Getting a Visa

Step one: get a visa.

This should be a simple process, really. Since I’m going as a student, and surely Greece wants students to be paying their schools for international programs, as long as I bring all the documents required to my appointment at the consulate, it should be no big deal, right?

Wrong.

Greece is, unfortunately, known for being difficult about the visa process. Actually, I’m pretty sure every country is, but the fact that it seems to depend on the mood of the people in the office on the day of your appointment is… discouraging, to say the least. The good thing is that the Atlanta consulate was pretty good about emailing back when I had questions about what to bring, and they let me continue to submit the extra documents they asked for at my appointment through email after my appointment. The bad thing is that they asked for extra documents.

I’ve talked to several other people who have come on student visas, and though the extra documents they were asked to acquire at their visa appointments varied, pretty much everyone I’ve talked to has run into this same hurtle. The really bizarre thing is that, in my case and in some others, they didn’t end up needing the extra stuff anyway.

Here were the issues they had with my paperwork: You have to prove that your parents can finically support you while you’re in school. This doesn’t change, no matter how old you are or what level of education you’re going for. Now, at my appointment, I was told I could submit my own bank accounts as well, to bolster the number, but that’s not listed as an option in the visa document. So take that with a grain of salt. As I’ve just alluded to, they didn’t like the numbers I was submitting, even though my Dad is very comfortably middle class, and an empty nester. My mom and I would be his only dependents. I was very confused by the math the consular agent was presenting to me, and ultimately I think he was looking at the numbers wrong, and either later realized his mistake, or someone else realized it for him. You’re only required, as per the visa document issued by the Greek government, as a student, to have 500 euro at your disposal a month. This is definitely an expense my Dad could afford.

The second problem they had was with my insurance. Even though I’d bought the Greek insurance plan that I was told to get by those advising me from Greece, and was told even by the insurance agent – when I later talked to him over the phone as we were both confused by the consulate’s demands – that this is the insurance plan that people get for their visas. The consulate wanted the plan to have a higher hospital coverage, and to include repatriation. Though I found travel insurance plans that covered the higher hospital amount (the company I’d gone through didn’t go that high – he did email the consulate on my behalf to try to figure out what they wanted, but they never replied to him), I never found anything that covered “repatriation.” Emergency evacuation, yes, but repatriation under the conditions the consular agent described to me: “if you commit a crime in my country”, was never listed under anything I was finding, so finally I googled, “do travel plans cover repatriation for crimes.” The answer is, no. From what I could find, you will be held responsible by your government for the cost of getting you back home if you commit a crime in a foreign country, but health and travel insurance doesn’t cover that. So, in exasperation, I emailed the three plans I’d found that seemed closest to what had been asked of me to the consulate office. This was the day before the expected two week wait time to hear back about my visa. The next day, I received an email saying my visa had been issued. Queue a sigh of relief (or rather repeated exclamations of “oh my god oh my god oh my god” as I’m near tears in my brothers car), but I still have no idea what the consular agent was talking about. In the end, they must have decided the insurance I had was enough after all.

Someone else mentioned that they were asked for an acceptance letter from the university in the US that has a partnership with the Greek university they were applying to, and the school here in Greece had to call and say no, they don’t need that. So it’s nice to know that the school could have called and come to my defense, if need be, but talk about a stressful two weeks! I was really convinced I wasn’t going to get it. That I was going to have to figure out how to apply in another state, under another consulate’s jurisdiction, or who knows what else – but in the end it all worked out.

Now that I’m in the country, I have to apply for a residency permit, since my student visa is only good for three months. Before I can do that, however, I had to have a tax number – which will be another post. Needless to say, don’t come to me for any visa advice, but this is a record of my experience. I’d been warned that getting a visa to Greece could be tough, but I really thought I was coming in well prepared. So this is my word of caution: no matter how many boxes you’ve checked, they just might find more for you, and in areas that you would never expect to be an issue.

So all I can say is: Best of of luck!