Immigration and residence permit lawyer in Tbilisi, Georgia

Staying in Georgia lawfully

Whether you need a permit at all depends on your nationality, why you are here, and how long you intend to stay. Nationals of many countries can enter and remain for a long period without a visa, which is why so many people arrive without a plan and then find that the thing they actually want, a bank account, a company, a school place, a family member joining them, quietly assumes a residence permit they do not have.

The rules here change more often than in most countries, and they change without much notice. Advice that was right last year is not automatically right now, which is the honest reason this page does not quote you figures and deadlines.

What I handle

• Residence permits. Temporary, work, study, family, investment, and permanent residence: which category actually fits, what it will require, and what it commits you to afterwards.
• Work authorisation. Whether the work you are doing needs it, what the employer has to do, and how that sits alongside the employment contract.
• Visas. Applications, extensions, and changes of status, including cases where a short stay has to become a long one.
• Renewals. Filed early enough to matter, which is the cheapest thing a foreign resident can do for themselves.
• Refusals and appeals. Reading what the decision actually says, and deciding whether to appeal it or refile.
• Family cases. Spouses, children, and dependants, including the document trail that has to be built before anyone applies.
• Overstays and irregular status. Assessed candidly, including when the best move is to leave and return properly.

Documents are usually the bottleneck

Applications rarely fail on the law. They fail because a birth certificate was legalised in the wrong order, a translation was not certified, a document that had to be recent was eight months old, or the address on one paper does not match the address on another. Getting foreign documents ready takes weeks, and it has to start before the application rather than after it.

If you are gathering papers from a country you no longer live in, say so in the first conversation rather than the last. That is usually the constraint the whole timeline runs on.

When an application is refused

Refusals here are often brief and do not always explain themselves, which makes the first question practical rather than legal: is there something to appeal, or is a better application the faster route? Appeal windows are short, so a refusal letter is not something to sit on for a fortnight while you think about it. Bring it when it arrives and we can make that call the same day.

For employers

If you employ foreign staff, the obligation is yours as well as theirs, and it runs alongside your duties under the Labour Code. I audit existing files, get the contracts and the authorisation records to say the same thing, and handle the permits for incoming hires as part of the same move rather than as a separate scramble.

For a company relocating a team, this works best sequenced with the corporate setup: the entity, the contracts, the permits, and the family moves in one order, planned once.

Why work with me

I am admitted in Georgia and in New York, and I act for foreign individuals and for the companies that employ them, which means I see both sides of the same file. You deal with me directly rather than with an agent, and you get a straight answer about whether a case is strong, weak, or simply premature.