A B O U T U N I N T E N T I O N A L L Y C H A N G I N G T H E C O U R S E O F Y O U R L I F E
This blog is not meant to be a place for me to air my political views, but you all deserve to know why I’ll be avoiding the majority of Europe for the next two years.
The story starts back when I was working in my study abroad office. None of us were immigration lawyers or anything, obviously, but we were all told to counsel students that if they entered the Schengen zone prior to the start of their student visa, their 90-day tourist visa would start. However, if they were semester students or yearlong students, this didn’t matter (we were told), because during the course of their student visa, their 90-day visa and 90-day ban from the Schengen zone following their 90-day tourist visa would pass. Thus, by the time their student visa expired, they would have a whole new 90-day tourist visa that would pick up where their student visa left off and would run for another 90 days so that they could travel after their program if they chose to.
This is what we were told to tell students. I believed it was true.
Anyway, this is the belief I had when I was in Barcelona this summer. I entered Budapest in mid-August 2013. In Hungary, I received a residency permit that was good until the end of August 2014. I took this residency permit with me to Spain this past summer. Although it expired at the end of August, I believed that after its expiry, I still had a 90-day tourist visa during which time I could remain in the Schengen area without fear of deportation or any other problems.
In September, I was arrested for overstaying my visa.
Like I said, this is not meant to be a place for me to air my political views. However, this is why I was arrested: my friends and I were a group of foreigners having a picnic under a tree by the beach in Barcelona. We hadn’t been there long when we were approached by two policemen on bicycles. They asked us if we had any marijuana, and we didn’t. There was no hint of marijuana or anything in the air, nor did any of us really look like drug dealers (as far as I know, anyway).
When we said we didn’t have drugs, they asked to see our passports to see if we were overstaying our visas since not all of us spoke Spanish and thus we clearly were foreigners. None of us had our passports with us since Barcelona is known for pickpocketers, so it would’ve been a stupid idea to take our passports to the beach. My friends from the EU who said they were from the EU had no problem (hell, a guy from New Zealand said he was from Greenland, and they didn’t know where that even was, nor did they check), even though they didn’t show their passports proving they were from the EU (they could’ve been from anywhere); I, believing I was within my 90-day tourist visa, and a friend, who also believed she was legally in Spain, were arrested and brought to the station. We were told that we needed to have our friends bring our passports to the station or else they would transfer us to the National Guard station and contact our embassies.
We had our friends bring our passports to us, but they still transferred us to the National Guard station. They told us we’d be there overnight, proceeded to take our personal items, fingerprints, and headshots, and put us in a cell. We ended up only being detained for about six hours (but they took our watches and phones, so we didn’t even know how long it had been). At the end of that time, they told us we could leave but were facing fines or, at worst, banned entry to the Schengen Area for the next three years. We were instructed to send pertinent materials to the lawyer they assigned us, and then we were dumped back on the streets.
Now aside from the confusion about how long we’d be there for, here’s some more confusion: I told the Guardia Urbana—the original policemen who arrested us—that I’d been living in Hungary and had a residency permit that had expired less than two weeks prior, and they told me it didn’t matter because Hungary wasn’t part of the EU. Uh, what?
I told them that I could show them both my Hungarian residency card (with the EU logo) and EU health card (with the EU logo and the format that all EU health cards have), and they told me Spain also had those, but they didn’t mean you could travel to a whole different country and still use them. Funny, I thought that was part of the point of the EU.
Anyway, like I said, we were only detained for about six hours, then told us that we’d likely be facing fines. I submitted my documents like I was supposed to, in a timely manner—especially because I still didn’t believe I’d done anything wrong. I guess I was expecting that the lawyer would solve the confusion of whether Hungary was part of the EU, and that would be that.
Instead, I am now banned from the EU for the next two years. No reason why. In fact, I’ve been asked to provide proof as to whether I’ve left Spain—apparently, the fact that they stamped and scanned my passport when I left (months ago) isn’t adequate.
Maybe the funniest part is, I would have gone to Russia well before my EU residency expired, if Spain would’ve let me apply for a visa (except they wouldn’t since I wasn’t a Spanish citizen or resident).
Or maybe the funniest part is that I’ve been banned from the EU for having a picnic by the beach with friends.
Or maybe the funniest part is that I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what I did wrong.
Or maybe the funniest part is that the girl who got arrested with me is getting of scotch-free because she didn't submit her passport photo, personal information, or anything else like they asked me to do. I'm being punished for doing what I was legally supposed to do. That feels great, let me tell you.
Spain didn't wnat me to remain there illegally, and I respect that. But I did nothing illegal in Spain, I did nothing illegal outside Spain,and I had the funds to remain legally in Spain. What, exactly, was the problem? I'm sorry that I fell in love with your country, wanted to stay there, and thought that I legally could?
Furthermore, I have friends who have overstayed their visas elsewhere. They have been fined, but have not received banishments. As I understand it, that means Spain has the right to ban me from countries that don't really care the I've overstayed--how is that fair?
I’ve always thought the idea of borders was strange—what gives someone the right to tell someone else that they can’t enter an area or work in an area? And even more so with the EU or the Schengen Area—why can someone in Spain or England tell me I can’t work in Hungary or Poland? Especially if I didn’t know I was doing wrong, that doesn’t really seem fair. But I suppose that’s how it is.
I’m sorry for having a picnic with my non-Spanish friends.
That’s why I won’t be visiting anywhere in the Schengen Area for the next two years. Cheers.
