Since I have just received a US visa and a Schengen visa for more than ten years and am unemployed, I would like to talk about my experience in applying for a visa. It should be emphasized that the point of this post is not to teach you how to fill out the form and issue a certificate. By default, you can complete these tasks on your own (or be guided by another online strategy). Here, I mainly want to use my own examples to 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 and applying for a credit card almost. The better your credit history, the easier it will be for you to apply for a credit card, and the higher your credit limit will be. What is the credit history of the visa? To put it bluntly, your workplace, travel history, number of developed countries you have visited, and whether you have a history of visa refusal or overstay will all have an impact on your visa credit record. Before applying for these two visas this time, I used up one and a half passports (I lost half of the first one). I have two US visas (visited three times), three Schengen visas (visited at least six times), one Canadian study visa (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 goes to my first job, because working as a migrant worker in a Fortune 500 multinational company gave me the opportunity to travel to many places, and it also provided strong protection and support for applying for a visa. What conclusion does this lead to? In fact, your first job after graduating from college is best to go to a big company that allows you to travel all over the world. This is not only beneficial to your future career development, but also allows you to quickly accumulate a good visa credit limit without draining your pocket. Even if this job cannot send you to travel around the world for training, you still have to use your working time to apply for several visas with "influencing factors", such as Schengen visa, US visa, and Australian visa. As for Southeast Asian countries, in fact, everything is useless. Most of them have already signed it. It doesn’t matter if you want it or not. Also, as long as you have a Beijing household registration, you can easily get a 211 University diploma. I suggest you find time to get one, even if you don’t plan to go to 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 most developed countries need to provide financial guarantee for the visa. For most people, the strongest source of financial security is your paycheck. What if not? Many friends think of scams. I personally think it's a big deal, because you never know how capable the people at the visa office are, especially now that the Internet is developed. If you do encounter a blind visa officer, you can even try. Once fraud is discovered, it is not as simple as rejecting the visa. It is possible that you will be blacklisted, which would be a huge loss. Some friends have borrowed a large amount of money from family and friends and temporarily deposited it in their personal accounts as proof of funds. This is also not advisable because many embassies now do not look at proof of funds. They want to see your debit card, so you can temporarily If you save a large amount of money without explaining the source, you will easily be suspected. We assume here that you have sufficient financial resources to support the trip before applying for a visa. For example, your budget for this trip is US$3,000, then all you need to do is prove that your savings and income are enough to cover the US$3,000, and that you still have a surplus. Although I am not working, I am freelancing, opening an online store and doing WeChat business, and I have income. To put it another way, you need to develop a good spending habit. Don’t spend every month. Save some money every month as a future travel fund.

After telling the truth, let’s talk about the truth. This is mainly about your travel itinerary, which may be the most important material for you to proactively apply for a US visa and a Schengen visa. What you need to do is make this travel itinerary meaningful and convince the visa officer that you have really planned and prepared for this trip. Take my application for a US visa as an example. I did a two week trip, 4-5 days sightseeing in San Francisco, visiting my uncle's family in the US, and 3-4 days sightseeing in Chicago. When filling out the DS160 form, the US visa system actually allows you to choose an uncertain travel plan. I chose this. Even so, in order to deal with the staff of China CITIC Bank, I still made accurate itinerary arrangements and gave a summary of my activities and accommodation in various places. In the DS160 form, I honestly filled out that I was umemployed, and then said in the description column below that I was in a career break and hoped to travel to the United States. After the trip from the United States, I would go to countries in Central and South America via the United States.

One last announcement on my travel itinerary is that I will eventually be flying out of the United States to Mexico City. From the visa officer's perspective, this makes perfect sense.

As for my Schengen visa, according to many opinions on the Internet, it is not recommended to travel for more than 30 days. But in the end, due to air tickets and my actual travel plans, I did a full 43-day trip. In order to justify this trip, I attached a letter of explanation to my visa materials, telling the visa officer that I had only been to Paris and the northern city of Lille when I went to France before. I would very much like to visit some of the famous cities in the south of France, such as Bordeaux, during my current sabbatical. Then I hope to go eastward from France, pass through Switzerland, Germany (Oktoberfest), Austria, Hungary, and finally leave the Schengen Area from Hungary and return home. I think this travel itinerary and the letter of explanation are completely reasonable in the eyes of any visa officer, and the final result also proves this. The visa officer generously gave me 50 days of stay.

3. The principle of abuse is better than lack.

In the process of DIY visa materials, be sure to prepare according to the latest official materials list of the embassy. Some of the materials on the list must be provided in some way, but materials not mentioned but that you think may support your visa must also be provided in some way. For example, applying for a Schengen visa in France no longer requires a hotel reservation form. It is optional in the list, but if you are an unemployed person and your material itself is seriously damaged, it is better to understand such optionality as a must. When I used the travel itinerary to apply for the French Schengen visa, I not only provided a detailed itinerary, but also generated an itinerary map on the itinerary master (I said the travel itinerary automatically generated by this tool is too ugly) and attached it . I also made a simple budget list and told the visa officer that although I did not have a job, the money in my account was enough to pay for the trip. If you still have a real estate certificate, car purchase contract and other things that can prove your financial resources, attach them all! If you have a wealthy father, it's definitely worth the effort to get a visa. Please feel free to attach your father's income certificate. I saw the travel itinerary of an unemployed single girl on a budget trip, and he was so meticulous about which bus line he would take. Is it too much? I think not. It is possible that many of the materials you prepared in the end were simply too lazy to show to the visa officer, or that the visa was directly rejected by CIIC or CITIC Bank before reaching the hands of the visa officer, but it is still much safer than not having all the materials you prepared. In short, you must not be lazy and save trouble when making materials. We must take the initiative to accidentally kill three thousand people and never let one go.

Finally, I would like to make an advertisement. I applied for these two visas this time and did not go to Beijing. The US visa is through CITIC, and the French Schengen store is found on Taobao. There are thousands of visa processing shops on Taobao, and the homogeneity is very serious, but few of them are reliable. I tried to contact many people, but the customer service staff were either stupid or too cowardly to accept materials from unemployed people like me. Finally, when I desperately wanted to buy a train ticket and send it to Beijing myself, I found Zhongyi, a store with good service and high efficiency. The materials were sent from Hohhot on Monday morning and the visa was submitted on Wednesday. Unlike the other store I consulted, here I want to name and criticize. This store is called "Baicheng" and it seems to be the largest store on Tmall. I asked customer service, explained my situation to him, and told them that I had prepared a complete set of materials, and I just needed them to help me ship the goods. Then their customer service told me that they need at least three days to review the materials (please, I'm ready, do you need three days to review?), and lied to me that they had made an appointment after the 20th during the peak season (that day It’s the 17th), and I clearly saw on the reservation interface of Zhongzhi that reservations can be made after the 18th. When I encounter such an unprofessional shop, I can only give them four words: "If you get negative points, you will be punished!" Not to mention giving them something as important as their own visa. What I want to say here is that it is best to issue the visa yourself, but if you don’t have time to find an agent to issue it to you, you must keep your eyes open and find a reliable one.

(In addition, starting from the end of 2015, Schengen visa requires applicants to collect fingerprints, so friends who have not recorded fingerprints within five years still need to go to the embassy to enter fingerprints 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 to change your thinking when preparing application materials and put yourself in the perspective of the visa officer to see if the materials you have prepared are convincing enough.

If the materials are well prepared, your visa application will be half successful. What is the other half? luck!