A friend of ours left on a mission to Europe. He has now been in the country for six weeks.

In his letter this week, he stated that he is now finishing up his Visa, and teased he was no longer an illegal immigrant.

I am clueless on all this, but I thought he had his Visa while in the MTC (that is what he said). Isn't this illegal? Is it 'normal' for a missionary to be in a country for a month and a half with no visa? I just hate all the half lies and truths that I keep running into while questioning my life as a Mormon.

This is my first time posting, and I have a lot to post, but I thought this 'easy' topic should be my first. My mind is swirling too much right now to convey my lost and confused feelings right now. :(

Which country, exactly? Anyway, they're under the Schengen agreement now, so I guess there is pretty much just one visa.

At any rate, they're supposed to get a visa before leaving, but it may not always be possible. In Europe there is a reciprocal agreement with the US--they all get 90-day no-stamp visas in the states (that begin with the entry stamp in customs), and we get the same in the various European countries. After that, you have to have a reason to stay plus a visa, and probably also a locally-issued identity document, as well.

Mormon missionaries' struggle getting visas is as old as the hills. The church used to blatantly lie (maybe still does) to countries that didn't issue visas for LDS missionaries. The church would pass them off as basketball coaches and musicians and the like. Church Co. can be very dishonest.

You generally don't need a visa in europe for shorter stays if you are from certain countries, usually other european countries but I imagine places like the US and Canada are included aswell. (Heck, going between the scandinavian countries doesn't even require a passport unless you're flying.)

When you enter Europe they give you a visa. That is the stamp they put in your passport. The Visa is only good for a certain amount of time before you are in the European union illegally. If he showed up and received a tourist visa in his passport then he may have overstayed that visa.

Some countries require you to apply for a visa before you arrive. Other countries with a more friendly policy towards the USA only require you to get the visa when you enter.

90 days. See above. Only a few countries (mostly Western Europe and Japan) have such an agreement with us. For all other countries, one needs a visa, often available for a modest price as you come through customs, but mostly you have to send your passport into the respective embassy or consulate closest to you in the States.

For any stay beyond 90 days, you need a visa foil stuck into your passport.

I'm a member of an e-mail group for mothers of missionaries which just sent out a very strongly worded e-mail to never blog about visa issues or criticize the country the missionary is serving in or to post derogatory comments about the country made by the missionary. The owners of this e-mail group said the e-mail was approved by the LD$ Missionary department. Maybe LD$ Co. is having more visa problems than they want to admit.

I wish the best for your friend. Would it be so bad if he/she had to come home because his visa expired? Maybe it would add an item to his shelf when he wonders why his path was not made smooth to do the Lord's work.

Would it be so bad if an 18 year old kid, a pawn in the LDS church's lying and subterfuge and blatant disregard for the laws of sovereign nations, post 9/11, engaged in visa fraud and got caught?

Yeah. For the kid, it would.

Depending on where he was when caught, how long overdue his visa was, if he told the truth about his knowing of the fraud and his part in the deception, etc, it could go very badly for him.

If he got caught with no passport on him and no access to it( since it might be locked up in the mission safe), and he had no other legal ID (and no, a US drivers license is not a legal ID in a foreign country), things might get bad, quickly.

His language skills might help or hurt him, depending on how truthful he is when caught.

3 days out of sight, some places, no right to a phone call in others, no lawyer provided pro bono in most, in many european countries; I hope someone he knows, knows where he is-and is willing to get involved despite being ln the country illegally themselves or being the director of such a conspiracy/fraud.

Hope the duty officer at the US consulate nearest them can and will consider the call to their office an emergency and not routine. hope theyll go to extremes to help the kid. unless they've been advised not to do more than give them the name of an english speaking local lawyer the kid would have to pay for, since perhaps this visa issue in that country is well known and both the consulate and the local authorities are sick of cleaning up after it.

Hope no one decides to make, quite literally, an international incident out of it.

I get what you're saying: the church should get caught and every member who had a hand in this mess should be informed what is going on is illegal and it should stop.

But as a mom, not sure I'd want my kid to be the guinea pig in this little experiment.

I once witnessed an American on a team not pay the <4 plan tram fare, get busted, dragged off the tram, fined 100 plan at the roadside and when they could not pay it, right then right there, get arrested and taken to a Polish jail. In 2010. I did not know them, tried to give them the 100 plan they needs and I was almost taken with them.

I knew the consular duty officer, called them, told them what the person looked like, their name and where and when this happened. It helped, but not enough, apparently.

despite its being an accident to start with (he intended to pay the driver in cash which you still can do there with exact change on some trams, if you do it before the tram moves/takes off from its stopped position), all hell broke loose thereafter). He got arrested for "stealing" what was then about $1, by not paying the fare.

This person was a "teacher of English" on an expired visa. They at least had their actual passport with them. I don't know the particulars, except that the person ended up on a train out of the country 3 days later and was not allowed re entry to Poland for 10 years. I don't know if they had a record after the incident, I don't know if they got back home ok and I don't know if they did jail time prior to being deported.


I wonder, if a kid on an expired visa, in the country illegally due to having lied about the reason for his stay there and the reason his visa app was bring submitted to begin with, with no passport ir other legal ID on him at the time, leaders also lying or covering it up/ being hinky with the authorities when asked directly what was going on, etc, would have better luck?

Not all European countries are covered by Schengen: the UK isn't, for example. Visa problems here have been going on for years, I was really shocked when I learned about how missionaries were here with overdue visas or how they were sent home early to avoid being here when visa expired. Different MPresidents seem to handle it in different ways.

You have to get a visa from the country's consulate before leaving your home country if you are going to be there for longer than 3 months and for something other than tourism. Then when you get to the country you have to go to the police station in the town you are living in and apply for a residence permit. That is probably what he is talking about. In Italy where I went it is called the Permesso di Soggiorno.

How 'bout a Visa Card so you can enjoy Europe?

Oh, wait, they pay ChurchCo to go there and then have to work the entire time with no vacation.

Brainwashing at it's finest..........

I had a weird experience stemming from all this, some 35 years after my mission. DW and I were vacationing in extreme northern Italy (Varese) close to the Swiss border. On my mission I had served in southern, Italian-speaking Switzerland and in Italy. For both Switzerland and Italy, I had to have a residency card, a "permesso di soggiorno" in Italian. I had kept my Swiss one as a souvenir.

We were driving around and were close to a Swiss border town. I suggested we go over and visit. But when we got to the remote border station, it occurred to me I had left my passport back at the hotel. I asked the Swiss guard if I could get through with any of the other ID I had. He said, let me check. He took whatever it was that I gave him (I think it was a State Dept. ID) and went into the shack. He came back out and asked, "Are you the same Cludgie that was on a Mormon mission here in 1969?" I asked, "Do you know me?" He said, "You know, you never turned in your residency permit when you left the country. We're going to need that back." I reminded him that that was 35 years ago and that I probably didn't even have it. He smiled and winked and said to go on through.

The Swiss are so organized. My permesso di soggiorno expired 3 weeks before I went home and I didn't renew it. I was really nervous because a couple months before the mission president emphasized that we had to have a valid one when leaving the country otherwise we would get in trouble and possibly banned from visiting Europe. Apparently they had some issues in some northern European countries but the lady in the mission office told me it wouldn't be a problem and she was right. In Italy I don't think they even checked anything when you were leaving the country. When I went back for a vacation the immigration officials didn't even look at my passport or ask me any questions. They just stamped it and gave it back to me.