They have to re-apply ever year for the D visa at a cost of Lev 500 for up to 10 years or, after 7 years her spouse needs to apply for BG nationality.
If your friend has to pay 500 leva every year to reapply, my first thought is that it is probably not a spouse visa. An EU spouse visa should be supplied and extended (but with maybe just some small processing charges) totally free, at least, that's how I understand it..
Are these friends BOTH non-EU perhaps? (Sorry just noticed you wrote "'BG national'' - probably not for this thread)
Joined: Apr 23, 2008 Posts: 5656 Location: Near Karnobat
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 11:07 am Post subject:
Anni wrote:
It worked for a friend who is BG and married to a foreign national and maybe therein lies the difference. She shared her experience with me and I was going to post it, but after she read about your case MW she said your experience would be different because of the special arrangements in place between Russia and Bulgaria, I decided not to because I wonder whether the nationality of the EU spouse and the nationality of the non-EU spouse also complicates matters and changes scenarios. I know it does in the UK.
They have to re-apply ever year for the D visa at a cost of Lev 500 for up to 10 years or, after 7 years her spouse needs to apply for BG nationality. Oh and she mentioned that if they don't get it right they can end up on a "banned" visa list. Happened to other friends of mine with the UK recently. 2 year ban. But I digress.
I have to add that I think whoever she was dealing with came very close to having to extract the BG legislation from a non-sunny area of their body.
I am not aware of any special relationships relating to visa or residency matters between Bulgaria and Russia other than that a School Party of over 15 members are supposed to get something for free. If you saw the queues and frustration outside of the Bulgarian Embassy in Moscow, you'd wonder why Russians bother to invest or visit here full stop. Even to get short stay Type C visas for my Wife's Parents to visit here was a complete and utter nightmare as such that we have both agreed NEVER to invite them again as it is far easier and less stressful for them just to buy a cheap tour from Moscow. This is exactly what I tried to explain to the Bulgarian Ombudsman without any joy; I am aware of perhaps hundreds of Russians that have property here and visit other Russians' properties here and NONE of them go through the Official Channels to obtain short-term visas as it is such a pain in the backside, they all go through cheap tour avenues and this is wrong where the official system is more difficult than the back door.
As far as I recall, a Type D visa does not allow 365 days a year residence, I think, but am not sure that it is for circa 360 days, but I might well be wrong. The Type D visa that my Wife was 'granted' only had 6 months validity as she was meant to obtain her residency within this period which makes the necessity to obtain such a mockery in itself.
Although the Directives are standard throughout the EU, I have NO DOUBT that certain Non EU countries' citizens are subjected to more stringent almost aggressive checking than say other countries' citizens. I've been through the Mill at both ends and know just how difficult the UK Immigration process can be.
Well, quite a development since last week at the embassy.....
Monday morning we went to the Thai embassy to have the Thai MFA signature on the marriage certificate and translation authenticated. One hour later, and it was finished.
Then to the Belgian MFA to have the just-stamped Thai embassy signature authenticated, but we were told this was not possible.
He didn't explain exactly why, but he said this was possible a couple of years ago, but they cannot do this any longer.
So, I asked his name and his number in case the BG embassy needed to have this confirmed directly.
Then to the BG embassy where the same man had the same "frosty" attitude.
During my explanation my wife started crying uncontrollably, saying she had a very bad migraine (later telling me it was his manner again which sparked her off), and that's when the man's attitude seemed to change and become more helpful.
.
Anyway, after the tears he took a copy of the certificate and translation, took her passport, and told me to call back Wednesday or Thursday.
The application looked to be complete, with no mention again of insurance.
Just about 2 or 3 hours later, back at my brother's house we had a call from the embassy saying the visa was ready, could we come to collect.
Yesterday we went back, and found inside her passport a type "c" visa, with multiple entries.
During this amazing turnaround of attitude he explained that we may need to go to Bucharest to finalise the authentication and that the single entry she had applied for might not be enough, so he offered more.
Anyway, my initial questions here were really about what the embassy can require for an application, and this is now irrelevant as the visa has been issued.
In hindsight i shouldn't have told him we were going to apply for residence once in BG, as this might have confused the issue, but it does seem like he wasn't going to let up until he could see that he had caused a bit of despair.
In his defense, he was trying to explain that when we enter BG and apply for her residency, the marriage certificate and translation might be refused, as it has unrecognised signatures, but he was using this as a reason to say her application was incomplete too, otherwise we wouldn't have had the runaround here in Belgium.
Her visa starts on July 1st so we won't start heading down quite yet, but when we do first enter we will go and apply straight away.
For those of you who have a non-eu spouse/partner, do you think we will need to complete our certificate and translation? If so, we will make a detour to Bucharest first so we are well prepared.
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