Originally Posted by
C010T3
There's definitely a difference. If it were visa, Brazil would require a visa as well because of reciprocity mandated by law. The problem is that "visa on arrival" doesn't exist in Brazil. Every country that offers that option does it unilaterally, since Brazil cannot reciprocate.
My apologies for being less clear than I should have been when saying "visa on arrival". I did that because some consider "visa on arrival" to perhaps include all circumstances of legitimate cross-border travel meeting both of the following conditions:
1. not required to send a passport in to a foreign country's embassy/consulate/other government-retained facility (in a place other than the receiving country) for permission to travel and/or enter the foreign country that is not that of one's own nationality/citizenship; but
2. requirement, applied or not, to satisfy the visit-purpose-related demands/purpose-verification requirements of the border control authorities in order to be granted permission to enter.
As in all of my posts in this thread where I mentioned 1996 in conjunction with Brazil, I was commenting in relation to entering much of Europe without having to get a visa in advance of travel to the other country/travel area.
EU Schengen Zone nationals in the main have reciprocity with Brazilian nationals in entering each others' area without needing to send their passport to an embassy/consulate or other government-retained facility to get a stickered visa in the passport for tourism and some other purposes. The visa-acquisition inconvenience (i.e. of having to send their passport to an embassy/consulate or other government-retained facility to get a stickered visa in the passport even for tourism visits) when it comes to Brazilians visiting the US is why some leisure and business meetings end up in the EU which could otherwise have taken place in the US.