Whew! It has been even quieter than usual here. I do apologize.
If you have been following, since my last post I have been waiting for my residence approval. There was a complication. At the end of December I received a nice letter stating two things:
- My proof of income had been rejected as it was not in Czech. This was my fault as I took a risk sending printouts from the website rather than certified copies. FIO was able to give me a summary of all months in one giant statement and only charged one fee. 120Kč.
- They wanted me to prove I made enough money not only to support myself, by also my partner. In 2012 I had applied for a partnership visa with my Czech girlfriend, after nine months of trying to provide enough information to make them happy we finally broke up and I went back to Canada just long enough to reset my Schengen clock. Being asked to prove I could support a partner I no longer had, and that they never accepted I had, was interesting.
So, I mailed (by registered mail) my updated a bank statements as well as a notarized místopřísežné prohlášení, a document my ex signed to state we were no longer partners.
On January 11th my application number appeared on the approval spreadsheet. I had a friend call and make an appointment for January 28th. This means my application took from October 15th to January 11th to be approved – 89 days.
On January 28th I went back to the Chodov office for my biometrics appointment. They took my photo and fingerprints. They also verified my address.
One complication. They now wanted my expired residence card from when I lived here in 2014. This is the first time it was mentioned, no one has ever asked to see it or verify it as I was starting over again. I offered to bring it back when I pick up my card, that seemed to satisfy them. They issued an approval document and gave me an appointment to come back to pick up the card (as well as pay the 2,500Kč fee in kolek).
The final steps:
On February 18th I went back to the office at Chodov and picked up my shiny new dlouhodoby pobyt and paid the 2,500Kč. I am now legal until November 2017.
The following Monday I returned to the zivnostensky office where they copied my new residence card and issued my zivno with the same expiration date as my permit.
Total cost of this entire process: 2,880Kč (primarily the actual fee for the permit)
I’m now done this lovely process until the fall of 2017.
Canadian in Prague 
Would you mind if I email you some questions regarding invoices for the Zivno list?
Feel free to message me….
You were smart to pick up your živno right away after getting your pobyt card. I forgot about it and let the time I had to show them expire, so they’ve cancelled my živno and I have to start again. In the meantime, it seems way more complicated to get a criminal record check from Canada now … fingerprints are involved and it costs over CZK 7000 and the wait is weeks! I’m trying to see if there’s a way around that – an affidavit like Americans do, because that’s just extortion. Oh, and there’s the worry that this will affect my permanent residence application, as because my živno has been cancelled by visa isn’t really tied to anything anymore (though it’s valid until the end of June – so I definitely have to get this all resolved by the middle of June).