Commercial life is the reason most foreign nationals end up living in Ukraine for longer than a season. Some are hired by a Ukrainian company. Some own one. Some were posted by a head office abroad and never intended to stay. Some signed a contract with a technology firm and have still not met their colleagues in person. All of them need the same plastic card from the State Migration Service, and all of them file a broadly similar bundle — passport, notarised translation, insurance policy, fee receipt, photograph. What differs, and what decides the outcome, is the ground: the one legal reason the state accepts for letting a particular foreigner live here.