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My friend was stopped when she traveled to Germany from Ukraine for a short term (1 week) tourist travel. Ukrainians do NOT NEED Visa to travel to Schengen area. This was not a Visa issue but a quick inetraction with customs officials at the airport.

The reasons given for the denial of entry were the following: 1). She did not have her travel health insurance,
2). Did not have enough funds with her to prove her financial viability 3). Could not show her hotel booking (I booked the hotel on my name and bought her tickets).

Those issues were simple mistakes due to our inexperience. Next time she will have insurance, sufficient funds, bank statement, hotel, tickets, etc. Because this is not a visa application I would assume that such thing will be sufficient?

I want to make sure that when she travels in October to Slovenia (a 1 week tourist trip) we are well prepared and there will be no problem in new denial of entry at the customs.

The document on denial of entry we were given does Not indicate a "travel ban" and looks like a one time denial. Is there an official database where we can find this out for sure? Do you know any good law firms that help with this?

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  • I can add tag "denial of entry". But I am not experienced with this site. – Michael Panin Aug 16 at 17:25
  • Please give me an advice on how to change tag to my question to be able to satisfy the request made by other user. – Michael Panin Aug 16 at 17:27
  • Does your friend need a visa for any of this? Does her passport allow visa free entry? – Ozzy Aug 16 at 17:42
  • @MichaelPanin, could you split the question into multiple paragraphs? It's a bit hard to read right now. – Mikael Dúi Bolinder Aug 16 at 17:44
  • @Michael Panin You asked “Where can we find out for sure if my friend was given a travel ban?” If she’d been given a ban, the documents she received at the time would state that. Bans are typically given for immigration offences such as deception or fraud; they’re not given for a one-off denial of entry due to lack of documentation. Although your friend’s citizenship means she can request to enter Germany visa-free, if she wants to be certain of not encountering any difficulties next time, she could apply for a visa. – Traveller Aug 17 at 8:39
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Only some of these are tick-the-box items or manufacturable. You can buy health insurance, but bank statements and financial means require a body of evidence going back quite some time.

Particularly, they are on guard against people who are being "propped up" financially by outsiders to look self-supporting when they are in fact not. An example is what we call "funds parking", where you lend her several thousand dollars long enough to get a bank statement showing thousands in the bank, and then of course take it back. That won't work. They typically want to see other evidence of ongoing income - a job appropriate to making enough money for leisure international travel to make sense, and a long period of bank activity which agrees with that.

Now that she's had a refusal, they'll have higher scrutiny on that. They might merely have no proof, but if their interview revealed that her employment situation is poor, that is unlikely to have changed in such a short time, so they will need her reversal of fortune explained.

They may also be on guard for exploitation situations. One is her being trafficked (either forced via threat, or merely sweet-talked with promises of a wonderful Western European life). The other is her taking advantage of you in pursuit of EU citizenship.

When she presents herself and seems to know little about the immigration process and has to check with you, or you answer her questions for her, that raises worries that she's not in command of her own customs/immigration process. And that tends to lead to trouble.

Her application needs to paint a picture to the contrary, and complete the missing parts from the previous application.

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  • I edited question to emphasize that Ukrainians do NOT NEED Visa to travel to Schengen area. Therefore I was a bit surprised that you think that such deep researching is needed to justify her financial means. I could vouch for her and be her sponsor but (i) I live in US and (ii) I am married and do not want to have unnecessary exposure of my private life. So I look for some sort of balanced solution. Thank you. – Michael Panin Aug 17 at 19:55
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    @MichaelPanin It's not needed, it just depends on how much of a chance you're willing to take on another refusal (which would be super bad). Is your line of thinking that immigration has no memory, and is unaware of the past refusal, and you can have unlimited attempts til you get it right/get lucky? No. Repeated refusals will be a disaster. I wildly concur with your plan to not involve yourself and let her succeed on her own merits. – Harper Aug 17 at 20:25

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