Visa application guide for developed countries for unemployed people + freelancers

Since I have just received a ten-year multiple-entry U.S. visa and a French Schengen visa as an unemployed person, I will talk about my experience in applying for a visa here. It needs to be emphasized that the focus of this post is not to teach you how to fill in the form or how to issue a certificate. I assume that you can complete these tasks by yourself (or under the guidance of other online guides). I mainly want to talk about it here based on my own examples. Let’s talk about several basic principles for unemployed people to apply for visas from developed countries:

1. Principle of credit accumulation

In fact, applying for a visa is similar to applying for a credit card. The better your credit record, the better your credit history. The easier it is to get approved for a credit card, the higher the limit. So what is the credit record for a visa? To put it simply, it is your workplace, travel history, the number of developed countries you have been to, and whether you have a history of visa refusal or overstay. These will all affect you. The visa credit record will be affected. Before I applied for these two visas this time, I had already used up one and a half passports (the first one was half used and was thrown away). I had two US visas (visited three times) and three Schengen visas (visited at least 6 times). , a Canadian study permit (study in Canada for one and a half years), and entry and exit records in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. These are all plus points. Most of the credit must go to my first job, because working as a migrant worker for a Fortune 500 multinational company gave me the opportunity to travel to many places, and it also provided me with strong guarantee and support for applying for a visa. What conclusion does this lead to? In fact, it is best for your first job after graduating from college to go to a large company that allows you to travel all over the world. This will not only be beneficial to your future career development, but also allow you to work in the future. Quickly build up a good visa credit limit without draining your wallet. Even if this job cannot send you to travel around the world for training, you should use your time on the job to apply for several visas with "impact factors", such as Schengen, US visa, and Australian visa. As for Southeast Asian countries, they are actually useless. Most of them have already obtained visas on arrival, so it doesn’t matter whether you want them or not. Also, for a five-year multiple-entry visa like South Korea, as long as you have a Beijing household registration, you can easily get a 211 University diploma. It is recommended to find time to apply for one, even if you have no plans to go to South Korea.

2. The principle of honesty and reasonableness

Many friends who do not have a formal job have a headache when applying for a visa, because visas from most developed countries require financial guarantees, and for major universities For most people, the most powerful financial guarantee is your pay stub. What should I do? Many friends think of fake ones. I personally think this is a Big

No

No, because you never know how powerful the people at the visa office are. Especially now that the Internet is developed, you may not know if you encounter a visa officer who loves to take advantage of others. Once the fraud is found, it will not be as simple as rejecting the visa. You may be put on the blacklist, which will cause too much loss. . Some friends borrow a large amount of money from family and friends and temporarily deposit it into their personal accounts to provide proof of funds. This is also not advisable because many embassies no longer look at proof of funds. They want to see your bank debit card statement. , so if you deposit a large amount of money temporarily and cannot explain the source clearly, you will easily be suspected. We assume here that you have enough financial resources to support this trip before applying for a visa. For example, your budget for this trip is 3,000 US dollars. Then what you need to do is to prove that your savings and income are enough to pay for this 3,000 US dollars. dollars and still have a surplus. Although you are not working, you are earning income through freelancing and opening an online store as a micro-business. Going one step further, you need to develop a good spending habit. Don’t spend all your money every month. Save a little money every month as a future travel fund.

After talking about honesty, let’s talk about reasonableness. This mainly refers to your itinerary. This may be the most important document in applying for a US visa and a Schengen visa. You can take the initiative, and what you need to do The thing is to make this itinerary make sense and convince the visa officer that you have really made adequate plans and preparations for this trip. Take my application for a US visa this time as an example. I made a two-week trip, 4-5 days for sightseeing in San Francisco, 3-4 days for visiting relatives at my uncle's house in the United States, and 3-4 days for sightseeing in Chicago. When filling out the DS160 form, the US visa system actually allows you to choose uncertain travel plans. This is what I chose. Even so, in order to deal with the staff of China CITIC Bank, I still made an accurate one. The itinerary also provides a summary of my activities and accommodation options in each location. Regarding the job in the DS160 form, I honestly filled in that I was umemployed, and then said in the description column below that I was on a career break and hoped to travel to the United States and end my trip from the United States. Later, he will travel to Central and South American countries via the United States. The last item on my itinerary also stated that I would eventually leave the United States by plane and head to Mexico City. This is very reasonable from the perspective of the visa officer.

Regarding my Schengen visa, according to many opinions on the Internet, it is not recommended to do a trip longer than 30 days, but in the end, due to the air tickets and my actual itinerary plan, I still did it for a full 43 days. In order to explain the rationality of this trip, I attached a letter of explanation to the visa materials, telling the visa officer that I had only been to Paris and the northern city of Lille in my previous trips to France. I very much hoped to Take advantage of this free time from work to visit some famous cities in southern France, such as Bordeaux, Marseille, Lyon, etc. Then I hope to go all the way east from France, through Switzerland, Germany (Oktoberfest), Austria, Hungary, and finally leave the Schengen area from Hungary and return home. I think this itinerary and the explanation letter are fully reasonable in the eyes of any visa officer. The final result also proves this. The visa officer generously gave me a 50-day stay.

3. It is better to have more than to lack.

When we DIY the visa materials, we must prepare according to the latest official list of materials from the embassy. There are some in the list You must find a way to provide it, and you must also find a way to provide the materials that are not mentioned but that you think may support your visa. For example, it is no longer necessary to provide a hotel reservation for the French Schengen visa. The list is optional. However, if you are an unemployed person and your materials have flaws, then it is better to understand such optional as a must. When making the itinerary for the French Schengen visa, I not only provided a detailed itinerary, but also generated an itinerary map on Itinerary Master (the itinerary automatically generated by this tool is really ugly) and attached it to the back. , and made a simple budget list and attached it, telling the visa officer that although he did not have a job, the money in his account was enough to cover the trip. If you still have a real estate certificate, a car purchase contract and other things that can prove your financial resources, attach them all! If you have a relatively wealthy father, then applying for a visa is definitely worth your effort. Dad, be generous. Please attach your father's income certificate as well. I saw an unemployed single girl on Qiongyou whose itinerary was so detailed that she would take which bus line she would take. Is this too much? I don’t think so. It is very likely that the visa officer will not bother to look at many of the documents you prepared in the end, or they will be directly rejected by CIC Legal or CITIC Bank before they reach the hands of the visa officer. However, this is better than not preparing all the materials. Much safer. In short, when it comes to making materials, we must not be lazy in order to save trouble. We must be prepared to kill three thousand by mistake rather than let one go.

Finally, I want to make an advertisement. When I applied for these two visas this time, I did not go to Beijing. US visas are delivered through CITIC, while France Schengen found a store on Taobao. There are thousands of visa stores on Taobao, and the homogeneity is very serious, but there are only a few reliable ones. I tried to contact many companies, but the customer service was either terrible or too timid to accept materials from unemployed people like me. Finally, when I was desperate and ready to buy a train ticket to go to Beijing to deliver it myself, I found Zhongyi, a store with good service and extremely efficient. I sent the materials from Hohhot on Monday morning and submitted the visa on Wednesday. Unlike the other store I consulted, I must name and criticize this store. This store is called "Baicheng" and seems to be the largest store on Tmall. I asked the customer service and explained my situation to him. , told them that I had prepared a complete set of materials, and I just needed them to deliver it for me. Then their customer service told me that they would need at least three days to review the materials (please, I have already prepared it, so you need to spend three days). Time review?), and lied to me that it was the peak season, and the appointment had been made after the 20th (that day was the 17th), but I was clearly on the appointment interface of Zhongzhi Law Sign at that time, and saw with my own eyes that the appointment would be made after the 18th. It is possible to make an appointment. When I encounter such an unprofessional store, I can only say "screw you!", let alone entrusting them with such an important matter as my visa. What I want to say here is that it is best to send the visa yourself, but if you don’t have time and need to find an agent to help you send it, you must keep your eyes open and find a reliable one.

(In addition, starting from the end of 2015, Schengen visa applicants have been required to have their fingerprints collected, so friends who have not had their fingerprints taken within five years still need to go to the embassy in person to have their fingerprints taken before they can apply for a visa)

Finally, it can be summed up in one sentence: Applying for a visa is actually not difficult. The most important thing is that when preparing application materials, you must put yourself in someone else's shoes and see yourself from the perspective of the visa officer. Are the materials you prepare persuasive enough? If the materials are well done, your visa application will be half successful. You ask me what the other half is? Luck!