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I am from Myanmar. I was on my way to Venice from Brussels while holding Schengen visa (single entry). I bought a British Airways ticket to fly from Brussels to Venice. Unfortunately, on that day, all BA flights from Brussels were canceled. British Airway's customer service centre told me to go to from Brussels to London by train, where I could catch my flight to Venice. I took a taxi to Bruxelles-Midi train station and bought a ticket to London. A Brussels immigration officer inspected and approved my passport.

Then I had to to through UK Border Immigration. There, they said I can't enter to get my flight. Although I explained the situation with the airline and made clear of my destination (I already reserved my hotels in Venice, Switzerland and France as described in my travel itinerary), they detained me for some hours and also took my fingerprints on paper and photo.

They asked questions concerned about my finances and gave me a refusal letter for not having a transit visa. So I had to re-enter Brussels where the immigration officer put the below stamp in my passport. As I had a single entry Schengen visa, I had to buy another airline ticket to Venice and complete my Europe trip.

  1. What do the stamps below mean on my passport?
  2. Can they affect me and, if so, how and why, when I apply for another Schengen visa?

Exit stamp from Brussels by train, crossed out "Immigration officer, Brussels", crossed out

David Richerby
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Ei Ei San
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    Did you inform BA in Brussels that you did not have a visa to transit the UK? It’s not clear to me why they would expect you to re-route via London rather than another airport within the Schengen Area, or why you would think that you could do so. – Traveller Nov 14 '18 at 16:41
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    @Traveller I think the answer to "why you would think that you could do so" is that you would expect that an airline wouldn't send their passengers on an impossible journey. I don't think it's unreasonable for a passenger to assume that travel professionals know what they are doing. BA made a mistake in not checking that OP had the documents required, and I wouldn't place blame on the passenger here. – MJeffryes Nov 14 '18 at 16:59
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    I gave full information about my travel itinerary. I clear them twice and BA in Brussel told me that is the only route for that day. – Ei Ei San Nov 14 '18 at 17:09
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    @EiEiSan but you didn't tell them that your Schengen visa was for a single entry, did you? Traveling between Schengen ports via the UK requires leaving and re-entering the Schengen area, so your visa was not sufficient for the trip. – phoog Nov 14 '18 at 17:13
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    Looks like things began to go wrong when you had a single-entry Schengen visa and nevertheless bought a ticket from Brussels to Venice via London. That itinerary would not work no matter whether you went to London by air or by train. – hmakholm left over Monica Nov 14 '18 at 17:28
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    @HenningMakholm These things may seem obvious to you, but why should the average traveler know that the UK is not in Schengen, particularly if they never intended to go there? – MJeffryes Nov 14 '18 at 17:32
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    @MJeffryes: If one buys a ticket from Brussels to Venice from British Airways, I'm pretty sure that ticket will originally have said to change flights in London. Thus, following the ticket as issued would have entailed re-entering the Schengen area in Venice. It is always on the traveler to know or research what the visa requirements for their planned itinerary are. – hmakholm left over Monica Nov 14 '18 at 17:36
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    @HenningMakholm I had assumed that it was a code share or something, keeping them within Schengen, but OP hasn't said what the original itinerary was. – MJeffryes Nov 14 '18 at 18:04
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    @MJeffryes I’m probably going slightly off-topic but one only has to glance at a map to see that flying from Brussels to Venice via London makes no sense; equally a Google search throws up non-stop flights with Brussels airlines and many other options via Schengen airports. As Henning Makholm says, the onus is on the traveller to understand what they’re booking. BA doesn’t fly Brussels-Venice direct, so the OP wouldn’t have been allowed to board his Brussels-London flight even if it hadn’t been cancelled. – Traveller Nov 14 '18 at 18:27
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    Guys. the question was just about the meaning of the stamps and phoog already answered that. It is not really relevant how the original itinerary was, if someone has made a mistake and if so, who made a mistake. – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo Nov 14 '18 at 18:52
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    @Traveller: BRU-LHR-VCE seems to make as just as much sense to me as any number of other itineraries that connect at the operator's hub, which are often cheaper than non-stop flights for yield management reasons. The slight extra distance compared to connecting in, say, Paris, Munich, or Milan would not necessarily make it any more expensive or even take longer time -- the dominant term in the travel time will be how long the wait at the hub is. Needing to leave and reenter Schengen can be a disadvantage, as we see here -- but just that might lead BA to price their offer a bit lower ... – hmakholm left over Monica Nov 14 '18 at 20:25
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    It's pretty crappy that the border guard who canceled your exit didn't explain what they were diong ... – Azor Ahai -him- Nov 14 '18 at 22:21
  • @MJeffryes: Besides, flying from Brussels to Venice via London would not involve leaving the airside zone of the airport, so I really don't see why there would be a problem on that point (if he were flying via a U.S. city, that would be a different matter, since the U.S., for some moronic reason, requires everyone getting off an international flight to go through customs, even if they're just transferring to another international flight, but London isn't in the U.S.). – Vikki Nov 15 '18 at 00:22
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    @Sean Because OP has a single entry Schengen visa, and being from Myanmar he needs a transit visa to transit airside in the UK regardless. – MJeffryes Nov 15 '18 at 00:23
  • @MJeffryes: Still stupid, but I get your point. – Vikki Nov 15 '18 at 00:27
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    It’s off-topic, but I’m confused about BA telling you to get on a train. Were you reimbursed for having to buy the train ticket? – Darren Nov 15 '18 at 04:05
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    @HenningMakholm "It is always on the traveller to know or research what the visa requirements for their planned itinerary are" - 100% true. I feel sympathetic for the OP who got into trouble they didn't ask for, but the harsh truth is that no airline will guarantee you that your papers are in order for the trip they are offering you. – Dmitry Grigoryev Nov 15 '18 at 08:45
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    @MJeffryes That's a fair point, though the traveler bears responsibility for their own movements and could/should have asked/checked rather than just assuming. This was a crap situation for the OP but it could be avoided in the future with an overabundance of paranoia that I would tend to agree shouldn't be necessary in an ideal world that we don't live in – Lightness Races in Orbit Nov 15 '18 at 11:17

1 Answers1

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The first stamp means that your exit from the Schengen area was cancelled. This is a good thing, since if you had been allowed to exit the Schengen area, you would not have been able to fly from the UK to Italy.

The second stamp means that you were refused entry into the UK. You will have to report this if you're ever asked whether you were refused entry. If you explain the circumstances, the refusal is not likely to have much of a negative impact. The key points are:

  • you were in the Schengen area with a single-entry visa
  • your flight from Belgium to Italy was cancelled
  • the airline instructed you to travel by way of the UK
  • neither the airline nor you realized that you lacked the necessary visas for that itinerary
  • the UK immigration officer therefore refused entry into the UK
phoog
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    +1 excellent answer. However, I think you should emphasize that OP really must declare the refused entry on future visa applications (for all countries). This will probably not be a big deal -- just some further questioning. However, the consequences of failing to declare this would be quite bad. – Thomas Nov 14 '18 at 23:38
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    @Thomas Visa applications for many countries do not ask about previous issues with immigration in other countries. There is absolutely no need to declare this situation if not asked about it. – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo Nov 14 '18 at 23:53
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    @Tor-EinarJarnbjo that may be true but most do. I just wanted to emphasize that this must be declared even to countries like the US that were not part of the described incident. – Thomas Nov 14 '18 at 23:59
  • @Thomas but the US is one of those countries that doesn't ask about immigration history with other countries. – phoog Nov 15 '18 at 00:58
  • @phoog Really?! I recall being asked about damn near everything when I last applied for a US visa. – Thomas Nov 15 '18 at 01:03
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    @phoog They likely don't ask on ESTA for Visa Waiver Program, but it might come up as an interview question for someone applying for a standard visa. – gparyani Nov 15 '18 at 02:02
  • @gparyani they also don't ask about it on the DS-160 visa application. But a visa interviewer could presumably ask about it in the interview. – phoog Nov 15 '18 at 06:32
  • @Thomas an overview of the DS-160.visa application is available at sample DS-160 https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/PDF-other/DS-160_Example.pdf – phoog Nov 15 '18 at 06:36
  • @phoog You are right. (That's a little surprising, given how much they do ask.) – Thomas Nov 15 '18 at 06:44
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    @Thomas You would think that they could omit one of the many variations of the "are you a terrorist" question in favor of a more useful question about your background instead, but the DS-160 seems to be more designed to ensure you've checked "no" to lots of boxes about bad things than eliciting background information. – Zach Lipton Nov 15 '18 at 09:39
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    @ZachLipton as you may be aware, the questions are fairly directly derived from the statutory grounds of inadmissibility (8 USC 1182). Congress never designated immigration troubles in another country as a bar to admission in the US, and the State Department never added questions of a more general investigatory nature to the form. They probably can't omit the questions that are there, but they could presumably add the question you suggest nonetheless. – phoog Nov 15 '18 at 14:11
  • The US doesn't really need to ask about immigration problems in other countries. –  Nov 15 '18 at 17:45
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    @ZachLipton I always understood that the main reason for the "are you a terrorist?"-type questions was to allow them to easily deport you for lying on the immigration form if you did bad stuff. Under VWP, you have no right to appeal so they can deal with the threat by just saying "In our opinion, you're doing terrorist stuff, so you lied on your immigration form", whereas any other way of dealing with it would require proving in court that you really were doing that. – David Richerby Nov 15 '18 at 17:48
  • @phoog that's a question of law vs regulation. In their Libertarian style, America's Congress delegates a significant mount of regulation down to regulatory agencies. When Congress specifies a law in USC, that cannot be freestyled. But the agency writes its regs (in CFR) and the agency can manage or waive those as it sees fit. So the presence of USC questions is compulsory. Also, they borrow a page from the IRS: most of those are "gotcha" questions designed to either exclude you or make you perjure yourself in writing. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Nov 15 '18 at 18:22
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    @Harper "the presence of USC questions is compulsory": not necessarily. The statute doesn't explicitly require the questions to be asked; it just specifies the grounds of inadmissibility. The choice to investigate those grounds of inadmissibility by including written questions on the application is in the discretion of the executive branch. For example, instead of asking about criminal history, they could require criminal records reports. Instead of asking about renouncing citizenship for the purpose of tax avoidance, they could look at citizenship renunciation records. – phoog Nov 15 '18 at 19:47
  • @DavidRicherby even for a visa visitor, they do not need to prove that someone is a terrorist (or whatever other ground of inadmissibility is in question) to deny entry. But they do need to give the person an opportunity to challenge the immigration officer's finding. Most do not take that opportunity, of course. – phoog Nov 15 '18 at 19:50
  • @greatone countries in general don't need to ask about immigration problems in other countries, but some do (notably the UK), because it helps them identify people who are more likely to abuse the immigration system (or so they hope, at least). It also gives them an opportunity to catch people on deception, though I suppose that's not the main reason for asking. – phoog Nov 15 '18 at 19:52