Schengen visa rejected but don't understand why

Many Vietnamese people who apply for Schengen visas are rejected but do not understand why because the reasons given are "general".

Ngo Mai, a tourist from Nam Dinh, applied for a French visa to travel with her friend but was rejected on April 12. The reason given was that "the information provided about the purpose of the trip was not reliable". According to Mai, this is a rather general reason, causing confusion. This tourist thinks she was rejected because of two factors: she is a single mother and her monthly salary seems a bit low, from 10-12 million VND. Before that, Mai had been to Thailand and India twice.

"I'm quite sad because I have enough income to go out but my visa was rejected," she shared.

Ngo Mai on a trip to Dubai after failing to get a French visa. Photo: NVCC

The rejection of the French visa cost Mai about 8 million VND in application fees and canceled her hotel and flight reservations. After that, she traveled to Dubai (UAE) for four days. Mai has not given up on her plan to travel to Europe and thinks she will explain more clearly in her visa application to be considered. For example, she will clearly state the reason for the trip, her companions and prove that she will definitely return to Vietnam because she has a small child.

Even a person with a high income can have their application rejected, as was the case with Linh Nga (living in Hanoi). She said she works for a family business, has a good income, and has full financial information. However, Nga was still rejected when applying for a French visa. The female tourist thinks her only drawback is that she is only 23 years old, single, and her travel history only includes a few Asian countries such as China, Thailand, and Malaysia.

Mr. Hoang Tuan, a representative of a travel agency in Hanoi that provides Schengen visa services (including 27 European countries), said that applying for a Schengen visa is not easy because this is a high-end market, requiring customers to have financial resources and conditions. Rejected applications are often only given "general" reasons and complaints do not bring any results.

According to Mr. Tuan, there are no specific regulations, but the following cases are often easily rejected when applying for a Schengen visa despite having a good profile: the profile and name of the customer are on the blacklist of the Embassy or the host country due to having previously entered the country illegally or committed crimes; the customer has a relative (whose name is on the household registration book) who has a history of traveling for the wrong purpose in the host country; the customer is a single mother, has been divorced or is married but is not yet on the husband's household registration book; the customer has too many deposit relationships with the bank in the host country or has signs of money laundering.

After failing to get a visa, many Vietnamese tourists say they will seek out companies that provide visa services in the hope of getting it "successful" next time. However, this is not the optimal solution, ensuring a high success rate as many people think.

Mr. Dang Duy Khanh, Sales Director of Group Tours, said that when receiving documents from customers, the staff will screen them again to avoid wasting time. This step helps the company filter out about 50% of the unsatisfactory documents and the screened documents can achieve a pass rate of about 80%. Therefore, the personal factor in each document is important, and service companies do not guarantee 100% pass rate.

A representative of a travel agency said that a Schengen visa is a sticker visa, requiring a more complete and stricter application than an e-visa. Therefore, a "good" application must meet three initial conditions including personal status, finances, and work. As for finances, customers need to prove that they have sufficient finances and many personal assets such as car registration, real estate, bonds, and stocks will be a plus. However, these assets must be "existing and not mortgaged".

Eiffel Tower - a symbol of France. Photo : Klook

In terms of work, customers need to ensure that they have a clear job, working in a leading company is an advantage. If working in a private company, the working time must be over a year, have full social insurance and health insurance, have a leave application from the company, and receive salary transferred from the company.

To have a good profile, many service providers will guide tourists to "beautify" their profile. Travel agency representatives said there will be two types of "beautification": "legal" and "illegal". The first type is to advise customers to add some missing elements, for example, encouraging them to visit other countries such as Korea and Japan to increase their "beautiful history" before applying for a Schengen visa.

However, some service providers may advise customers to falsify information such as falsely declaring income or work records. This does not really help customers because the failure rate is still quite high.

Ms. Nguyen Nguyet Van Khanh, Marketing Director of Vietravel, said that recently visa procedures have been relaxed with the application review time being 15 working days (excluding Saturdays, Sundays and holidays). However, the issue of applying for a tourist visa to some countries in the Schengen area such as France and Germany is still a big obstacle for many tourists. These countries have many requirements such as good travel history, stable job, strong financial capacity as well as other strict requirements on documents.

Tu Nguyen

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