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My local Embassy is a Visa Denier Champion! What should i do??

dbaz

dbaz

New Member
Hi,

This is my first post here and i would like to wish good luck to all DV participants of 2014 and 2015.

Now, as far as myself, i have a case number of 2014EU39xxx which seems very close to an interview, and i’m waiting patiently for the notification letter.

I have all my documents ready for the interview (except medicals and police certificates), and i think that i am quite well prepared for that.

Only recently however, i realized that the place where my interview is scheduled is the worst possible in Europe. It is the US Embassy in Athens, Greece.

By searching the CEAC data of 2014 (by the way i would like to thank the guys that uploaded them), i noticed that this specific Embassy has the by far the highest Refusal and Administrative Processing Ratios in all over Europe and most of the World.

I have attached an Image File (i tried to upload XLS but couldn't) with the data to see for yourselves, but in short let me outline the main findings. The US Embassy in Athens, Greece is the:

1) ONLY Consulate in Europe that Less than 50% of the people that have an interview actually get the Visa (Europe Average 81%, most countries 90%+, Athens only 48%)
2) ONLY Consulate in Europe that more than 20% of the people that have an interview are refused at the first place (Europe Average 5.5%, most countries less than 3%, Athens 23%)
3) ONLY Consulate in Europe (with Moscow Embassy) that more than 25% of the people that have an interview go into administrative processing (Europe Average 13.5%, most countries less than 10 %, Athens 29%)

All the above data are for EU case number interviews only.

I wonder what makes this specific consulate so hard to get issued a VISA:
- Maybe some stubborn immigration officers that try to find the smallest details to cut people?
- Maybe some very strict policies against Greek citizens, for some reason? (Terrorism etc.)
- Maybe the fact that there are no specific interview details for this Specific Embassy, so people don’t know what to expect?
- Maybe that the Greek people get the interview too lightly and aren’t well prepared?

I’m quite confused…

On top of all that i recently saw an announcement at the official website of the Athens US Embassy that reads: “Please be advised that due to the peak summer travel season, applicants may experience some delays in the processing of their immigrant visas. We kindly advise all applicants to not make any travel arrangements until the visa is actually issued”.

I haven’t a similar announcement in any other consular website.

All the above make me wonder if the place of my interview is ruining my USA dreams and if i should start searching the possibility of having the interview done in another embassy.

Thoughts?

CEAC_2014_Embassy_Stats.png
 
You are working yourself up for no reason. We can certainly speculate why the denial rate etc is unusual in Athens, but a more important thing to do would be confirm your case is good to go.


You can be denied for various things – so let’s go through them.

  1. People sometimes make “errors” in filling in the forms, for example claiming to be married when they are not, or making multiple mistakes on minor details. It is important the the eDV entry and the 122/230 forms were the same in all these details. So – have you made any of those errors?
  2. People get denied for not meeting the education requirement. They get confused about what US High School education means. Basically it is the point at which you can enter a degree program with no further testing or schooling needed. It takes around 12 years in most countries. Is that going to be a problem?
  3. People can get denied for medical grounds – generally this isbn’t about your health, but whether you are going to spread some horrible disease in the USA. Do you have anything nasty?
  4. People get denied for public charge grounds. You must be prepared to prove that you can support yourself through having at least $10k savings per adult AND or someone in the US willing to sign an affidavit of support (I134). Having a great job, assets like owning your own home (with equity) and so on will all be helpful. Do you have any problem showing ability to support yourself?
  5. Lastly people get denied for lack of documents such as birth cert, police report or so on – or that something is on the police reports that would be a concern. Do you have any of those concerns?


If you answered no to all these questions – you will not have a problem. If any of that is a gray area – let’s discuss that further.
 
Britsimon's post is eminently sensible. If you still want to speculate about the reasons for the high rejection rate I'd wager that Athens is being meticulous about the public charge aspect, possibly asking to see poverty line proof ($10000) and given what has happened to the Greek economy and employment over the last few years it may well be that is what is tripping people up.
 
I think your analysis is overly mathematical. You aren't comparing like with like.

Based on your logic, if all DV applicants from Fiji flew to New Zealand they'd all receive visas because the Auckland embassy is kinder.

If you finished high school and were accurate in your application you should get a visa.
 
Thank you all for your replies, i really appreciate your help. I’ll try to answer all the comments:

SusieQQQ: Maybe the $10,000 benchmark and the crisis is a possible reason. Consider though the cases of:
- Serbia with 20.1% unemployment and $11,100 GDP per Capita
- Croatia with 21.1% unemployment and $17,800 GDP per Capita
- Macedonia with 28.6% unemployment and $10,800 GDP per Capita
- Bosnia Herzegovina with 44.6% unemployment $8,300 GDP per Capita

All these countries are in the same region and have worse economies than Greece (Unemployment 27.5% - GDP per Capita $23,600), but their acceptance rates for DV2014 are 85-100% compared to 48% for Greece. So, i think there has to be something more than just the country’s economic situation.

Especially in the interviews of the last 3 months (CN EU>15000), the success rate for Athens has dropped to 13%! (Only 5 successful interviews out of 38). There is definitely something very wrong going on there… but i don’t know what.

guestgulkan: My friend, i don’t have any "logic". I’m just giving numbers. I didn’t try to explain these numbers and i didn’t make any analysis. I am just worried about this extremely low approval rate, that’s all.
As far as being too mathematical, don’t worry at all! People in the forum do all sorts of complex stuff to predict the next bulletin. That’s a piece of cake for them;)

Britsimon: Your questions make great sense. I’ll try to answer all the points one by one.

1) I rechecked 122/230 forms thoroughly. The points that would make my forms a little below "perfect", at least in my eyes, are:
- DS122: Question 7b – I just wrote the Job "Titles" but not the Job "Descriptions"
- DS230: Question 10 – I entered "N/A" in the USA address Field (in Q.11 I put a friend’s address for the Green Card)
- DS230: Question 13 – I wrote my Mobile Number as "Office Tel. Number"

2) I have a High School Degree. The one that everybody here has (it’s not a vocational degree). It doesn’t write anything about 12 years on the degree, just that you have completed the last grade, which happens at the age of 18.
High School here takes place from the ages of 12-18. Before that there is the Primary school degree, ages 6-12. Do i need to have that as well?
I also have a Bachelor’s Degree in IT.

3) As far as i’m concerned, i don’t have any diseases, contagious or not

4) I am a single applicant and have a bank account with about $15,000 that i have a certificate for. No Affidavit of support, because i don’t have any US relatives, and no jobs in the US yet.
Should i try to get an Affidavit of Support? I read that these companies that fill the DV form for you with a fee, maybe can help on that.
About the job, i haven’t contacted any US companies yet, because i don’t know if I’ll get the visa or not. Is there a better approach?

5) I plan to bring the following Documents to the interview:
Birth Certificate – Military Records – Passport – High School Degree – BSc Degree –Bank Statement – Medical Examinations (not done yet) and the original copies for all those where appropriate.

The trickiest documents though, in my opinion, are the Police Certificates and Court Records. Let me get into a little detail here:
- The Greek Police don’t issue any certificates. They can’t certify if you are a good guy or not.
- That is why the directions from State.Gov for Greece mention only Penal Records needed and provide instructions on how to get them
- There are two types of these records in Greece 1. Those for General Use which can be obtained by anyone, and 2. Those for Authorities Use, the issue of which can be requested by anyone but can be handled only to those specified in the application, for instance the US Embassy.
- The USCIS talks about the second type of Document, for authorities use, but doesn’t state clearly who will possess the document.
- In other words, if you follow the instructions word by word, you arrive at the Interview without having any sort of proof of status against the law, and just hope that these documents have already been handled to the US Consulate by the Greek Government. Have they? I don’t know.
- I’ve seen this topic already being discussed in a Greek forum in the past, but no definite answer was given.
- You think i should obtain the Records for General Use, as well, to have with me at the interview just to fill more secure?

And that is all. Does anything of the above sound fishy?
Sorry for getting into all those details, but if i don’t understand clearly WHY in some embassies 1 out of 2 (and recently 7 out of 8) get cut, while in some others do not, maybe I’ll be a part of the statistics myself… the bad ones!

Peace
 
Yeah ! There is good and bad embassies its all about fitting into the qualifications criterias :)
 
Thanks for the link Sloner. It seems the Russian High School Certificate wasn't accepted by the Athens Embassy for some reason.

From the little i understood, people are trying to find workarounds of that by searching for American Evaluation Agencies that can certify, if the Russian degrees are equivalent to the US ones or not. Isn't that going a little too far?

Vladek, if the qualification criterias were the same for all embassies there wouldn't be a problem, but i see a lot of disparities here
 
The point is, visas can't get denied for no reason. When a visa is denied the CO has to file the report of why. Also, these visas are just waiting to be issued. So, unless Greece is like Nigeria in high fraud, I can only assume that the embassy is quite strict in interpreting the guidelines... We certainly see some tend to be less strict than others. For example it seems Kenyans and Ethiopians are very seldom asked proof of finances. At first glance one might think this is odd but I guess they have a reputation for being hardworking people willing to work at whatever they need to. One might well find though that if the $10k rule was applied a lot of those same people would be denied.

All you can do is what britsimon says and make sure all your ducks are in a row. I would be exceptionally wary of paying some agency who claims they can get you an affidavit of support. You will have no clue how reliable that affidavit is and what are you going to say when the CO asks - as they most certainly will - how you know the sponsor? At absolute worst case is that the affidavit is fraudulent in which case they will deny you on the spot. You have your $15k, you have a degree in a field that I believe is pretty easy to find a job in the US with, you should be ok.
 
dbaz said:
Thank you all for your replies, i really appreciate your help. I’ll try to answer all the comments:

SusieQQQ: Maybe the $10,000 benchmark and the crisis is a possible reason. Consider though the cases of:
- Serbia with 20.1% unemployment and $11,100 GDP per Capita
- Croatia with 21.1% unemployment and $17,800 GDP per Capita
- Macedonia with 28.6% unemployment and $10,800 GDP per Capita
- Bosnia Herzegovina with 44.6% unemployment $8,300 GDP per Capita

All these countries are in the same region and have worse economies than Greece (Unemployment 27.5% - GDP per Capita $23,600), but their acceptance rates for DV2014 are 85-100% compared to 48% for Greece. So, i think there has to be something more than just the country’s economic situation.

Especially in the interviews of the last 3 months (CN EU>15000), the success rate for Athens has dropped to 13%! (Only 5 successful interviews out of 38). There is definitely something very wrong going on there… but i don’t know what.

guestgulkan: My friend, i don’t have any "logic". I’m just giving numbers. I didn’t try to explain these numbers and i didn’t make any analysis. I am just worried about this extremely low approval rate, that’s all.
As far as being too mathematical, don’t worry at all! People in the forum do all sorts of complex stuff to predict the next bulletin. That’s a piece of cake for them;)

Britsimon: Your questions make great sense. I’ll try to answer all the points one by one.

1) I rechecked 122/230 forms thoroughly. The points that would make my forms a little below "perfect", at least in my eyes, are:
- DS122: Question 7b – I just wrote the Job "Titles" but not the Job "Descriptions"
- DS230: Question 10 – I entered "N/A" in the USA address Field (in Q.11 I put a friend’s address for the Green Card)
- DS230: Question 13 – I wrote my Mobile Number as "Office Tel. Number"

2) I have a High School Degree. The one that everybody here has (it’s not a vocational degree). It doesn’t write anything about 12 years on the degree, just that you have completed the last grade, which happens at the age of 18.
High School here takes place from the ages of 12-18. Before that there is the Primary school degree, ages 6-12. Do i need to have that as well?
I also have a Bachelor’s Degree in IT.

3) As far as i’m concerned, i don’t have any diseases, contagious or not

4) I am a single applicant and have a bank account with about $15,000 that i have a certificate for. No Affidavit of support, because i don’t have any US relatives, and no jobs in the US yet.
Should i try to get an Affidavit of Support? I read that these companies that fill the DV form for you with a fee, maybe can help on that.
About the job, i haven’t contacted any US companies yet, because i don’t know if I’ll get the visa or not. Is there a better approach?

5) I plan to bring the following Documents to the interview:
Birth Certificate – Military Records – Passport – High School Degree – BSc Degree –Bank Statement – Medical Examinations (not done yet) and the original copies for all those where appropriate.

The trickiest documents though, in my opinion, are the Police Certificates and Court Records. Let me get into a little detail here:
- The Greek Police don’t issue any certificates. They can’t certify if you are a good guy or not.
- That is why the directions from State.Gov for Greece mention only Penal Records needed and provide instructions on how to get them
- There are two types of these records in Greece 1. Those for General Use which can be obtained by anyone, and 2. Those for Authorities Use, the issue of which can be requested by anyone but can be handled only to those specified in the application, for instance the US Embassy.
- The USCIS talks about the second type of Document, for authorities use, but doesn’t state clearly who will possess the document.
- In other words, if you follow the instructions word by word, you arrive at the Interview without having any sort of proof of status against the law, and just hope that these documents have already been handled to the US Consulate by the Greek Government. Have they? I don’t know.
- I’ve seen this topic already being discussed in a Greek forum in the past, but no definite answer was given.
- You think i should obtain the Records for General Use, as well, to have with me at the interview just to fill more secure?

And that is all. Does anything of the above sound fishy?
Sorry for getting into all those details, but if i don’t understand clearly WHY in some embassies 1 out of 2 (and recently 7 out of 8) get cut, while in some others do not, maybe I’ll be a part of the statistics myself… the bad ones!

Peace
Click to expand...

OK - answers to your answers.

1. No issue there.

2. That is good enough. Take proof of that and the IT degree to the interview.

3. Good to hear!

4. That is enough cash - need need for an I134 UNLESS it is specifically requested by the embassy (local rules). I don't think Athens does that.

5. Regarding the penal records. Apply for both types of penal record that you mention. The instructions are clear on the reciprocity page, but you have obviously investigated further. Just do the best you can do follow the instructions - but cover your bases too. I would imagine many people fail to follow the instructions clearly and that could be a reason for the denial rate. IF you had an interview where the Greek authorities had failed to supply a request penal record, the CO should issue a denial notice (221g) and you would be given an opportunity to provide the requested documents. I would expect them to record that in CEAC as AP - but they may be recording it as a denial. Either way, you should be able to get to issued status by supplying the documents within the timeline.

Point 5 could partially explain the denial and AP rates in Greece - along with other factors such as economy etc.

Just a point about Susies point on the economic crisis in Greece. I think the economy in Greece is much worse than you seem to believe. The GDP number is relatively high but the concentration of wealth to a relatively small portion of the population is unlike many any countries. The country is deeply in debt (without the broad base of wealth to support that) and the man in the street is on average not benefiting from the GDP number you mention. Property values probably have affected sales and equity shares. That means it must be difficult to obtain the sort of funds that are needed to make the jump to the USA - hence the concern.
 
dbaz said:
Thanks for the link Sloner. It seems the Russian High School Certificate wasn't accepted by the Athens Embassy for some reason.

From the little i understood, people are trying to find workarounds of that by searching for American Evaluation Agencies that can certify, if the Russian degrees are equivalent to the US ones or not. Isn't that going a little too far?

Vladek, if the qualification criterias were the same for all embassies there wouldn't be a problem, but i see a lot of disparities here
Click to expand...
you read the response of the Moscow embassy.

In general, the Consular Section at U.S. Embassy Moscow considers diplomas from vocational schools with the notation “c получением (полного) среднего образования” (“having received (full) secondary education”) to be the equivalent of a U.S. high school diploma. However, each case is evaluated closely to ensure that an applicant’s particular diploma qualifies as full secondary education.
Unfortunately, your case cannot be transferred to U.S. Embassy Moscow if it has already been refused at U.S. Embassy Athens. If you believe that your application was refused in error, you are welcome to contact the Consular Section at U.S. Embassy Athens with an explanation of why you believe that is the case. You may also mention that they are welcome to contact us for additional information on Russian educational schools/levels required for Diversity Visas.

Embassy in Athens does not think so. I think sitting there not competent workers. Simon looks more worthy than they.:cool:
 
Thanks again for your support Susie.

No Greece is not known for having high fraud rates in cases of a documents etc. It might be known for many other bad things but faking documents is not one of them.
It's obvious that the Embassy is strict in interpreting the Guidelines. The question is HOW strict.

I do not know how familiar you are with Greece, but having a University degree and $10.000+ in the bank here is like living in Sweden and having blue eyes. That common.

So why are people getting cut in such high rates?

I do not know but i can give you an example. In the website that Sloner kindly mentioned, there was a Russian woman that was describing her interview experience at the Athens Embassy. She said that when the interview started the interviewer said something like: "Lets go through your education YEAR by YEAR".

If the interviewer says something like that to me i can easily get cut. I don't have a year by year education. Just a usual certificate stating that i finished the last grade of HighSchool like everybody here does. Just one year from 17 to 18 years old. Nothing else. If the interviewer wants to cut me on that, he/she may very well can. Unless i find what is that evaluation thing and how to do it.

The Russian woman also said the she was a psychologist by proffession, meaning she can handle emotions very well, but felt so pressed in the interview from the repeated questions, that she was about to break. That demanding it was...
 
Britsimon thank you very much as well

On number 4.... I134 is NOT requested by the Athens Embassy because the document of requirements is totally blank.
Meaning that this embassy has no special requirements. I can only hear that as a joke...:DLOL. No special requirements but the highest cut off rate in the world.

Now about the economy. You have a point that income inequality plays an important role.
The most popular index that measures inequality is the Gini index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

The higher the Gini, the more the inequality. Now look what we have here:
Macedonia 43,0
Bosnia 36,2
Greece 33,0
Croatia 32,0
Serbia 28,2
So Greece is somewhere in the middle... not too high not too low.

We can also measure the purchasing power of people. A good link that does that is the following http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_current.jsp
There, we can see that Athens is No2 only after Croatia

Croatia: Split 35,51 – Rijeka 45,44 – Zagreb 46,87 – Osijek 47,64
Greece: Patras 36,70 - Athens 39,18 - Thessaloniki 41,23 - Chania 48,74
Bosnia: Sarajevo 38,89 – Banja Luca 39,92
Serbia: Pristina 25,69 - Nis 31,04 - NoviSad 31,80 - Belgrade 36,44
Macedonia: Skopje 31,88 - Bitola 33,77

In other words i haven’t yet seen a financial index showing that Greece’s economy is worse the any other Balkan state. If we find one, then we can talk about it
 
Sloner said:
you read the response of the Moscow embassy.

In general, the Consular Section at U.S. Embassy Moscow considers diplomas from vocational schools with the notation “c получением (полного) среднего образования” (“having received (full) secondary education”) to be the equivalent of a U.S. high school diploma. However, each case is evaluated closely to ensure that an applicant’s particular diploma qualifies as full secondary education.
Unfortunately, your case cannot be transferred to U.S. Embassy Moscow if it has already been refused at U.S. Embassy Athens. If you believe that your application was refused in error, you are welcome to contact the Consular Section at U.S. Embassy Athens with an explanation of why you believe that is the case. You may also mention that they are welcome to contact us for additional information on Russian educational schools/levels required for Diversity Visas.

Embassy in Athens does not think so. I think sitting there not competent workers. Simon looks more worthy than they.:cool:
Click to expand...

Ok so one Embassy accepts the High School Diploma, while the other doesn't. Great!
What did this person do Sloner? Did he find a solution?

PS. If the Embassy stuff where Greek people, i could think again about competency, but they are all Americans, aren't they?
 
dbaz said:
Britsimon thank you very much as well

On number 4.... I134 is NOT requested by the Athens Embassy because the document of requirements is totally blank.
Meaning that this embassy has no special requirements. I can only hear that as a joke...:DLOL. No special requirements but the highest cut off rate in the world.

Now about the economy. You have a point that income inequality plays an important role.
The most popular index that measures inequality is the Gini index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

The higher the Gini, the more the inequality. Now look what we have here:
Macedonia 43,0
Bosnia 36,2
Greece 33,0
Croatia 32,0
Serbia 28,2
So Greece is somewhere in the middle... not too high not too low.

We can also measure the purchasing power of people. A good link that does that is the following http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_current.jsp
There, we can see that Athens is No2 only after Croatia

Croatia: Split 35,51 – Rijeka 45,44 – Zagreb 46,87 – Osijek 47,64
Greece: Patras 36,70 - Athens 39,18 - Thessaloniki 41,23 - Chania 48,74
Bosnia: Sarajevo 38,89 – Banja Luca 39,92
Serbia: Pristina 25,69 - Nis 31,04 - NoviSad 31,80 - Belgrade 36,44
Macedonia: Skopje 31,88 - Bitola 33,77

In other words i haven’t yet seen a financial index showing that Greece’s economy is worse the any other Balkan state. If we find one, then we can talk about it
Click to expand...


Seems like you are as set as you can be for the DV process. Really, try not to worry. From your detailed writing I can see that you are a thoughtful person and have considered all angles. With an attitude like that and the boxes ticked I would put money on you raising the visas issued number for Athens. So stop worrying.

As for the points about the economy - take your mind out of the numbers for a moment and look around. It isn't so long since there were riots in Greece about the economy and the government handling of the economy and the debt. My own investments took hits because of the Greek economy and the PIGS countries (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain). Greece had some particularly "creative" practices that would tend to overstate their economic strength. But fundamentally, I don't remember my investments getting hit for any economic issues the other Balkan states you mention....
 
My friend Simon. Greece is a f*cked up country.
No doubt about that. Just not THAT f*cked up as some people might think. But it's not the proper forum to discuss about it.

Thank you for betting on me. And you will probably win a lot if i get the visa based on my embassy odds;)

But it's not only about me. Its about all the people that are coming. Based on the available stats the Athens Embassy will process about 100 interviews in the next 4 months.
Instead of being professional they say that "due to the peak summer travel season, applicants may experience some delays in the processing of their immigrant visas."

An apart from that they have a cut off rate of 87% in the last three months. Can you believe that? 87%!
Even the Antartica Consulate processing penguins wouldnt have a 87% cut off rate!

Can you please mention another Consulate where these things happen?

What i'm trying to do here is to raise people's awareness, that one of the popular Consulates of Europe treats people extremely unfairly.

As a forum we have 3 options:
a) Do nothing about it
b) Find why all that happens and educate people what to do pass the interview OR
c) Tell people how to transfer their interview to another place

I don't believe that anyone in these forums would vote for (a)... especially you with so many thousands posts... an ofcourse all the other people that spend so much time in here

I'll try to contact people that had an interview in Athens through the Russian Forum that Sloner provided, and see their expiriences.
Any other ideas are welcome...
 
The thing is, you can't just look at the numbers and say it's unfair, you need to know what the reasons for the refusals were. Other countries with very high refusal rates typically have a lot of fraud cases. You say you don't believe that is the case but... You don't know. Unless you can find out, maybe through a freedom of information request, what the stated reasons for the refusals are, you can't raise this as an issue. Finding out through forums the reasons people give is a good place to start - if you start seeing a pattern definitely let us know.
 
Well here's an interesting twist.
According to wikileaks most of the refusals in Athens are for Albanians (and Ethiopians and Nigerians , but these would obviously not have EU numbers) ...and one of the issues cited is indeed fraud.

According to this the overall refusal rate is low though, which means either the CEAC numbers you have are suspect, a lot more people are coming from across the border with similar issues as before, or more Greeks are indeed applying and the cession has had a worse impact than you think and/or it is only the more desperate (less financially stable or educated) ones who enter rather than just move elsewhere in Europe.

https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09ATHENS1774_a.html
 
Thanks for that.
The CEAC numbers i have are from the Dalius Rafikbo spreadsheets... nothing special

It makes sense that there are some Albanian cases processed in Athens.
According to (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanians) there are about 6.5 million Albanians about 450,000 of whom live in Greece.
There were 3289 Albanian Selectees in for 2014, so proportionally about 230 of them will likely be processed in Athens.

With the same procedure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeks) there are about 15.5 million Greeks about 2 million of whom live in the US (excluded) and 11.3 million live in Greece. The overeal Greek selectees were 230 for 2014, and proportionally 193 will be processed in Athens.

So basically its about one Albanian interview for one Greek interview. The link you mentioned says that "Immigrant visa fraud is generally seen with Nigerian, Albanian and Iraqi applicants providing false supporting documents or engaged in sham relationships." From all those only Albanians have EU numbers

Even if we suppose that all Albanians are fraudsters (which obviously is an exageration), then in Tirana Embassy we would see very large rejection rates that we don't. The approval rate there is over 70%, much higher than Athens.

So the Athens curse is still not solved.
 
SusieQQQ said:
Well here's an interesting twist.
According to wikileaks most of the refusals in Athens are for Albanians (and Ethiopians and Nigerians , but these would obviously not have EU numbers) ...and one of the issues cited is indeed fraud.

According to this the overall refusal rate is low though, which means either the CEAC numbers you have are suspect, a lot more people are coming from across the border with similar issues as before, or more Greeks are indeed applying and the cession has had a worse impact than you think and/or it is only the more desperate (less financially stable or educated) ones who enter rather than just move elsewhere in Europe.

https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09ATHENS1774_a.html
Click to expand...

Good find Susie. The report is from 2009 - and since then the economy will have caused more desperation - possibly increasing fraud levels. Through the available stats we can see that Greek entries doubled from 2012 to 2013 - and selectees were increased massively in 2014 compared with 2013 and previous years. To me that suggests some "organisation" at work - perhaps someone has created a "service" that helps people fill in forms. In some countries (such as Nepal) these organizations seem to behave fairly. In other countries (such as former USSR countries) they do not.

Also - as you point out Susie, Athens seems to be dealing with a lot of foreign DV tourism...
 
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