@asandamagaqa Yeah its nice when your visa finally gets approved but ngl the experience is so dehumanising that even when I do eventually travel, I feel like so I sold a bit of my soul to get there.
1. Flights and accommodation booked for the proposed trip at your own risk. Because you might not get the visa.
2. Proof that you can financially take care of yourself is 3 months bank statement like you are applying for a loan…and proof of employment.
3. Visa costs are upwards of 100 Euros for them to give you 3 days multiple entry visa or reject it because you would leave your fancy job, permanent residency, 10 year US visa to not return from their precious country who’s languages you don’t speak.
How? You just need to have flights and accomodation booked, an itinerary including the entry points of each European country you will visit and then prove to them that you will be able to financially take care of yourself for each day you are there.
Solid process really.
I did a 3 country tour to SouthEast Asia and they sufficiently guarded against visa overstays & illegal immigration but didn’t make me feel like a pariah.
Worse I had issues returning back into Vietnam to take my flight back home from Laos and you know what the Vietnamese did? They let me through!
@asandamagaqa Theres really no reason for me to resubmit my fingerprints and take fresh passport photos for a 3 day meeting in Italy when they are the exact same biographical details they have on file and are on my passport!
There lies a history of racism and we need to be honest about that. Policymakers are not the be all and end all. They too suffer from conscious and unconscious biases. The Schengen visa is a way for the Schengen states and the VFS’s of the world to further extract money from the global south.
dont get a full refund*
Oh forgot at the last one, they deemed my travel insurance to not be sufficient so I had to submit my repatriation insurance.
The one before that they made me take fresh passport photos because I had used the original photos for my Egyptian visa and it was already in my passport.
WTF 🤷🏾♀️ bahlali??
Why should you have real reservations for a maybe?? Those things also costs money, you also at times to get a full refund should your visa get declined.
The US Visa form is a lot but I respect the fact that they tell you not to make any travel bookings until you have your outcome.