Money for nothing, visa for free

Money for nothing, visa for free
30 July 2010
Madrid, Spain

This morning my friend and I dropped off our China visa applications at the Chinese embassy. It makes getting a NIE look easy! CEIBS provided a form and a letter, and otherwise the application only required a form, a copy of my NIE (for non-Spaniards), one passport photo, and our passport. The remaining question is mostly what sort of visa will be awarded. Two other friends were only able to get double-entry visas (though they can apply for further entries once in China). I included an extra letter explaining my request for two entries and made sure not to apply for an "estudio" visa, but a short-term (6 months) F Type visa which is technically called a Business Visa, but it includes "estudio en corto plazo" or for short-term study. The embassy official checked the appropriate box and wrote down the request as one for an F visa with multiple entries. So we'll see if luck was with us. We'll find out a week from today, next Friday.

A note on costs: no matter how many entries, a Chinese visa for an American costs 120 Euros, whereas for a Spaniard it costs a fraction of that - and only 30 Euros for a single-entry visa. My question is: is there any actual processing cost different or is this pricing differential purely on the demand side, or possibly set as retaliation for the costs and efforts required for US visas?

At any rate, it will indeed be worth every penny!