My wife and I are planning (hoping!) to move my family to Barcelona at the end August, and put our daughters in international school (we are US citizens, coming from the US).  Neither my wife or I plan to work during this one-year stay.  We have visited the school, and the application/approval process at the school is nearly complete.

I have combed through the visa forum posts, as well as the web sites, but still have a couple questions.

I just spoke on the phone to the consulate in my city (San Francisco), and he indicated that we must apply for a non-lucrative visa.  He stated that we must show an income of $75k or greater.  I said that we have a sizeable investment portfolio and savings that we will be living off of during this year, but that I wasn’t sure if we’d meet the $75k of income requirement off of the investments.  We have always planned to dip into savings to make this one-year experience happen.  He said that the INCOME was required, and that the size of the financial ASSETS in a bank/brokerage account didn’t matter.

Question #1:  Is this accurate, or will a visa officer have a different opinion once we’re in the interview?  It seems illogical to me.

The earliest appointment with a visa officer for an interview is Aug 8.  And, we need to depart end of August, with school starting in Barcelona on Sep 3.  I understand that the approval of the non-lucrative visa takes “months”.  So, we’re in a bit of a bind.

Interview with visa officer is Aug 8
Planned depart for Spain is Aug 21
90 days as a tourist expires Nov 21
Will take “months” from Aug 8 to approve visa
—>  looks like we will have exposure from Nov 21 until visa is approved

Question #2:  is there any way to accelerate the approval process?

Thanks in advance.

Sparks

Hey Sparks:
1. Yep, it sounds a bit illogical to me too, but a lot comes down to the opinion (subjective) of the officer doing the interview. If you come off as wealthy and confident then you’ll probably stand a better chance (you have a lawyer helping you right? I’m sure he/she’s mentioned this).

2. There’s no way to accelerate the approval process, but I honestly doubt you need to worry about this period of “exposure”. There are a ton of expats in Spain who slip past deadlines or don’t even bother to get a visa in the first place (albeit they aren’t bringing children). My guess is that they’ll approve it at around the 5-6 month mark (there was another guy on here who recently waited 6 months for his) at which point you’ll have to return to SFO to pick it up (I believe, it’s like that with other visas anyway).

Thanks a lot for your quick response.  Sounds like I’m a bit naive, in that we do NOT have a lawyer.  I was assuming that the application process was pretty straightforward—fill in the forms, show bank statements, etc.  How can a lawyer help this process?  I did check with a Passport/Visa agency that my old company used to accelerate passport processing, but they indicated that Spain does not allow an agency to work with the consulate, that the individual must work directly with the consulate.

We have angst because we need to make decisions NOW on finalizing our housing (apartment, etc.), school applications and fees, etc., yet we don’t have an appointment until Aug 8th!  If the visa process does indeed take 6 months for approval, is it an irresponsible thing to consider living there with wife and three children between day 90 and approval day?  This is a very uncomfortable and awkward limbo to be in…

And, yes, we have been told that we have to come back to San Francisco to pick up the visas in person.

Thanks again,

Sparks

Well, as usual in cases like these I would suggest keeping a “low profile” during the time you guys are without a visa… however if you look up “low profile” in the search box above (with the quotes) I think you’ll see there are a LOT of Americans in this situation. It’s not my call to say whether that’s irresponsible, but if I were you, knowing what I know, I’d see no other option. At least you’re trying. Remember Spain doesn’t have a Homeland Security department to track people down… 😉

There’s still hope that it could be approved sooner than 6 months too.

Actually I see that the search for “low profile” doesn’t bring up what I was expecting. There’s definitely mention of it on the visas page however.

Thanks again for the info.  Yet another question:  If we leave at the end of August, stay for almost 90 days, come back to San Francisco for a week (entire family), and then go back to Spain—does the clock re-start for another 90 days as a visitor?  I think I read that you cannot stay more than 180 days in a 12-month period, but was wondering if you can effectively stay 180 days by coming back to the US and then re-entering Spain.  If that is the case, I think I would feel pretty comfortable that our non-lucrative visas would be granted from within that 180-day period.

Sparks