HELP! VISA ISSUES.

I am sorry to say that, but change the lawyer. If he is not able to give you the right advice.

IVisa D and residence permits are stages from ONE procedure, and owning this property is the Obligatory requirement for this.

I think I gave you a good advice in another talk.

We bought our house for about 12 thousand levs, had the estate agent run my wife ragged for nearly a week getting the relevant permits, setting up the limited company and a bank account.

The one thing we never completed was the transfer of the electric but that is another story.

Have the rules changed regarding house/land value since 2020?

Try speaking to this lady, she was very helpful with our Visa D & subsequent residency.

visaforbulgaria.com

Her name is Tanya & comes highly recommended by many!

@Stephanie Goodrum

Oh dear, what a pickle. As @Vasilev already pointed out, you have not been appropriately advised so far.

You already posted a similar query about D visa and residence in Bulgaria, and I think there was some very helpful advice posted.

From your last thread, you said: "My husband is now retired, but I am not. My husband has an EU passport, I have a British passport."

When you say he "has an EU passport", do you mean that he has a British passport, but one issued pre-Brexit?

And when you say he "is now retired", does he have pension, and an official letter of entitlement (or other proof) of his pension?

Separately, here are some notes...

(1) As you didn't buy your house yet, you don't have a proof of address in Bulgaria.

(2) Currently, only one of you qualifies for the D visa (your husband, as a pensioner).

(3) You have formed a Bulgarian company for your small business. A Bulgarian company is NOT a basis for a D visa unless you have 10 Bulgarian employees.

(4) Yes, a Bulgarian company can be used to buy and hold property, which gets you around the restriction on non-EU citizens buying a house with land. But usually you would have a non-trading company to hold your property, and a separate trading company for your spa business.

(5) Owning a property in Bulgaria (whether personally or via your company) is NOT a basis for a D visa, unless the purchase cost was over 600k leva (about 312k euros). Which qualifies for the D visa by investment.

@gwynj sorry should have been more clear, yes my husband is still currently on a EU passport but is a British citizen, this was renewed prior brexit.

Thanks for your help so far. I feel like its all a goose chase for us at the minute

Our bulgarian lawyer here in London has been very unclear exactly what we need. As I said, the business is registered so that's all underway, so we just need to now head to bulgaria in January planned and purchase our property

Then return to London to apply for the visa with the purchsed properties address and once in place we can return to Bulgaria?.

We have all other relevant documents for the application in place here ready and understand the application process now having been to embassy.

@gwynj

Good job.

Just remembering the situation. So, not stress.

Even Family reunionificarion is not the right term to the situation of an EU spouse. Family reunification is used in the Bulgarian Foreigners Act and only refers to non-EU citizens when they are a family member of a bulgarian citizen or a foreigner, who had obtained residence permit.

But it is sad that people do not have good lawyers or trust them. In case they have such advisors it is more likely to let them finish what they began.

@Vasilev many thanks for the confirmation.  I wish we would have researched some more lawyers in relation to this.

We trusted what she had to say as you do when your investing so much money into them.

Our plan is to head to bulgaria as planned after the new year and head straight to varna. We have a list of properties there and in contact with the local estate agents there. We hope we have more luck in purchasing a property. Ready to head to back to UK for the visa process.

Many thanks again. Appreciate your time.

@Stephanie Goodrum

"so we just need to now head to bulgaria in January planned and purchase our property"

Yes, good first step. The Notary Act (deed) of the property serves as your proof of address. A rental contract (provided by a landlord and/or immigration attorney) also works.

"Then return to London to apply for the visa with the purchased properties address and once in place we can return to Bulgaria?"

Yes! The deed of your new house will be your proof of address. But at this stage, ONLY your husband qualifies for the D visa (as a pensioner).

Yes! Once he has his D visa, you can return to Bulgaria, and HE can apply for residence.

Once HE is a resident, you have to start a new process of family reunification for you.

@berryd Hi, can I ask, you said you purchsed a property for 12,000 lev. Did you then get the D Visa ? That doesn't seem like a lot of money than whay we have been told we need. Are you living there premently now? And your not aware of this, purchse a property no less than 600,000 lev as a requirement for the D visa. ? We getting worried now as we don't want to put that much into the purchase as I will Need it for my business and potential housing works/renovations etc.

Hi Stephanie,

I truly don't know about this VISA D thing. I only know that, to own a property in Bulgaria, we had to set up a limited company and a bank account linked to that limited company but that was 2 years ago. Nobody ever mentioned us having to have a visa and that is most likely that we never asked.

We did buy the house and my wife was run around multiple banks and offices over a week - we have just (I hope) sold the house as it is no longer viable since BREXIT.

Hope you get sorted soon but it sounds like you are being asked for some kind of golden visa which I really don't like the sound of.

@Stephanie Goodrum

Please don't stress! You definitely don't need to buy a 300k house! :-) And hardly any Brits do (I certainly didn't).

But there are some GENERAL requirements for the immigration process: they are proof of address (rental contract or house deed), proof of funds, proof of health insurance.

And there's the SPECIFIC basis on which you qualify for the D visa. The most common is retiree (with a pension), or a TRO. But you could be a student (at a Bulgarian university), or a freelancer (with Bulgarian language competence), or a Bulgarian company owner (with 10+ Bulgarian employees). Or by investment, including 300k of Bulgarian real estate. Or by Family Reunification with a Bulgarian citizen or Bulgarian resident.

A 12k leva house is a proof of address, but not a basis for a D visa. A 300k euros house is BOTH a proof of address, and a basis for D visa.

Sorry for the confusion!

@gwynj sorry should have been more clear, yes my husband is still currently on a EU passport but is a British citizen, this was renewed prior brexit.

Do you mean he has a British passport with European Union written on the cover?

@GB_2_BG Yes thats correct, he is a british citizen but currently holds an eu passport as it has not been renewed since brexit yet.. Sorry its all so confusing someone like me not having a clue where im even at

@Mel1702 Thanks for the advice, we have sent her an email and hopefully we can gain some help. x

@Stephanie Goodrum Dear Stephanie, did your lawyer propose you to make visa using Representative  and Trademark registration legal basis? We got visa D and residence permit not because of company and property, but it was much more easier to open representative of my company in Bulgaria and to register TM ( it takes 3 day for representative).

But answering to your question: you must get visa D and only after come to Bulgaria and apply for residence permit. I have heard that people travel to  Serbia for visa D, if they don’t want to come back home.

My business here doesn’t give me any legal basis to get visa D . I tried to get visa and residence permit with Bulgarian lawyers , but it was not successful. It is a great problem with lawyers here. Now I know that there are only 1-2 specific companies (even not lawyers) who can help with it. Sure, it sounds strange , but it is Bulgaria. So we  did everything by ourselves. Unfortunately, I can’t recommend you really lawyers for this. But in front of  MVR in Sofia at the corner there is company, and the owner is  Mishu ( from Iran), he helped us and consulted  for free.  I saw him every day I was there. Looks like he lives there and all MVR officials knows him. I have great doubts, that he is a lawyer. Now (9 years passed) as I see, he has several offices and a lot of employees, but  if I have questions I go to him directly.

@Stephanie Goodrum

I quote your original post: "My husband is now retired, but I am not. My husband has an EU passport, I have a British passport."

I understood this to mean that your husband has an EU passport. i.e. he is a dual citizen with both UK and a second passport from another EU country.

But your later comment here seems to indicate that you mean that you and your husband only have British passports. But you're calling an old (pre-Brexit) British passport an "EU passport". While your new (post-Brexit) British passport is a "British passport".

Profuse apologies to all on the thread, if I'm the only one that's confused!! :-) And big thanks to @GB_2_BG for helping me spot that! :-)

If he has an EU passport (of an EU country), there is a completely different (and easy) process.

If you BOTH have UK passports ONLY, then it's the D visa route, and there's no way round it (sorry).

Here's the summary process for that...

- The D visa route means you need (a) proof of address (which you don't have yet), and (b) proof that you qualify for the D visa.

- When you come to Bulgaria and buy a house, the Notary Act (deed) will serve as the proof of address (even if you buy a very cheap house).

- You don't BOTH qualify for the D visa, currently. ONLY your husband does, if he is indeed "now retired" AND he has proof of entitlement to a suitable pension. So you can get HIS D visa only.

- With HIS D visa, he can go to Bulgaria, and he can apply for residence.

- Once he is a resident (with his official residence permit), you can apply for family reunification.

- As you are non-EU spouse of non-EU citizen, YOU must also get a D visa. "Family Reunification with a BULGARIAN RESIDENT" is YOUR grounds for D visa.

- Finally, YOU can come to Bulgaria with your D visa, and you can apply for YOUR residence permit.

NOTE on visas: You and your husband can come to Bulgaria as many times as you like with your UK passport, without any kind of visa, for UP TO 90 days in 180 days. BUT you can't apply for residence until you have, and enter Bulgaria with, your D visa.

NOTE on house price: In the above process, your husband qualifies for D visa as a retiree... then, later, you qualify as the spouse of a Bulgarian resident. And you can buy a cheap Bulgarian house merely as your proof of address. The Bulgarian Embassy probably thought that you wanted to get D visa for BOTH of you, immediately, and so they suggested you buy a property of 300k euros. Which serves BOTH as proof of address AND grounds for D visa (for you both) by investment.

My honest opinion is that the case become very perplexed, and whithout seeing any documents ( she mentioned that even one of the passport is expired; which one? ), and all that urgency can lead to mistakes. If someone needs my professional advice, I can help, after sending me some official written explaination to my email.

Stephanie, what Gwyn said! If the only passport your husband has is a British one, regardless of whether it says European Union on the front, he is NOT an EU citizen.

Unfortunately, just having a Bulgarian company (unless it employs 10 Bulgarians full-time) and owning a Bulgarian property (unless it's worth over 600,000 lev) will not get either of you a D visa.

But if your husband is retired and getting a pension worth over 360 EUR a month (whether private or state OAP, regardless of his age) he can apply for the retiree D visa, and once he has that then you can apply as a family reunification D visa. He does need to show proof of the pension income.

It's complicated and it seems there's been some misunderstandings in your previous dealings with your attorney and the Embassy.

Maybe this is a bit off topic, but I'm a UK citizen, would I need to have my documents "apostilized" or can I have them notified/certified..(as I understand apostllized is a process of verification only done in the USA for US citizens?? or am I wrong) or how does that work..

@RichardKing44 you can get docs apotilized in the UK you send it to them by courier and they send it back costs about 50 quid if I recall just google it

To the best of my knowledge, the process of certification with apostille is legally valide process    world wide, with few exceptions, Canada is one of them.

For ex.   this BG site have English content on this matter:  https://www.ati-bg.com/en/

@RichardKing44

Apostille (in French: Apostille) is a special certificate with a seal for document certification from the country where the document was issued. Documents bearing an apostille are exempt from any additional form of legalization in countries that are parties to the 1961 Hague Convention.

When the country is not a part of this Hague Convention, so you will need a full Consular certification.

Without these procedures Bulgarian government connot apprive any of applicant's official documents.

I'm so sorry to see revisiting this thread that Stephanie's posts now appear as  Guest6579. Does that mean she's left the forum? I hope it all works out for her.

Hello Janemulberry,

Unfortunately, the member has indeed left the website.

Regards,

Bhavna