An innovation for intermediaries is a bot that facilitates application registration. Now Polish visa can be purchased online.
According to hrodna.life, on an online shopping platform Kufar (the equivalent of Amazon), ads are posted for the sale of ready-made bots that help find and fill free registration slots for submitting documents for a Polish visa at visa centers.
A user named Valery posted advertisements in the "business" section. The product is a code for a bot. In March, a ready visa bot cost 800 Belarusian Rubles (approximately 245 USD - belsat.eu). In May, the price increased to 278 USD. Both advertisements are offered to recipients from the Hrodna region. The same bot was also sold on the Barakholka e-commerce platform.
User valera2901 tried to sell a ready-made bot in November 2024.
,,-Return on investment period: 3-4 months. Remote work. A laptop is enough. A cooperation option is possible. Programmer support is free of charge, and a bot rental option is available, wrote valera2901 at the time.
Since Belarusians are now willing to pay 400 Belarusian Rubles (approximately 123 USD - belsat.eu) for visa registration assistance, the buyer could recoup his investment from the first two clients.
Due to the high demand and the impossibility of self-registration at visa centers, the Belarusians have created various schemes to simplify the process of submitting visa documents.
In September 2024, independent media outlets reported that Belarusians from other regions of the country were changing their place of residence to Hrodna. They identify intermediaries willing to register them in their apartments to facilitate this process. This service incurs a fee of 300 Belarusian Rubles (approximately 92 USD - belsat.eu). Hrodna was a more accessible location for obtaining a work visa than Minsk or Brest during that period.
Obtaining a Polish visa for Belarusians is becoming increasingly difficult. The number of consular officers in Minsk, Brest and Hrodna has been drastically reduced over the past four years, and as a result, fewer visa applications are being accepted.
As of January 2024, the Polish government has suspended a visa program for freelancers, startups, and IT workers called "Poland. Business Harbor." The program was created in September 2020 to bring highly skilled workers and entrepreneurs from Belarus to Poland. At that time, they were emigrating en masse from their homeland due to large-scale repression after the regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka rigged the presidential elections.
Even with an invitation from relatives, friends, or employers, applying for a visa on your own is almost impossible. Intermediary companies that offer assistance in applying for a Polish visa charge for their services from 400 to 1000 Belarusian Rubles (approximately 123 USD - 306 USD- belsat.eu) per person, depending on the type of visa.
jkm,pj / en.belsat.eu
Translated by PEV
