Teaching in São Paulo or Rio

Hi Margot,

As someone who has lived in Brazil for 14+ years now, and as an ESL English teacher with a career spanning 28 years, and Portuguese for expats 14 years, I can tell you that none of the commercial (for profit) language schools will offer any assistance whatsoever to obtain a VITEM-IV Work Visa.

This exists for 2 very simple reasons:

1.  The bureaucracy involved, and thus cost to the school. The law requires that the school would be required to prove to the Ministry of Labor that they had exhausted all efforts to place a qualified Brazilian in any job vacancy before they are permitted to hire an expat to fill it. That's a standard that would be almost impossible to meet, since there are any number of Brazilians who teach English. On the other hand, expats who are already legal permanent residents of Brazil can take these jobs if they don't mind the low pay.

2.  By sponsoring an expat for a VITEM-IV that would automatically require them to hire on a traditional CLT Employment Contract, pay all benefits and provide all working conditions mandated by law. They simply will not do that, when they can get any number of teachers to sign "Contrato Particular de Prestação de Serviço", service provider contracts, that frees them from any and all responsibility to the contracted employee. They don't pay benefits, they don't guarantee hours of work, and many of them don't even care if the teacher has the legal right to work in this country. If truth be known, they prefer those here working illegally on VITEM Tourist Visas, in order that they can continue to pay near-slave wages and deny benefits. Of course when they're caught with undocumented employees, they plead ignorance. Undocumented teachers working illegally will not complain about being exploited and underpaid, so that's how the schools get away with it.

The only teaching jobs in this country that would offer any potential at all of being sponsored by the educational institution would be those at private schools, and international schools, or universities. Of course they will all require a much higher educational standard for their job applicants, usually some post-secondary degree and teaching experience.

Cheers,
James
expat.com Experts Team

In my experience , every school I have been at likes to see an RNE permanent residence card

As a rule; I never saw or heard about a brazilian company who made the effort (time and money) to sponsor a foreigner for a visa when already in the country with a tourist visa. Stop to dream; get in the country with a tourist visa and find a company which sponsor them won't happen. Sponsorship happen generally in the case of an expat contract. So someone already working for the company is sent to the brazilian branch. I don't say it ever happened but certainly ghis is next to impossible. Especially now in crisis time,with near 10% unemployment and with trabalistic laws saying that company should employ a foreigner if they did not find Brazilians bring able to do this job.

What about a more uncommon language? I speak greek (mother language) and brazilian portuguese. I always dream about living and working in Brazil, to get away from the economic crisis in Greece, but now they have in Brazil too (which is not as tragic as in Greece, but it's getting difficult)

The public school system is reserved solely for Brazilian teachers. You need to be a citizen.

Private schools (international schools) may sponsor teachers, but usually don't because they have a ready supply of native teachers that live here permanently.

Language schools (commercial) exploit teachers with near-slave wages, the do not help in any way with visas, and in fact prefer that their teachers are working illegally, so they don't complain about the exploitation.

Cheers,
James
expat.com Experts Team

An alternative way has been used is to build a small company - which for so there is no need to have residence - and this company place a contract with the schools. Will  depend on the willingness of schools to hire you.

There are also abundant legislation opening exceptions for "guest teachers" as well.

Hi fronimitis,

I've found that Greek is almost unheard of here. When I've spoken to people they seem more interested in learning Ancient Greek as opposed to modern Greek for biblical reasons, which I can't help them with.