Visa Support

Types of Visas

First of all it must be mentioned that, depending on the purpose and duration of stay in a country, the visas are subdivided into such types as tourist, business, transit, private and group visas, with the right of single or multiple entry.

Tourist visas are, as a rule, procured by travel agencies and issued against confirmation of a purchased tourist journey, booked stay at a hotel, on a cruise liner etc.

Private visas are issued for an individual trip by invitation of a private person and usually procured without anyone’s assistance.

Business visas or visas for business trips are only issued in case a business trip is planned for the purpose of conducting negotiations or consultations, attending a congress or an international exhibition; their issuance requires an invitation from organizations acting as business partners.

In order to travel through a country, in some cases you have to apply for a transit visa, which can be issued without any invitations, but necessitates a copy of the ticket and valid visa of the country you are heading for. Besides national visas, there also exist Schengen-visas, entitling their holder to stay in more than one member countries of the Schengen Agreement, namely in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Iceland, Finland and the Netherlands. When you are planning to visit several countries during your journey through the Schengen area, you should apply for a visa to the embassy of the country where you intend to spend the longest number of days or through which you will be entering Europe.

Documents Necessary for Obtaining a Business Visa

In the majority of consulates, the set of required documents is standardized. To obtain a visa, it is necessary to produce your travel passport, the validity of which expires no earlier than three months after the expiration of visa validity, as well as photocopies of your previous travel passports containing visas. Another requirement is a photocopy of all pages in your national passport and a questionnaire with a pasted colour photography sized 3.5x4.5, to be filled in English or the official language of country to the consulate of which you are applying. In addition, you will have to provide the consulate with documents certifying your secure accommodation during the period of your stay in the country — this may imply either an invitation from a private person or a confirmation of hotel reservation. It is worth mentioning that persons procuring visas into countries of the Schengen Agreement should reserve hotels in the same country to the consulate of which they are applying. Some consulates require that documents submitted for the visa issuance should be supplemented with a policy of medical insurance; however, regardless of the country of your destination, it is mandatory to acquire medical insurance beforehand, since it may be demanded by the customs services.

An essential part of documentation to be submitted consists of papers certifying your financial and social reliability as well as those confirming your intention to return into your native country upon expiry of the visa validity. Among such documents there may be: reference from the employer, certificate from a bank with an abstract of account, traveler’s cheques for the necessary amount, credit cards, documents attesting your possession of property (apartment, automobile) or a company, as well as evidence of any other sources of income. It must be remembered that the officers of consulates are de facto guided by the «presumption of guilt», i.e. the consul believes from the outset that you do not deserve a visa, and you are naturally trying to convince him/her to the contrary. The website of the US embassy reads literally: «Article 214(b) of the „Immigration and Nationality Act“ obliges every consul to proceed from the assumption that each applicant is intending to immigrate into USA». Consequently, the more documents you furnish the better it will be: marriage certificates, birth certificates of your children, papers confirming your possession of property or diseases of your elderly relatives, student’s card, pensioner’s certificate and the like.

In case you are applying for a business visa, special attention will be paid to the reference from your employer and documents attesting your company’s activity in a certain sphere. If you are planning to participate or attend an international subject-devoted exhibition, it will be necessary to submit documents proving your company’s linkage to the exhibition subject — for example, advertising booklets, catalogues, certificates, licences etc. Should the purpose of your trip consist in negotiations or meetings with business partners, you will be required to present an evidence of interrelations between the companies, i.e. contracts, customs warrants, invoices, business correspondence etc. A mandatory prerequisite for the issuance of a business visa is the submission of original invitation from the partner company on a letterhead with a seal and signature of the person in charge, where purpose and date of the trip must be indicated along with travel passport data of the invitee.

A reference from the employer must be printed on the company’s official letterhead, signed and sealed by its director, clearly stating the position and monthly salary of the employee sent on a business trip, as well as guaranteeing the retention of his/her position and salary for the duration of this trip.

More detailed information on the necessary documents and requirements for their drawing-up set by the visa-issuing departments of foreign consulates on the territory of Ukraine may be found in the subsections of our website.

Procedure of Visa Procurement

After you have gathered and properly drawn up all the documents, they need to be submitted to the visa department for consideration. In most of the consulates, this will be preceded by a quite complicated procedure of registration for an interview and then by the interview itself. Please bear in mind that, depending on the work intensity of the visa department, the date of your interview can be fixed for the following day just as well as for the following month. Due to this reason, it is advisable to register yourself as soon as possible. However, complications of this kind and the personal submission of documents do not exist in all consulates or in all cases.

The very process of document consideration at the embassy may also necessitate a wide range of time periods, varying from one to forty-five days.

In conclusion, it needs pointing out that the procedure of obtaining a visa does not represent a standard process, because every particular case requires an individual approach and familiarity with the peculiar features and specificity of various consulates. Entrust the procedure of visa procurement to professionals in this field — and you will receive documents so necessary for you without the scrupulous adherence to all the bureaucratic subtleties of one or another consulate.