Are you moving to the Czech Republic as a student and you wonder if you can bring your family with you? Of course you can! This article tells you everything about bringing your family with you when moving to the Czech Republic as a student, so read on!
Can students bring their family to the Czech Republic?
This is one of the most common questions we get and the answer is kind of simple – you can. You just need to know who qualifies as a family member you can bring and who does not. You should also be aware of what visa or residence permit options you have when you want to bring your family to the Czech Republic as a student. Let’s go through everything together now.
Who qualifies as “family” for students
There are two groups of people who qualify for the family reunification with no problems – spouses and children. Bringing your wife or husband and your child or children to the Czech Republic should be pretty straightforward since that is whom the Czech Republic sees as immediate family members.
Bringing your other family members such as parents or sibling is technically also possible but not really realistic in most cases. If you want to bring your parents for example, they have to be solitary (meaning you only have one parent alive), above some age limit and/or not able to provide for themselves.
Bringing your siblings would be even more complicated and basically then only way to do that would be if they had no one else and they could not provide for themselves.
What visa options does your family have
If your family members fall under the “allowed” groups listed above, you basically have two visa or residence permit options you can use to bring your family here as a student. Which one to chose mainly depends on two things:
- How soon do you want to bring your family to the Czech Republic,
- If you want your family to be able to work from the moment they come to the Czech Republic or not.
There are generally two options which differ based on the two above.
Long-Term visa with the family purpose of stay
The biggest advantage of the long-term visa is that your family does not need to wait for anything. They can apply for this visa along with your student visa/residence permit application or anytime after that (i.e. right when you get approved etc.).
The approval time is also pretty short – officially 60-90 days.
The main disadvantage is that your spouse can not work freely under the long-term visa. There are still some options for them to work though (i.e. to get a trade license or find employer willing to sponsor them for an employee card or a blue card) so it does not have to be such a big deciding factor 🙂
Long-Term residence permit with the family reunification purpose of stay
The disadvantage of applying for the long-term residence permit is that your family can only apply for it after you (as the main applicant, student) have been here for at least 15 months. That means your family would have to stay outside of the Czech Republic for say at least about a year after you had left.
The official approval time is also pretty long – up to 270 days (even though it is in most cases decided faster).
On the other hand, if your spouse gets this residence permit, they can basically work from the moment they get their residence card.
So, it depends on what is generally more important for you – bringing your family right with you even if they can not work for a year or two, or stay a year or two without your family (so they can i.e. keep their current job in the country of origin) and only bring them when they can join a job in the Czech Republic.
If you have any questions or need help with bringing your family to the Czech Republic, fill in the form below or on the right and we’ll be happy to speak with you 🙂
Move To Prague relocation experts
