Visas, Part One
By: Christy
& Mary of My Life in Scotland
Christy:
If you're thinking of moving abroad, one of the first things you'll need to secure is permission to enter and reside from whatever country you want to move to.
You have options. A multitude of options, most likely. (Depending, of course, upon where you go.) And the process can be VERY confusing. Pick up the wrong form or speak to the wrong person, or even file your paperwork on the wrong day and you could miss your window of opportunity or have to start the process all over again. Volumes have been written about the crazy things people have had to endure while securing visas!
Wherever your destination, be sure to research your options and choose the one that best suits your situation. If you choose the wrong option, you could end up in BIG trouble: Fines, deportation, imprisonment (seriously, a friend of mine found himself in a chinese prison once because he tried to re-enter Tibet with an already-used single-entry Tibetan visa!) or you could get yourself banned from ever entering a country again -- TROUBLE!
This post is part one of two on the subject of Visas in the Departure Lounge series. Today, Mary of My Life in Scotland is going to discuss the different ways she and her husband COULD have approached expatriotism, and I'll discuss options that I have for entering Italy that I won't be taking when I move there next year. In next week's post, Mary will tell us how she DID enter Scotland with a Visa and I'll write about my gameplan for entering Italy.
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Mary:
I personally feel that your Visa {permission to stay} in the country of your choice is the most important piece of documentation that you will need. Period. Don't try to out smart the authorities. You could land yourself in a heap of trouble sooner or later. You can live abroad, but there is a process. Do it legally. It will be worth it.
When LD and I got engaged we had to choose where we wanted to live. My husband was born and raised in Venezuela to Portuguese parents. He was living in Scotland. We knew we needed to get our future spouse permission for where we wanted to live. Scotland or America? We decided I'd come to Scotland. I thought it would be a great adventure, and it is!
We thought about these Visas:
-Fiancée Visa {takes a few months to get and you need to be married within 90 days of receiving}.
-Married Visa {I'd be a spouse of an EU member, but I wouldn't be living in Portugal, so this one would be complicated to obtain at the present time}
-Residence Visa {I could reside with my husband in his country of choice}
I think these are the easiest ways {probably} to live abroad. Just marry yourself a foreigner and you're good to go! There was a lot to think about though. If LD was to move to the USA we'd have gone through rigorous questioning and a lot of expense. We chose Europe because the process was cheaper and faster. We had more options. We could get married when we wanted and I'd be able to move straight away. This was our main reason for choosing Scotland. We were married in Ohio Feb 2008 and I moved to Scotland 3 days later! It has been quite the adventure.
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Christy:
Thanks Mary!
So, Mary's needs for entering Scotland are a bit different from my needs entering Italy. Mary needed to move (permenantly) abroad, while my plan (for now) is a six-month abroad plan. As an American going to a European Union country (Italy), in general, there are several options available.
-Student Visa (I won't be going to school there, so this isn't an option for me.)
-Work Visa (It is VERY difficult for Americans to obtain permission to work in the Eurozone. There aren't enough jobs in Italy for Italians right now, so unless your company is sending you to Italy, you should probaly not expect this one to happen.)
-Spouse Visa (I'm not married, so this is right out)
-Non-working guest resident visa (For this visa you have to prove that you have the means to live in Italy without working an Italian job while there. There is base income chart you will have to prove you have the funds to cover for the length of your visa. There are also other requirements you'll have to meet, but income is the main factor here.)
-Holiday (90-day Schengen) visa
-Visa run (more on this in a minute, this goes hand in hand with a 90-day Schengen visa)
The best two options for me are the non-working guest visa and the Schengen (90 day visa) and resulting Visa Run.
Before I go any further, a bit of explanation on what a Schengen visa is, just in case you wanted to know:
"The Schengen Agreement is a treaty signed on 14 June 1985 near the town of Schengen in Luxembourg, between five of the ten member states of the European Economic Community. It was supplemented by the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement five years later. Together these treaties created Europe's borderless Schengen Area, which operates very much like a single state for international travel with external border controls for travellers travelling in and out of the area, but with no internal border controls."
(From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement)
For the purposes of this post, let's say that I'm not a student, not going to Italy for work, I'm not married to a EU resident I don't want to be bothered trying to secure a guest visa. After all, I'm only going to be in the EU for six months, and I may not spend all of that time in Italy, so why get an Italian residency visa? In this instance, the best option for me would clearly be to simply stay in the EU for 90 days and then leave the Schengen zone. Here's where things get sneaky. You can only be in the Schengen zone for 90 days out of a 180-day period. After that, you have to leave for the remaining 90-days. Pain in the butt!
Ways around, if, like me, you want to stay in the Schengen zone for more than 90-days:
-Some countries aren't as stringent about administering this visa. I've heard tales of travelers in Greece legally extending the visa for two months by paying a fee and waiting in a couple of lines.
-The legendary "Chunnel" -- you fly into London, get your UK stamp, (You ARE required to have an exit flight from the UK within 90 days, so the easiest thing to do is probably to buy a cheap flight to anywhere on ryanair or easy jet and just let it lapse... or get a refundable fare.) then you simply take the tunnel into France. Your passport isn't stamped on entry into France when entering via tunnel (though this won't work the other way around, you will get an exit stamp from France). Now you've got an unstamped passport. But this in and of itself could be quite problematic. You could end up in a secure room with a toilet and a group of passport abusers getting grilled about why you don't have a stamped passport. This option may not really be the best.
People do this all of the time, and since I only expect to stay in the EU for six months (two 90-day visas) on a very long holiday, I could *possibly* get away with it.
The downside of doing things this way:
-You can run into problems doing visa runs if you continually do this over a long period of time. If any country suspects you of doing these visa-runs with the intent of LIVING overseas, they can detain, deport you bar you from entry. (If you've read Elizabeth Gilbert's Committed, something similar happened to her husband.)
-Round Trip tickets to/from the US are VERY expensive. For the cost of a round trip ticket home for a visa, I could take two or three nice holidays in Europe... I mean, holidays on my holiday... nice.
That's it for this week. Come back next Wednesday for the second half of our Visa discussion!
Are you planning on moving abroad? Have any questions for Christy or Mary or suggestions for topics about moving abroad? Leave your comments below.
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