Re: [guadec-list] Visa section

[Sindhu S <sindhus live in>]

Hello all,

On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 5:08 PM, Rui Tiago Cação Matos <tiagomatos gmail com> wrote:

On 29 May 2013 13:28, Florian Nadge <fnadge gmail com> wrote:
> My experience is that this so called letter does not help. The Czech embassy
> unusually asks to see the registration conformation. Sindhu had a very bad
> basically lost a lot of money because she assumed that she could travel when
> she could not. Maybe we could call this letter Confirmation of Participation
> or something along these lines and make clear that this is in no way a
> guarantee to get a visa.

I agree with Florian. Some of you on the list may already know the difficulties I faced due to the visa rejection. I don't want to re-iterate the past. These are the few details that will make a big difference to the visa application at the Embassy:

1. Invitation letters that make it clear as daylight that the event is a tourist event of hobbyist nature open to all interested in Free and Open Source Software and does not have anything to do with commerce, trade or recruitment.

2. Invitation letters must keep it quiet about internal arrangement such as reimbursement of travel fees (as previously agreed through the travel subsidy application). I have e-mailed Karen about this however, let me reproduce some parts of the email sent:

"This reimbursement of expenses (that is partial sponsorship) is an internal arrangement that GNOME sponsors its volunteers who are not capable of paying for their own travel, why should this be disclosed without being exclusively requested for this piece of information?

Secondly, I feel this creates a conflict. At the point of applying for visa, we will be submitting bank account statements that show our savings and we also mention in our visa application form that we fund this trip from our own savings. By mentioning that this trip is partially sponsored will raise more questions. Embassy will wonder why should money be reimbursed later and not now? Can we go on to explain that this is GNOME's policy in a barely 3 minute (and hurried) visa interview? From my previous experience, I believe it's best to keep the matter straight forward and simple to understand. "

Robert Kratky is right, as important as the invitation letters are for an applicant to travel to a foreign country, it's equally important the applicant show a compelling tie back to their home countries as a strong reason to return. This is mainly because of the increasing number of illegal immigrants from developing countries migrating to schengen countries in search of work.

P.S: I am currently in the process of gathering up Indian interns via mailing lists who plan to attend GUADEC 2013 to apply for visas here by planning together as a group. https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-soc-list/2013-May/msg00013.html