works here illegally, he can stay in Shanghai for three months at the most before he needs to get out of the Chinese mainland to renew his visa. But after he gets the work visa, he doesn't have to travel to Hong Kong to renew the visa as long as he works for our company. That also means we save thousands of yuan in air tickets every year," said Wen.

But some businesses don't want to get work visas for their foreign employees.
 
Zhang Bin is a lawyer specializing in labor laws and a member of the Shanghai Lawyers' Association. He explained: "Small companies have fewer reasons to convince the local labor authority why they have to hire foreigners, who will be taking up jobs that Chinese staff could be handling. They could be unwilling to pay the costs of the application which is about 1,000 yuan a year. Even large businesses are reluctant to help foreign staff apply for work visas. Although it does not take that long, about a month, from the formal application to the approval, the procedures are complicated. Companies have to deal with three government agencies including the labor and public security authorities.
 
"As well as employment permits and residence permits, businesses also need to help foreigners with many other things like obtaining medical certificates from hospitals and authorized translations. Before foreigners get a work visa they have to have signed a formal contract with their employer. That means businesses have to pay the social welfare insurance for them, which increases the costs of hiring foreign workers. Also if a company does not have specific and special reasons, it cannot fire a foreign worker during the period of the contract," said Zhang.
 
Although the new Shanghai PR Minges is happy with her work visa she is a little unhappy about the amount of tax she has to pay. This is another reason why some foreign workers don't apply for work visas. Once a foreigner signs an employment contract with a company, he or she needs to pay tax every month. They pay the same as their Chinese colleagues but often they will also have to pay extra tax on their income in their home countries. Trying to avoid paying tax is difficult and can incur serious penalties.

Despite the possibility of being taxed twice, some foreign workers still want the work visa in their passports. Even the workers who might not be officially qualified for the jobs they are seeking. There are visa agencies that offer to help these people. "In the past, if you didn't have a bachelor's degree and wanted to get a work visa, it was no problem. But now these things are checked more closely. However if you have two years of work experience you can get a work visa," said a worker with a city agency which arranges visas for foreigners. The agency charges 1,200 yuan for a work visa and promises to refund 70 percent of this fee if it cannot get the visa.
 
While obtaining a work visa in China can be complicated, the rules are there for a reason, said Zhang, from the Shanghai Lawyers' Association. "It is not that easy for ordinary foreigners to get a work permit. The work permit system is there to satisfy the employment demands of the country's citizens and protect their interests. It is the same in other countries like the US. But talented foreigners can easily get a permit and their work will help boost our economy," he said.