- FAQ
- Login
- Register
- Call Workpermit.com for a paid service +44 (0)344-991-9222
ESC
Welcome to immigrationboards.com!
Moderators: Casa, Amber, archigabe, batleykhan, ca.funke, ChetanOjha, EUsmileWEallsmile, JAJ, John, Obie, push, geriatrix, vinny, CR001, zimba, meself2, Administrator
If Colombian citizens need a visa to visit Spain, this plan may get her no further than the airline check-in desk.Steve Manley wrote: Just FYI my Colombian wife and myself will be travelling to Spain (having nothing but her Colombian passport with UK residence permit & our marrage certificate-NO SCHENGEN) to see if we get in & how difficult it will be.
Well, that all depends on Spain's interpretation of 2004/38/EC article 5:tt wrote:That's right. Once you've got on that plane* and arrived in Spain, the entry officer in Spain will see that your Columbian wife will need a visa to enter Spain (Directive 2001/539/EC).
But does "the valid residence card" mean a card issued by the country being entered or a card issued by any EU state? Press releases such as the following show that the European Commission intended it to mean a residence card issued by any state. However the UK doesn't accept this interpretation and I don't know of any countries that do.2. Family members who are not nationals of a Member State shall
only be required to have an entry visa in accordance with Regulation
(EC) No 539/2001 or, where appropriate, with national law. For the
purposes of this Directive, possession of the valid residence card
referred to in Article 10 shall exempt such family members from the
visa requirement.
From http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressRelease ... anguage=enNo more visas for visits to the United Kingdom or any other Member State that does not yet participate in Schengen when the family members who do not hold nationality of a Member State have a residence card.
Angelo (24), an Italian studying biophysics in the Czech Republic, and his Russian wife Svetlana (23) are planning to visit their friends in Glasgow for two weeks in summer. When they called the UK embassy in Prague to arrange for a visa, they were surprised to learn that the new EU directive on free movement exempted Svetlana from the visa requirement as she holds a Czech residence card.
This is not surprising. Being someone who requires a Schengen visa myself, I am often surprised at how few times check-in staff have ever asked to see it when travelling from the UK to a Schengen country. I would estimate that roughly 1 out of 10 times does the person at the check-in desk ask me if I have a visa. And then they just take my word for it when I say yes.We queued up at Luton airport ready for a fight to get my wife in, armed with our passports and lack of Schengen visa. The check-in person had a quick thumb through our passports and issued the boarding passes. She did re-check my wife´s passport but asked no questions as to the lack of a visa. Even less problems through security. Upon boarding the plane the person did wonder at my wife´s lack of visa to which I replied she no longer needed one from April of this year. That got us on board the plane.
I would have to say that, personally knowing many Spanish people, your wife's biggest problem was not that she had no visa, but the fact that she was Columbian. In fact I think you probably chose the worst Schengen country to perform your little experiment. Spanish people are extremely prejudiced towards South Americans and, as I'm sure you experienced at the airport, view many of them with utter contempt, especially if the tone of their skin has a brownish tint.What I´ve learned from this is EU law means very little unless it´s national law, police-check officials are a law unto themselves & dont seem to care about regulations (or surely they´d have asked more questions/stamped my wife´s passport etc) & seem intimidated by embassies.
I´ll be writing an article for a local newspaper in London about our adventures... my wife will soon be applying for her citizenship so all of this will be moot to us. It was interesting how so little of this has anything to do with regulations, and soooo much to do with whoever you happen to be dealing with.
STATUTORY INSTRUMENT
S.I. No. 226 of 2006
European Communities (Free Movement of Persons) Regulations 2006
http://www.justice.ie/80256E010039E882/ ... Q6PEJEW-en