Why “I have all documents” Does Not Guarantee a Visa
WITH MOST EMBASSIES ESPECIALLY SCHENGEN AND USA
At Travel Abroad our aim is to make visas easily accessible to those who want to travel by helping them at a fee, and that means processing visas comprehensively. These involve putting together a plausible application with documents to guarantee success.
All technical and professional work comes at a fee and our service fees are very competitive. Those who have tried other immigration consultants would attest to that. Having a checklist of the requested documents is just part of the process and may qualify you for a discount. Unfortunately to some clients, the discount may not be enough.
On several occasions, we have been abused because we quoted a fee that did not align with the clients expectations. Their impatience would not give us the opportunity to explain our reasoning for the service fee and what service we would be performing to help them secure the visa. What they fail to understand is that documents alone, do not guarantee visa success.
EVERY embassy lists on their webpage, for free their documentary requirements for a particular visa application - tourism, family visit, work, study etc. But there are caveats to them. You may submit a bank statement but the embassy may look not only at the bank balance but other aspects of the bank statement. Even a mere birth certificate or something as harmless as an airline or hotel reservation can cause red flags. How much you state as your trip cost alone may make or break your application; not forgetting your purpose visit. And the embassy is not obliged to tell you this. But this is part of what we do.
All applicants for visa present all documents required by the embassy but not all of them are issued with the visa. This is a question that the “I have all documents” clients fail to ask or are impatient for us to address.
In their 2020 Schengen visa statistics (see link below), the EU reported that out of the listed number of applicants who applied for a Schengen visa from Ghana, to the various embassies, the following percentages (in brackets) got REFUSED:
Hungary 156 (66.7%)
Netherlands 3,238 (55.4%)
Norway 474 (53.5%)
Italy 1,286 (50.3%)
Spain 1,659 (45.9%)
Denmark 512 (44.0%)
Switzerland 710 (43.1%)
France 909 (39.3%)
Germany 1,551 (37.3%)
Czech Republic 94 (36.2%)
Did you notice 45% or more of the people who applied to Hungary, Netherlands, Norway, Italy, and Spain were refused their visa applications? They presented all documents and yet were still refused! The idea of having the requisite documents and so you cannot be refused a visa is flawed and the number of applicants who were refused Schengen visas shown above speak for themselves.
Visa applications need to be prepared taking into consideration the travel purpose and the social, economic, professional and personal circumstances of the applicant. For interview based applications, knowing what to say and not say is also very important. And for non-interview based applications, knowing which documents are not relevant and may rather lead to doubts about you and those that may increase your chances are equally important.
Our job at Travel Abroad is to make sure your visa application tells a story, a good and plausible story, with irrefutable evidences. These expertise are not part of your documents but they help you process the visa successfully.
Travel is expensive but it is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.
Getting the visa, and the opportunities that comes with it outweigh the fees you pay. Documents alone do not get visas, and our visa process goes beyond them. We hope to hear from you soon. WhatsApp +233 204 652 595.
Read our other article on some Schengen visa refusal reasons.
