Back in September 2022 the local government of Albania’s capital city, Tirana, invited a group of us digital nomads to join their nomad festival.
As part of their pitch to encourage people to move to Albania was a new Digital Mobile Worker Visa.
https://mb.gov.al/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Ligj-p%C3%ABr-t%C3%AB-Huajt-%E2%80%93-nr.-79.2021_English.pdf
Article 68 Single residence permit for digital mobile workers
Pitching a Digital Nomad Visa to a Group of Digital Nomads
The pitch sounded quite good. It included:
- Easy online application
- English language
- Multiple entry visa for 1 year
- No obligation to remain in country for most of the year (single biggest failure of most digital nomad visas)
- Inexpensive fees
- Fast turn around
Yes, you needed local Health Insurance but in Albania my quotes were around €50 a year. Super affordable for a technical tick in a box.
Once you became resident you could also get access to Albania’s:
- Low cost of living
- 5% income tax (technology employees and businesses)
- low social contribution rates
- lovely warm weather on the Mediterranean
- and their legendary 300 days of sunshine each year
The pitch was rolled out by senior politicians and bureaucrats.
They explained how hard it was to get Albanians around the world to return home but much easier to import smart migrants with easy visas. These tech driven migrants would help enthuse and encourage local a local tech scene and provide additional job opportunities within global companies.
Since then, it’s largely been . . . crickets.
Crickets
Repeated requests by many of the festival attendees to the agencies and officials involved have gone unanswered.
The immigration agency even confirmed in writing to several that no such visa exists (yet is already in law and linked above)
The Albanian government also has an issue with their government websites, including the e-visa site, being hacked often, and routinely goes offline.
The e-visa site https://e-visa.al/ is quite easy to follow but has almost no instructions and so with some questions I, like others, have raised a series of requests to the Albanian government.
Almost no answers have come back from the bureaucracy in nearly 4 months.
Visiting a Local Immigration Center
Without any answers arriving in over 3 months, with the help of some local Albanian business friends, today I trotted down to the immigration police today in Vlore to ask my questions.
While I got the answers, I needed I also learned of a lot more unwritten rules and processes to follow.
Things appear nowhere near as straight forward as any documentation lists.
The Outlined Process
Here is what they said:
- You must apply for the visa within 30 days of crossing the border into Albania (please leave for a day if you fall outside the limit)
- You must start by registered for a local tax file number before you can apply for a Residency Permit (which will obviously need an address)
- After your Tax File number is achieved (timeframe unknown) you need to get a Work Permit by showing you have a job with an overseas company
- Then with these 2 documents please apply for the Residency Permit. (I should mention that US citizens can stay in Albania for 1 year on a tourist visa but us non-US people it usually only 3 months at a time)
- So, as part of your Residency Application you need to prove you a resident somewhere and that document (birth certificate, divorce cert, marriage cert, apostilled civil partnership agreement etc.) needs to be dated within the past 6 months.
- It also needs to issued from your home country and ‘apostilled’ by your home country – e.g. the Australian Embassy in Rome in my case. (I don’t know if apostilling requires me to present in person in Rome or not yet)
- Then you are required to present a 12-month rental agreement for an apartment or house. (Hotels apparently are not acceptable)
- That rental agreement needs to have been signed in front of an Albanian Notary and lodged with the Municipal council as well (which means there is tax to pay by the landlord)
Ouch
Ouch is the word.
Such a lot of extra and illogical paperwork needed to stay a few extra months in the country.
Such a lot of anti-digital nomad roadblocks.
Such a lot of dual standards. E.g. US tourists staying 12 months only need to show proof of accommodation for 1 night (maybe) yet a non-US person wanting to stay 12 months needs to have a long-term agreement.
Frankly, how would I know where I want to stay until I’ve spent a few months here anyway and looked around a bit.
In my case this is my 3rd visit to Albania and while I’ve explored a lot of the country already, I need deeper understanding of local issues before signing a 1-year lease. For instance, the part of Vlore I’m staying at now has an issue with consistent power supply, which also takes out the internet in the suburb.
Albania and Albanian are Lovely… but Maybe They Just Want Tourists
Now, I really like Albania and Albanians.
The food is great, the people are great, the weather is some of the best in Europe, there are miles of empty beaches, the internet is pretty good, the cost of living is awesome… the list goes on.
As a digital nomad I’d like to spend more time here and maybe employ more of the locals.
But right now, the barriers to entry are out of sync with the reward. It’s probably easier to remain a tourist and minimize any business investments or expenditure.
Time will tell. But it’s now nearly 4 months since the pitch, and over a year since the visa became law.
Maybe this is the reason there have only been 20 remote worker visa’s issued (according to the Albania government).