How to not overstay in your current job

For years, I thought my professional calling was working in international development.

I idolized development and aid workers, imagining my future self running vaccination campaigns or defusing international conflicts while speaking multiple languages and traveling around the world. In college, I interned for the U.S. embassy in Cyprus and the World Health Organization, eager to learn the ropes and make a positive impact. And as a management consultant at McKinsey, I did everything I could to get on projects that would let me have a hand in the development and nonprofit world.

So, when I landed a position doing strategic planning and implementation for vaccine introductions in East Africa, I thought I had landed my ultimate dream job.

In reality, I hadn’t.

Yes, I was doing incredibly valuable work, but most of my day-to-day involved costing out implementation in Excel spreadsheets, building PowerPoint decks to present our approach to groups of officials, and dealing with various bureaucracies. While the people I worked with were phenomenal, I ultimately realized that the work really wasn’t making use of my best skills and abilities. At the close of one particularly successful project, I started to feel itchy feet.

Making the decision to leave that job was difficult for many reasons—not the least of which was that I was walking away from what I had always considered my dream career and starting the next chapter essentially from scratch. But looking back, I knew in my gut it was the right decision. When I returned to the U.S., I began working on a small website—a project that did make use of those skills I wanted to be using and that eventually led to me founding The Muse. I haven’t looked back since.

Whether you, like me, aren’t sure you’re passionate about your work anymore, or you’re itching for a change, pondering new opportunities, or just wanting to try something else, I know how hard it is to make a change versus staying the course that you’ve plotted for yourself. But I also know that career paths are long and rarely linear anymore, and that if you’re not feeling fulfilled in your day-to-day, there’s no better time than now to consider what you might like to be doing instead.

But how do you know if it’s really time to make a change? Here are a few of the questions I asked myself when considering leaving my job. Hopefully, they will help you decide if a career move is right for you, too.

1. Do I want to do this for the next five years—or does the thought of that make me panic?
2. When I look at the opportunities ahead of me at my job, am I excited—or do I feel stressed, anxious, or bored?
3. Are there other roles, opportunities, projects, or clients I could work on at my current job that are interesting to me—or not?
4. Am I still excited about my work—or am I holding onto this job because it’s what I’m used to, because it’s what I thought I wanted to do, or because I’m afraid to make a change?
5. Does this job make use of my best skills—or am I feeling frustrated that my abilities aren’t being put to good use?
6. Does my current employer value growth, learning, and new opportunities for employees—or would I have more support elsewhere?
7. Is my work still aligned with my values, interests, and goals—or have my needs changed over the years?

Deciding whether to stay or go is never an easy decision. But hopefully, these questions will get you thinking—and, one way or another, point you in the direction of your career dreams.

Disclosure: This post was written as part of the University of Phoenix Versus Program. I’m a compensated contributor, but the thoughts and ideas are my own.

Ever had friends or family who somehow manage to turn a quick meeting into a four hour ordeal? It’s frustrating when you have things to do and people overstay their welcome, but getting rid of them isn’t always easy. Here are a few ways to do it without coming off as a jerk.

We all deal with someone who lingers too long. It might be the guy who stands at your desk after the conversation is over, the stranger who won’t leave you alone at the bar, or the in-laws who always seem to find a way to stay a little longer. To figure out how to deal with these people we talked with marriage and family therapist Roger Gil to come up with the best ways to politel ask someone to leave.

For Those You Know Will Linger: Put a Limit on the Conversation Time from the Start

The best way to get rid of someone who likes to overstay their welcome is to make sure it doesn’t happen to begin with. You can do this by setting up boundaries before the conversation starts. When you make plans with a serial-overstayer, mention that you have other things going on in the day. If you can’t do this, Gil also offers this suggestion:

If you’re out on the town and someone approaches you to talk, you can always say “I’m waiting for my friend” as soon as the person starts conversing with you. This also works great for house guests. When you invite them over, make sure you set an “ending time” to your social gathering.

When you can it’s best to set up an ending time so you don’t need that awkward conversation. If you don’t have the opportunity to preempt the problem you can still get rid of people without saying a word. Photo by Hendra Willyanto .

Use Your Body Language to Convey that It’s Time to Go

The easiest way to get rid of someone is to show them it’s time to leave with a little body language. This way, you don’t have to go through the trouble of coming up with something to say. Gil has a simple set of different cues you can give off:

Doing things like packing up your papers or looking at your phone and commenting on how you told “person X” that you would be calling them “at around this time” are pretty overt ways of telling someone, “I need this conversation to end now”. Averting your gaze also breaks the conversation and causes most people to back away. For especially persistent people (e.g. pushy guys at the bar who don’t get the hint) a trip to the bathroom is often a subtle-yet-effective “get away from me” cue. Just be wary of the fact that some people may react negatively to this if they’ve had a drink or two.

Body language is a great way to convey a feeling without saying anything, but sometimes people don’t get the point and you need a more direct approach. Photo by Jellaluna .

You Must Deal With Negativity Or It Will Just Get Worse

Some people exude negativity. They don’t like their jobs or they don’t like their company. Their bosses are always jerks and they are always treated unfairly. The company is always going down the tube and customers are worthless. For success at work, however, you must learn to deal with these negative coworkers.

You know these negative Neds and Nellies—every organization has some—and you can best address their impact on you by avoiding them. You have no reason to hang around with negative people and it’s a fact that their negativity is contagious. Hang with negative people and you may become negative, too. Why go there? Your career and job should bring you joy—not sorrow and negativity.

On the other hand, sometimes normally positive people are negative. Some of the time, too, their reasons for negativity are legitimate. You will take a completely different tack with these occasionally negative people, whose negativity may have some justification.

The following tips provide advice about how you can deal with both of these varieties of negative people. You need to approach them differently and sometimes, you may need help addressing their impact on you and your workplace.

Tips for Dealing With Occasional Negative People

Listen to the employee or coworker’s complaints.

You need to listen until you are certain that they feel heard out and listened to. Sometimes people repeat negative sentiments over and over because they don’t feel like you have really listened to them. Ask questions. Clarify their statements. Make sure that you have actively listened.

Decide if you believe the employee or coworker has legitimate reasons for their negativity. If you decide affirmatively, ask if they’d like your help to solve the problem. If they ask for help, provide advice or ideas for how the coworker can address the reason for their negativity.

Short-term advice that points a person in a positive direction is welcome. But, your role is not to provide therapy or counseling. Nor is your role to provide comprehensive career advice or long-term recommendations. Point the coworker to helpful books, seminars, or the Human Resources department to solve their problem. Know your limits when advising coworkers.

The coworker just wants to complain to a friendly, listening ear.

The coworker just wants you to listen; they don’t want your advice or assistance to address the situation. Listen, but set limits so the coworker does not overstay or over-talk his or her welcome.

Long-term complaining saps your energy and positive outlook. Don’t allow that to happen. Walk away. Tell the coworker you’d prefer to move on to more positive subjects. Tell the coworker that their complaining affects how you feel about your job and your workplace—and not in a good way.

If you are frank, hopefully, the negative person will stop complaining or unfortunately, probably target a less straightforward employee. If you see this happening, you might want to head to your HR manager to let him in on what is happening. He may address the problem to create a more harmonious workplace.

If you listen to the coworker’s negativity and decide their concerns are not legitimate, tell them.

You will need to practice personal and professional courage and tell them what you think about the cause of their negativity. Tell the coworker you care about their concern and about their happiness at work, but you disagree with their assessment of the situation. You do not, for example, agree that management lied or withheld information improperly to mislead staff. You believe that the information was provided as soon as it was available.

Back gracefully out of additional conversations. The coworker will attempt to appeal to your sympathetic nature, but if you believe the negativity is unwarranted, don’t spend your time listening or helping the coworker to address the negative feelings.

You will only encourage long-term and ever-growing negative feelings and, potentially, behavior. You will set yourself up as a negativity magnet. Constant negative interactions will eventually permeate your interaction with your workplace. You could become a ​negative person, too.

Tips for Dealing With Regularly Negative People

Deal with genuinely negative people by spending as little time with them as possible. Just as you set limits with the coworkers whose negativity you believe is baseless or unwarranted, you need to set limits with genuinely negative people.

The causes of their long-term negativity are not your concern. Every negative person has a story. Don’t impact your own positive outlook by listening to the stories, or reviewing the history and the background about the grievances purported to cause the negativity. You’ll reinforce the negativity; negativity is a choice.

Negativity mongers need a new job, a new company, a new career, a new outlook, a new life, or counseling. They don’t need you to help them wallow in their self-serving despair. Don’t go there—it’s not good for you, for them, or the organization that you serve.

Steps to Deal With an Often Negative Coworker

Deal with perpetually negative people in these ways.

• Avoid spending time with a negative coworker. For all of the reasons cited, you want to limit the amount of time you spend with them.
• If you are forced, through your role in the company, to work with a negative person, set limits. Do not allow yourself to become drawn into negative discussions. Tell the negative coworker, you prefer to think about your job positively. Avoid providing a sympathetic audience for the negativity.
• Suggest the negative person seek assistance from human resources or their manager. Try to steer the person in the direction of getting help with their negativity.
• If all else fails, talk to your own manager or human resources staff about the challenges you are experiencing in dealing with the negative person. Your manager may have ideas, may be willing to address the negativity, and may address the issue with the negative person’s manager.
• Remember, persistent negativity that impacts the work and environment of coworkers is a work behavior that may require disciplinary action up to and including employment termination.

The Bottom Line

If negativity among employees in your company is persistent, if the issues that warrant negativity are left unaddressed, and the negativity affects your ability to professionally perform your work, you may want to consider moving on. Your current culture will not support your desired work environment. And, if no one is working to improve a work culture that enables negativity, don’t expect the culture to change anytime soon. Move on.

A couple of people contacted my office recently who were facing the same dilemma. They had overstayed on their visas and wanted to know about the possibility of staying in the United States with their US citizen spouses. They wanted to know:

• Would they have to leave the country?
• If they did leave, would they be able to come back and reunite with their spouse?

Fortunately, I was able to fill them in on the fact that spouses of US Citizens enjoy special privileges.

One such privilege is the ability to stay in the country, file for adjustment of status and obtain a green card despite a visa overstay.

This post briefly discusses the options that you may have if you find yourself in a similar situation.

The Typical Adjustment of Status Process

Typically, when a family member files a petition for you while you are in the US, you can simultaneously file for adjustment of status and get a green card as long as you meet the requirements.

One requirement is that you maintain lawful immigration status. Under the regulations, if you are not in lawful immigration status at the time of filing your Adjustment of Status, your application will be denied. You will be considered to be in unlawful immigration status if you have never had lawful status (ie. you entered the U.S. without inspection at the border). Additionally you will be considered to without lawful immigration status if your authorized period of stay has expired.

I know that doesn’t sound great if you have overstayed on your visa. However, the good news is that as an “immediate relative” of US citizen you can successfully file for adjustment of status, even if your authorized period of stay has passed as long as you:

1. meet the requirements to be able to adjust status and
2. you don’t have other immigration or criminal violations that make you inadmissible and will prevent you from being able to adjust status and obtain a green card.

Immediate Relatives

Before we dive in and talk about the requirements, it is important to define the term “immediate relative.” When I think of immediate family members, I think of parents, brothers, sisters and spouses. For US immigration purposes, siblings do not count as immediate family. So, when you hear the term “immediate relatives” in the immigration context know that it means spouses, unmarried children under 21 years of age, and parents as long as the petitioning U.S. citizen is 21 years of age or older.

Requirements for Adjustment of Status after a Visa Overstay: Lawful Entry and US Citizen Immediate Relative

Lawful Entry Required

In order to be able to successfully file for adjustment of status, you must not have entered illegally(ie. you crossed the border without talking to any US government officials). If you are in this type of situation, you will need to seek a waiver and show that your US citizen relative would suffer extreme hardship if the waiver is not granted. This process requires you to leave the country at some point which creates a lot of anxiety. A lot of people simply don’t want to leave the country if there is a possibility that they will not be allowed to return and reunite with their family.

Immediate Relative of a US Citizen

In addition to people who entered illegally, immediate relatives of green card holders who entered legally but overstayed on their visa are also unable to successfully file for adjustment of status. If you are in this position, you will be required to seek a waiver if you want to pursue a green card based on the permanent resident status of your relative.

Possible Problems: Adjustment of Status After a Visa Overstay

So, let’s say that you are an immediate relative of a US citizen who has overstayed on your visa. You are in a good starting place. However, there are factors that may disqualify you from being able to stay in the US and adjust status. Most commonly fraud and convictions create problems.

Misrepresentation/Fraud

If the US government suspects that you committed visa fraud, you will be unable to adjust your status and obtain a green card. So, how does this come up? Let’s say that you arrived on a visitor visa, then immediately got married and moved in with your spouse. In this scenario you may be accused of fraud. The US government could say that your true intent at the time of your entry was to stay in the US permanently. Therefore, you misrepresented your intentions and committed visa fraud when you entered as a temporary visitor.

Criminal Convictions

You also need to watch out for Criminal Issues. Convictions of certain crimes will prevent you from being able to successfully file for adjust of status without going through a waiver process. The regulations state that foreign nationals are inadmissible to the U.S. if they have been convicted of or admit to committing a Crime Involving Moral Turpitude (CIMT) unless it was a purely political offense.

Conclusion

If you are married to a US citizen and overstayed on your visa please understand that there is no reason to panic. Many people who have overstayed on their visas are able to successfully file for adjustment of status. However, it is important that you sit down with an immigration lawyer to talk about your eligibility and to plan a strategy.

Focusing on asylum seekers who cross land borders ignores the real problem: people who overstay their visas.

If curbing illegal immigration is the goal, as politicians in the United States and Europe argue, then no wall or border fence will stop the West’s largest source of such immigrants. They are not the subject of televised debates or of long stories highlighting their plight. Many are invisible, making them hard to count, and little attention is paid to them. Yet focusing on them might yield better results than focusing on those fleeing violence and persecution.

The group in question? Visa overstays.

These immigrants, who enter countries legally on student, tourist, or work visas and then stay past their visa’s expiration date, are often overlooked in the discussion of illegal immigration. But in the past 10 years, visa overstays in the United States have outnumbered border crossings by a ratio of about 2 to 1, according to Robert Warren, who was for a decade the director of the statistics division at the agency that has since been renamed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and who is now a senior visiting fellow at the Center for Migration Studies, a New York–based organization. Elsewhere, the issue is even more pronounced—in Britain and Australia, the absence of a land border of the kind the United States has with Mexico and Canada means that nearly all illegal immigration comes in the form of visa overstays. Most people who are in Britain illegally, for example, entered legally and simply stayed on after their visa expired, research by Oxford University’s Migration Observatory shows.

Recommended Reading

A Functional Immigration System Would Look Nothing Like America’s

The Diversity Visa Program Was Created to Help Irish Immigrants

‘How Much More Merit Do You Need Than Saving American Lives?’

Recommended Reading

A Functional Immigration System Would Look Nothing Like America’s

The Diversity Visa Program Was Created to Help Irish Immigrants

‘How Much More Merit Do You Need Than Saving American Lives?’

Still, none of this has translated into visa overstays becoming a source of anti-immigrant sentiment. Immigration, especially in the U.S. and Europe, has become shorthand for the perceived uncontrolled flow of immigrants across land borders. In the U.S., Donald Trump has railed against “Mexicans” (though illegal border crossings by Mexican nationals are at multi-decade lows) and the thousands of people from Central America’s Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) who are seeking asylum. In Europe, the populist backlash to the entry of more than 1 million people from Syria and elsewhere in 2014 and 2015 resulted in even mainstream parties espousing a more restrictionist immigration policy.

“It’s right out there in the news, and you can see people” crossing borders, Warren told me. “With the overstayers, people will be tourists and they’ll come here, and they’ll either join relatives or they’ll join people they know, and they’ll get a job, and they’re not visible.”

The practice of pointing to a visible facet of a social problem—such as immigrants massing at a border—is hardly isolated when it comes to policy making. It is far easier to call for gun control or restricting the sale of violent video games after a mass shooting than to formulate more complex and coherent policies that might be more effective.

That could be changing, however, at least in the U.S. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the Trump administration, which has restricted its public statements, if not its actual policies, to illegal border crossings, now might be turning its attention to overstayers. Its specific focus may be the B1 and B2 visas, which are awarded to people visiting the country on business and tourism, respectively. Under the reported plan, the U.S. would put the nations with the highest overstay rates, based on Department of Homeland Security data—Chad, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone—“on notice,” and tell them that unless the numbers change, their citizens would find it harder, maybe even impossible, to obtain visas.

In the U.S., visa overstays have exceeded illegal border crossings in each of the past seven years. In 2016, about 515,000 people arrived in the United States illegally, the Center for Migration Studies said in a report. Of these, 320,000, more than three-fifths, overstayed their visas, and the rest crossed a land border illegally. But tracking people who enter the U.S. legally until they leave is difficult. The Department of Homeland Security conducted its own analysis for fiscal year 2017, and its estimate was 702,000 overstayers. (To be clear, that number is a small fraction, 1.33 percent, of the more than 50 million people who arrive in the U.S. each year on valid visas.)

Part of the reason the numbers are hard to track is that visitors’ visas are not checked as they exit some countries and, when they are, the system is either incomplete or problematic. In the U.S., Congress has mandated that authorities track those who are leaving the country, but the reliability of the data is unclear; in the U.K., which instituted exit checks in 2015, the process has been called “shambolic.”

The situation is more complicated elsewhere in Europe. The EU allows its citizens to move, live, and work freely across its member states. Some EU members also belong to the Schengen area, which allows for borderless travel—visitors can cross, for example, between France and Germany without having their passport checked. This lack of borders, in theory, allows someone who arrives in one Schengen country with a valid visa to move to another and remain there well after that visa expires. Collecting data on visa overstays in the EU is difficult, but they are likely the main source of its illegal immigration, according to the European Commission.

The Trump administration’s goal of reducing overstay rates is in line with its pledge to cut overall illegal immigration. As Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesman, told the Associated Press: “It is a top priority” for the president. But, even if the administration’s efforts are effective, they are unlikely to garner headlines.

You Must Deal With Negativity Or It Will Just Get Worse

Some people exude negativity. They don’t like their jobs or they don’t like their company. Their bosses are always jerks and they are always treated unfairly. The company is always going down the tube and customers are worthless. For success at work, however, you must learn to deal with these negative coworkers.

You know these negative Neds and Nellies—every organization has some—and you can best address their impact on you by avoiding them. You have no reason to hang around with negative people and it’s a fact that their negativity is contagious. Hang with negative people and you may become negative, too. Why go there? Your career and job should bring you joy—not sorrow and negativity.

On the other hand, sometimes normally positive people are negative. Some of the time, too, their reasons for negativity are legitimate. You will take a completely different tack with these occasionally negative people, whose negativity may have some justification.

The following tips provide advice about how you can deal with both of these varieties of negative people. You need to approach them differently and sometimes, you may need help addressing their impact on you and your workplace.

Tips for Dealing With Occasional Negative People

Listen to the employee or coworker’s complaints.

You need to listen until you are certain that they feel heard out and listened to. Sometimes people repeat negative sentiments over and over because they don’t feel like you have really listened to them. Ask questions. Clarify their statements. Make sure that you have actively listened.

Decide if you believe the employee or coworker has legitimate reasons for their negativity. If you decide affirmatively, ask if they’d like your help to solve the problem. If they ask for help, provide advice or ideas for how the coworker can address the reason for their negativity.

Short-term advice that points a person in a positive direction is welcome. But, your role is not to provide therapy or counseling. Nor is your role to provide comprehensive career advice or long-term recommendations. Point the coworker to helpful books, seminars, or the Human Resources department to solve their problem. Know your limits when advising coworkers.

The coworker just wants to complain to a friendly, listening ear.

The coworker just wants you to listen; they don’t want your advice or assistance to address the situation. Listen, but set limits so the coworker does not overstay or over-talk his or her welcome.

Long-term complaining saps your energy and positive outlook. Don’t allow that to happen. Walk away. Tell the coworker you’d prefer to move on to more positive subjects. Tell the coworker that their complaining affects how you feel about your job and your workplace—and not in a good way.

If you are frank, hopefully, the negative person will stop complaining or unfortunately, probably target a less straightforward employee. If you see this happening, you might want to head to your HR manager to let him in on what is happening. He may address the problem to create a more harmonious workplace.

If you listen to the coworker’s negativity and decide their concerns are not legitimate, tell them.

You will need to practice personal and professional courage and tell them what you think about the cause of their negativity. Tell the coworker you care about their concern and about their happiness at work, but you disagree with their assessment of the situation. You do not, for example, agree that management lied or withheld information improperly to mislead staff. You believe that the information was provided as soon as it was available.

Back gracefully out of additional conversations. The coworker will attempt to appeal to your sympathetic nature, but if you believe the negativity is unwarranted, don’t spend your time listening or helping the coworker to address the negative feelings.

You will only encourage long-term and ever-growing negative feelings and, potentially, behavior. You will set yourself up as a negativity magnet. Constant negative interactions will eventually permeate your interaction with your workplace. You could become a ​negative person, too.

Tips for Dealing With Regularly Negative People

Deal with genuinely negative people by spending as little time with them as possible. Just as you set limits with the coworkers whose negativity you believe is baseless or unwarranted, you need to set limits with genuinely negative people.

The causes of their long-term negativity are not your concern. Every negative person has a story. Don’t impact your own positive outlook by listening to the stories, or reviewing the history and the background about the grievances purported to cause the negativity. You’ll reinforce the negativity; negativity is a choice.

Negativity mongers need a new job, a new company, a new career, a new outlook, a new life, or counseling. They don’t need you to help them wallow in their self-serving despair. Don’t go there—it’s not good for you, for them, or the organization that you serve.

Steps to Deal With an Often Negative Coworker

Deal with perpetually negative people in these ways.

• Avoid spending time with a negative coworker. For all of the reasons cited, you want to limit the amount of time you spend with them.
• If you are forced, through your role in the company, to work with a negative person, set limits. Do not allow yourself to become drawn into negative discussions. Tell the negative coworker, you prefer to think about your job positively. Avoid providing a sympathetic audience for the negativity.
• Suggest the negative person seek assistance from human resources or their manager. Try to steer the person in the direction of getting help with their negativity.
• If all else fails, talk to your own manager or human resources staff about the challenges you are experiencing in dealing with the negative person. Your manager may have ideas, may be willing to address the negativity, and may address the issue with the negative person’s manager.
• Remember, persistent negativity that impacts the work and environment of coworkers is a work behavior that may require disciplinary action up to and including employment termination.

The Bottom Line

If negativity among employees in your company is persistent, if the issues that warrant negativity are left unaddressed, and the negativity affects your ability to professionally perform your work, you may want to consider moving on. Your current culture will not support your desired work environment. And, if no one is working to improve a work culture that enables negativity, don’t expect the culture to change anytime soon. Move on.

One of the scariest occurrences that can happen while traveling is overstaying your visa. To overstay your visa means that you have stayed beyond the days allotted on the visa you either applied for or the terms set forth by the stamp you received from the country of entry. Even if you didn’t apply for one, if you’re only allowed a certain number of days to be within a country and you stay beyond those days, that also classifies as an overstay—which may mean penalties.

How to Get a Visa

International travel involves a lot of moving parts:from getting a passport and booking your…

You might pay a fine

A few years ago my husband and I went to China for the first time. China requires American travelers to apply for a visa prior to travel and he thought he received one that allotted him to stay for 60 days. Unfortunately, the visa was only a 30-day stay, and by the time he figured it out he had overstayed almost a full week.

Upon attempting to catch a flight, he was flagged and pulled to the side. He was told he would have to pay for each day he overstayed his visa. The penalty is 500RMB or about $70 per day. Thankfully, because they could establish that this was his first time ever in China and that he was not a repeat offender, his punishment was merely a fine and not worse.

Because of the long wait in between each round of questions, however, we missed our flight to Thailand and had to rebook all new flights.

You could go to jail

Going to jail for overstaying your visa is often a result of more extreme circumstances such as:

• Overstaying for longer than a certain time. For example, you decide to stay a full year and you were only allowed 30/60/90 days to 6 months.
• Being a repeat offender
• Refusal to pay the fine

Here are some (but not all) countries where overstaying can land you in jail:

• Saudi Arabia
• China
• The United Kingdom (you would need a good reason to explain why you overstayed like giving birth, a death, or a global pandemic)

Each country is different, and you may receive different treatment depending on the customs officer you’re dealing with.

What to Do If You’re Locked Up Abroad

With the pandemic hitting across the globe, many American travelers have gotten stuck while living…

You might get banned from the country

Overstaying your visa can get you banned from being able to reenter a country. This ban can be a matter of years or a lifetime ban.

For example, an overstay in South Africa of fewer than 30 days will result in a ban for a period of 12 months. If you overstay your visa for more than 30 days, however, then the ban period will be at least five years. With this ban you will be labeled “undesirable” and the likelihood of being able to attain another visa or entry back into the country would be slim to none.

The consequences during COVID-19

Many expatriates and travelers have been stuck abroad due to border closings, canceled flights, or insanely high last-minute flight costs. According to onlinevisa.com , many governments have given travelers an automatic grace period while some require you to reapply for an extension.

If you are in a situation where you have been abroad and are not sure of the current restrictions:

• Call the US Embassy/Consulate and ask for advice.
• Email the Embassy/Consulate as a back up to show that you were not purposely overstaying your visa.

Because the pandemic is outside of everyone’s control, the likelihood that you would be penalized for overstaying a visa right now is slim, but always double-check, just in case. Also, be aware that your start and end date don’t have to be measured by a stamp or visa sticker. When your passport is scanned at customs, the biometrics are measured and will automatically compute the time you have been in a country. It is your job to keep track of the days you’re in a country.

Imani’s a writer who’s contributed to publications around the world including Business Insider, Cosmo, Glamour Magazine, & various airline in-flight magazines. She has lived in Egypt, Poland, & China.

If you stay in UAE even after your visa gets expired then the UAE government will levy you overstay fine for each and every day of overstaying in their country. From this article, you gonna learn how much will it cost for your overstay, how to calculate overstay fine and how to pay fine. Keep in mind that the fine amount will differ according to your visa plan.

Types of Emirates ID / ICA overstay fine in UAE:

UAE consists of seven emirates. While coming to overstay fine the fee will differ among the emirates. In UAE the tourist or visitor visa overstay will differ compared to the residential visa. Those difference in overstay fine fee is clearly mentioned in the list which announced by the ministry of the interior (in the Arabic language).

Emirates ID / ICA Overstay fine for Tourist or visitors:

If you are a tourist/visitor visa holder then you are allowed to have a grace time for 10 days. You have to exit or renew your visa within ten days otherwise you will be fined on the daily basis.

• Initially, you will be fined AED 200for the very first day after your grace time ends.
• For each consecutive days, you have to pay AED 100
• Also as a one-time service fee, you have to pay AED 100.

Overstay visa fine for UAE residents:

If you are a UAE resident, then you are supposed to have a grace period of 30 days after your visa gets expired. You need to renew your visa or else you can exit the country within this 30 days of the grace period. No fine will be charged during this grace period. After the 30 days of the grace period, you may tend to pay fine on the daily basis.

• AED 125for the first day of overstay in UAE,
• AED 25for each subsequent day,
• AED 50per day after six months of overstaying,
• AED 100per day after 12 months of overstaying.

However, if you are from the employment visa and the visa got expired or delayed to renew then the fine amount will be paid by your company at the immigration office.

Overstay is always dangerous:

Overstay in UAE is not only subjected to pay fine but also cause many penalties. If you are not able to settle the overstaying fine fee then any or all of the following things could happen.

• Your name will be in the blacklist,
• You may face an immigration ban,
• You could go to jail for approximately 3 months.
• You may be issued a deportation order.

Meanwhile overstaying in UAE is not a criminal offence whereas it is a criminal offence in UK like other countries.

Steps to calculate UAE overstay fine via online:

To calculate the overstay fine via online you need to visit the link mentioned below along that you require resident visa copy/file number and your date of birth.

Step 01: Visit the above website it will lead you to the ICA official website’s home page. Now search for public service tab under the icon which consists of four collective horizontal lines.

Step 02: After entering into the public service tab you have to click the “start service” button that exactly lies below “FINES-PAY FINES – VIOLATIONS OF ENTRY PERMISSIONS OR RESIDENCES-PAY NEW FINE” option.

Step 03: Once after finishing the previous procedures, you are allowed to fill three more steps. You have to type your visa file number, department number, year in which your visa got printed, serial number and sequence number (7 digit), your date of birth and enter the captcha code correctly (to prove that you are not a robot) and finally click on the search button.

Step 04: If the entered above information is right then you can able to see your overstay fine amount calculated along with how many days you have been overstaying in UAE.

Where to pay the overstay fine:

The overstayed fine amount will be paid at any one of the entry ports, immigration office, Amer office or at any typing centres. If you are willing to stay some more days in UAE and opting for an extension, the tourist company will make the payment for you.

• ENTRY PORTS: Most of the visitors pay their overstay fine at the entry ports like AIRPORT, LAND BORDER, SEA PORTS in any of the seven emirates.

• MINISTERY OF INTERIOR-IMMIGRATION OFFICES, AMER OFFICES AND TYPING CENTERS:

In order to save time, you can pay or settle the visa overstay fine through any of this nearby centres.

If you want to pay to overstay fine through online, complete all the steps after visiting the “smartservices.ica.gov.ae” link. In the personal information tab, you can able to see “sponsored relation with sponsor” column, in that you have click your relation from the drop-down menu and click next.

Next page asks for your phone number(which is linked with your bank account) to send OTP for verification and submit your request.

Once everything is done successfully you may receive a SMS and email confirmation with the receipt as “your overstay fine is paid”

• EXTENTION: 30 days or 90 days on arrival visa holders, prepaid visa holders or Mexicans are eligible to extend their visa via local tourism firm.

Fines during a pandemic situation:

The federal authority for identity and citizenship announced that any UAE visit visa holder waiting for the extension for the individual unable to leave UAE due to airport closures and flight cancellation there won’t be any overstaying fine charged towards the expired visit visa holder.

In case of extension of tourist visa despite exit, you need to pay AED 2300 for 90 days and for 30 days you have to pay AED 1900.

The resident visa holder needs to exit UAE after 30 days of the grace period or need to change their status as a tourist visa, after this pandemic situation controls and it cost nearly AED 1400 for 30 days and AED 1800 for 90 days of stay.

Online overstay fine service charge’s:

• 52 AED is the total fee to clear fines,
• 4 AED is the e-service fee,
• 22 AED is the fee paid to ICA.

In case of rejection due to some wrong information entered, the total fee to clear fund 52 AED will not be refunded.

Overstaying, also called illegal residence, means that one remains in a country after his/her visa or residence permit has expired. If an alien’s total length of stay in China exceeds the appointed time on the visa, it will be deemed to have overstayed the visa. For instance, if a foreigner enters China on June 19 with a 30-day visa, he is supposed to leave on July 19. Since the stay length in China is counted from 00:00 the next morning following the entry date, if the foreigner leaves on July 22, he will have overstayed his visa by three days.

Note that if the scheduled time on your departure ticket is later than your visa’s expiration time, you will be regarded as having overstayed even if you go through the immigration inspection before the visa expiration time. However, if your scheduled departure time precedes the visa expiration time, but the carrier changes the schedule, you won’t have overstayed your visa.

Do I Have A Grace Period?

What Are the Penalties for Overstaying in China & How Much Does It Cost?

What Can I Do after Overstaying?

How Do I Prevent Unintentional Overstaying in China?

visa Overstay Can I be Reconsidered Using Administrative Reconsideration Appeal
I have Overstayed by 62 days; the day I will turn myself in will make it 68 days. I understand that I have broken the Law and I have to face the penalty. I want to ask that after I pay the fine and may possibly face detention, If I can be reconsidered to stay and finish my degree as I am due to graduate 2022. thanks you for taking time to read this and please get back to me at your earliest convenience.