Meet Germán Amaya, a Colombian TCN living in Hungary

Germán took part at the Getting (self-)employed as a TCN training and succeeded to become an entrepreneur

Meet Germán Amaya, a TCN from Colombia living in Hungary. Germán came to Hungary in 2019, he’s working as a consultant in market research for Hungarian, British, Colombian and Israelite companies.

Why did you choose Hungary?

In high-school, I had the chance to come to Budapest as an exchange student, and I fell in love with the culture, and especially with the city. When we had the chance to leave Colombia with my wife, our first choice was Budapest. I had friends here, I knew the city, I knew how things worked.

What difficulties did you face setting up a business?

When I came here, I worked as an employee for a Hungarian company, but when COVID came, everything became problematic. I decided to leave the job and start working as a consultant. I have worked in market research for 15 years so I already had had some clients and connections, so I decided to do all the paperwork and start running my own business.   

You said you were grateful for the Getting (self-)employed in Hungary as a TCN training that the Subjective Values Foundation held.

Exactly. I found an advertisement for the TCN training on social media and I decided to participate. At that moment, I was trying to figure out how the system works, what are the experiences, because it was one thing to learn how to work as an employee but then I had to understand how to work as an entrepreneur. The training gave me the opportunity to get to know how the process under the KATA system works. Other TCNs shared their experiences with getting their residence permits and drew our attention to the difficulties. That really cleared my eyes. I also got in touch with some consultants who helped me shift from working as an employee to become a self-entrepreneur, and to be able to obtain the residence permit.

Then, you returned to the following training to share your own experiences…

When I saw the call to give a presentation at the second training of the SVF, I felt like it is something I should do, because the first training helped me a lot, and I knew a lot of people were in the same situation with the same needs and doubts. I was happy to share my experiences and to let other TCNs know that getting a residence permit is absolutely possible (even if it doesn’t feel like that), they just need to get the proper help with their application.

What would you suggest to other migrants and TCNs who want to set up a business as well in Hungary?

I would recommend participating in trainings, just as I did with SVF, because this way you get to know people and get to understand the procedures and what you need to do. You need to know that every individual’s case is totally different, but it is always good to hear different stories and experiences. The trainings are really useful because you get official and trustable advice from accountants, lawyers, and other kinds of experts and TCNs.

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If you’d like to get information on the upcoming activities organized for migrants and TCNs living in Hungary:

• fill out our registration form for the training of spring, 2022
• join our community on Facebook: Migrant Communities in Hungary

Photo: Getting (self-)employed in Hungary as a TCN event, 2021