The hassle of acquiring a Schengen Visa

Dear Editor,

The matter of the application for, and, indeed, the necessity for a Schengen Visa for Guyanese to travel to anywhere in Europe has recently been raised by the President. A Schengen Visa is “an entry permit for non-EU nationals to make a short, temporary visit of up to 90 days in any 180-day period to a country in the Schengen area.”

Guyanese who want to visit Europe must obtain a Schengen Visa which involves completing a comprehensive application online and obtaining an appointment to visit the Netherlands Visa Application Centre in Suriname to have one’s biometrics taken and to present (leave) their passport.

This requires either remaining in Suriname to collect one’s passport when the process is completed or obtaining an Emergency Certificate through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to travel home from Suriname and wait for your passport to be returned by mail.

The applicant will know whether their application was successful or not when they receive their passport, about one week later.

On January 9, this year, I and my wife submitted applications for Schengen Visas to the Netherlands Visa Centre in Suriname^[1] to travel to Iceland and Norway. We attended an interview at the Centre on January 15.

On our arrival at the Centre, only one of us was permitted to conduct the interview and my wife was called because her name, Madhoo, is alphabetically before mine, Nascimento. I then followed, not for an interview, but to submit my biometrics.

We received our passports on January 23, with an enclosed notification and a rejection letter stating that “justification for the purpose and conditions for the intended stay was not provided” and “you have not provided proof of sufficient means for subsistence, for the duration of the intended stay or for the return to the country of origin or residence, or for the transit to a third country into which you are certain to be admitted.”

Let me underline that at no time during her interview was my wife questioned in any manner with regard to any of the grounds given for rejection.

The rejection letter provides for an objection process to the rejection which we immediately submitted.

One of the reasons stated for the rejection was that I did not sufficiently state the purpose of our visit. In fact. we stated “tourism.”

The second reason for the rejection was that we had not sufficiently provided our means of support. In fact, under that requirement, we had stated “credit card, providing the details of the card – prepaid accommodation – prepaid transport.” At the interview, my wife provided documentary evidence from the travel agency which had arranged the visit, that all the expenses, that is the cost of flights, the cost of accommodation, the cost for tours and transportation to and from and within the countries to be visited, had been prepaid, along with evidence of travel medical insurance.

Neither on the application nor in the interview, were we required to provide any other evidence of our financial capacity such as a bank account.

We submitted the objection on the form provided on February 11. Herein, however, we confronted a major challenge. The only address provided for submission for the Objection was to the “Postbus 2, Consular Service Organisation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, IND Visadienst, Nederland.”

Because it is a P.O Box address, we airmailed it and couriered it to a person we knew living in Holland to mail it locally for us. It was delivered to the postal service in Holland on 4th March, stamped as received and placed in the mailbox. We could not courier the objection from Guyana to the address given because the courier (DHL) required a postal address zip code, not available for a P.O Box address.

Over one month later, on April 13, we received, via surface mail, an unsigned acknowledgement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Holland^[2], of their receipt of our objection informing us that the deadline for their decision to process our objection may take longer than 12 weeks (again by surface mail) and that we will receive it in Dutch “for legal reasons.” Nine weeks have now passed since we applied for the Schengen Visa.

On April 14, we wrote the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Head of the Visa Service, pointing out that according to their letter, I should not expect a decision on my objection until 25th May and that they should appreciate the fact that we had “already incurred substantial expenses in booking airfares and hotel accommodation in anticipation of receiving the Schengen Visa.”

I also pointed out that the web address that they provided for contact required the use of Zivver and DigiD, which is not readily available, and that no other email address is provided for easy and rapid means of communication.

We finally received a letter from the Netherlands Ministry of Justice and Security^[3], confirming that our objection had been upheld and that “your visa application has now been approved” for “a visa for a single entry for a stay of nine days” and that we should “make an appointment to collect your visa” and if we have questions we should raise them with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs via website contact, believe it or not.

We then immediately proceeded to make the appointment in Suriname. The first available date was 14th August. At this point in time, some seven months since first applying for the visa. It was now unclear to us whether we had to return to Suriname or not to collect the visas since we had already submitted our biometrics.

I was then able to enlist the good offices of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and our Embassy in Suriname who contacted the Netherlands Visa Centre in Suriname^[1] who confirmed that we now only have to submit our passports for the visas to be entered into. This process, however, took until August 21, for us to receive our passports with the visas, some seven months after we applied for the Schengen Visas, having persisted in pursuing the objection and with the assistance of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

I have decided to write this letter in order to illustrate the degree of insult afforded to the people of Guyana in applying for a Schengen Visa to visit Europe. Not only was our President fully justified in raising this matter publicly, but it is incumbent upon our government to confront the government of the Netherlands and make it plain that this arrogance towards our country is unacceptable and intolerable.

I must conclude, however, by pointing out that since our experience, a Schengen Visa can now be obtained much more easily and much more readily through the French Embassy in Guyana^[4], providing, however, that the primary destination in Europe is France.

References

1. Guyanese Fly to Suriname or Trinidad to Give a Fingerprint. The EU's Own Visa Code Tells Its Members to Fix That. — www.lacaribenanews.com ↩
2. Object to decision on Schengen or transit visa - IND — ind.nl ↩
3. Schengen Visa Denied to Moroccan Woman: She Discovers That a Secret Algorithm Examined Her Application | Bladi.net — en.bladi.net ↩
4. Visa applications doubled since French Embassy opened here - Ambassador - News Room Guyana — newsroom.gy ↩