kristina12

I am a US citizen and have two US passports. They are both currently active. I am moving to Spain as a student and have therefore applied for student visa. Unfortunately the visa process is going to take 3 weeks and I leave to Spain in 2 weeks. I wanted to know if it is legal to enter Spain with my secondary passport and then have my passport with the visa mailed to me. I would then exit the Schengen area with my secondary passport and reenter with my passport with the student visa.

Gagravarr

May depend on if you'd start studying before the new visa was issued and active (not sure on that one). May also depend on the exact kind of visa you're getting?

hdogan

Welcome to FT, kristina12!

As long as you enter and exit Schengen with the same passport, you'll be fine. You can enter initially as a tourist, exit (with the same passport), and reenter with the primary passport with the visa inside.

Closest non-schengen options in the EU to Spain would probably be Gibraltar and Croatia. A short trip to London could do too

zkzkz

I would be a little nervous about this. You're entering claiming to be a tourist but clearly you're not and you'll be setting up a residence etc. A border guard would be rightly suspicious that you're not entering legitimately on the basis you're claiming to be entering.

hdogan

http://www.europass.it/en/europass-study-visa.html

"If you are a citizen of a member country of the Schengen States or if you come from one of the countries listed below, you do not need to request a visa for study purposes for stays under 3 months’ length.

Schengen States: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia, Slovenia

Other countries: Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Macao, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Singapore, South Korea, USA, Uruguay, Venezuela"


http://www.learn4good.com/travel/es_visa.htm

"Student Visas for Spain:
This type of visa allows you to study or do research work in Spain for periods exceeding 3 months.

U.S. citizens do not need a visa to study in Spain for less than 90 days."

Google is your friend.

shefgab

I assume this means that if the course is 90 days or less, no visa is needed. If the course is over 90 days, then a visa is needed. I don't imagine you can't use the visa exemption for up to 90 days then get a proper visa. So it depends on the length of course the OP is doing. If you arrive in Spain with documents for a 3 year undergrad or similar, the border guard is going to want to see a proper visa.

Of course, you can enter as a tourist, get set up, then fly to London, and come back. Not 100% how you're meant to do it, but feasible. Also worth noting, in most countries it's illegal to have two valid passports of the same nationality on your at the same time (when abroad). If the OP gets searched leaving Spain/entering the UK with 2 valid US passports, it might not be a great outcome. I have two passports, and was told when the second was issued that I could only use one at a time, and the other must remain in the home country.

Aviatrix

That's interesting. My husband has had two British passports for as long as I can remember, and he was never told that he can only carry one of them. He does often travel with two, especially when going to countries from where a lost one would be difficult to replace.

I don't have two passports of the same nationality, but I do have a passport and a national identity card issued by the same country and usually carry both. The national identity card serves as a passport for most of Europe (not just Schengen/EU countries), so am I breaking the law too?

I would be interested to read up on the law myself. Would you mind providing a reference?

As for the OP... I'm not aware of any laws that prohibit non-visa nationals from travelling to Schengen for up to three months while they have a pending visa application for a longer stay. You can legally enter the country for three months without a visa. You can legally study for three months without a visa. You really want to check with the Spanish authorities (rather than strangers on an Internet forum) but i think it is unlikely that you will have any problems.

David-A

Most countries? Defined?
Which law? Which lurisidiction?

Who issued your passports and who told you that?

I would very much dispute the main thrust of this.

Christopher

I've never heard of such a rule for "ordinary", Western countries, where by and large you are able to have on your person any passport that you legally hold, whether issued by different authorities (i.e. different countries) or the same authority. Some countries might have rules about which passport is used to enter and leave the country, and it would obviously (in general) be unwise to enter a country on one foreign passport and then leave on another issued by the same country. But that's quite a different thing from having the two passports in your possession.

Saudi Arabia has laws prohibiting people having two passports in their possession, but I don't class that as an "ordinary", Western country, and the OP isn't going there. There might be other such countries too, but again without further information I'd be suprised if such rules applied in any of the countries that the OP is likely to be visiting.

Which country issued these two passports and who was it that said that you couldn't have both of them with you at the one time?

kshanew

Interesting. I was issued a second (US) passport while abroad and with the first one also with me and had no issue or caution about having both. In fact, I still generally have both on me while crossing borders.

GUWonder

That is not true.

It is worth noting that in most countries with US citizens, it's quite routine for some US citizens to have two US passports in the host country and there is nothing illegal about it. On the contrary, in some such cases, it would be a violation of US legal requirements and even perhaps of host country rules not to have two US passports during their travels to visit other countries for personal purposes.

GUWonder

There are US citizens in Saudi Arabia who are known by Saudi authorities to have two US passports. I can't recall any such persons having to seek US consular assistance merely because they were found to have two valid US passports.

Christopher

That's interesting. It could well be that the rules have changed. One of the main reasons in that part of the world for having two passports from the same country would have been, I imagine, for travel to Israel and to the countries that don't allow entry to travellers with evidence of a visit to Israel in their passport. Now that can mostly be avoided because Israel doesn't stamp pasports any more (although there could still be evidence, for example, from a stamp at a border crossing, e.g., from Jordan).

:D!

The OP is long gone, but anyway, I don't know whether Spain technically requires you to activate a visa by exiting and re-entering. However, often when one enters Spain one's passport may not even be checked - especially if Gibraltar is the port of entry, where I once was informed by a border guard (rightly or wrongly) that foreign passports are never stamped.

seyvo

the rule is simple ;

you should enter and exit a common travel area - Schengen Zone in this case -
with the same passport , so that the entry/exit stamp should be on ONE passport.
(failure to do so would result in a stamp missing | entry stamp missing meaning entering illegaly , exit stamp missing meaning overstaying | altough these procedures are rarely checked in spain / italy / france and enforced in Switzerland / germany / netherlands...)

oh and if you want to exit schengen area fom spain i strongly recommend the neighboring morocco either with ferry if you're in southern spain or trought low cost
airfares (60€ roundtrip Ryanair) trought Madrid - Marrakesh

hope that helps