[nirbheek]

Yes, there are two problems:

1. You are misrepresenting the purpose of your visit and you can get deported and/or barred from entering the country. For example, you can be stopped and asked for your passport at any time (this has happened to me multiple times, even though technically it's against Schengen rules).

2. Visiting for 2-3 days makes sense for a conference, but it makes no sense for a vacation and you will raise flags. This would lead to a request for more information from the consulate plus a delay then a rejection, or just a straight rejection.

The dumbest thing is that all this friction is completely unnecessary. The EU can copy the homework of other countries mentioned by the author of the post, but are unable to for unfathomable bureaucratic reasons.

[KineticLensman]

Yes, I got caught out for misrepresenting my reason for visiting Canada once. My UK company provided tech support to UK government organisations and routinely sent people to Canada as part of this contract. All fine. They then sent me out to provide similar support to a Canadian govt org with the paperwork they provided to people attending conferences or sales meetings, etc. The immigration officers spotted the difference when they asked me a couple of simple questions that I answered naively. I was threatened with arrest and deportation unless I presented with the correct docs in 24 hours. It took me three days to get the right paperwork from the guys back home but because I was obviously a clueless techie being messed around by corporate the immigration people were okay with this.

[KineticLensman]

(replying to myself because it’s too late to edit)

I just wanted to add that the whole experience was massively stressful and gave me much greater awareness of the challenges faced by people who can’t cross borders easily. I was given the 24 ultimatum when I arrived in Canada which was late on Sunday afternoon UK time. Luckily I had the mobile number of a very dynamic departmental director who was staggered that corporate had totally misunderstood the circumstances of my trip. He kicked some ass to make things happen and I was home and dry, although I didn’t know it at the time. My customers (the Canadian Army, bless them) were also very understanding and put up with my slightly ragged sleep-deprived performance resulting from lengthy phone calls to corporate lawyers in the middle of the night, Canadian time. They introduced me to a senior military stakeholder I had to brief as the ‘criminal software architect’ which was actually a superb icebreaker.

But my heart goes out to people who don’t have this sort of support.

[pbhjpbhj]

>Visiting for 2-3 days //

Long weekend "city breaks" are pretty common amongst the UK middle classes.

Can you not go to a conference when in holiday? Isn't the difference who is paying - if you pay then it's a holiday, if work pays then it's business. Could work just give you a bonus to cover the amount at some later point?

What's the rationale for not allowing business travel but allowing the same people to travel for tourism?

[nirbheek]

> Long weekend "city breaks" are pretty common amongst the UK middle classes.

Presumably to nearby countries, not via 12-15h flights with layovers, and not after an onerous visa process?

I think you underestimate how much work is needed to submit a visa application. No one in their right mind would spend several days preparing documents and traveling for a total of 30 hours for just a 3 day holiday.

> Can you not go to a conference when in holiday? Isn't the difference who is paying - if you pay then it's a holiday, if work pays then it's business

The difference is "what is the primary purpose of your visit".

There are no clear rules around this, but for Schengen countries generally you decide based on the day spent on each (because that's how you must decide which country to apply to as well, when doing a multi-country trip).

I am visiting Europe this year: attending a conference for 5 days and on holiday for two weeks. My primary purpose is tourism.

If it was 5 days of conference and 4 days of holiday, I would have to submit the application with the conference being the primary purpose, and classified as a business visitor visa.

> What's the rationale for not allowing business travel but allowing the same people to travel for tourism?

No idea, you'd have to ask the consulates.

[gumby]

> Long weekend "city breaks" are pretty common amongst the UK middle classes.

Maybe to the Costa Del Sol, but not the lovely city of Melbourne.

The overhead of flying from India to Europe makes a 2-3 day holiday pretty unlikely. The flights depart in the middle of the night, and then there is jet lag.

> Can you not go to a conference when in holiday?

That is immigration fraud. If you’re a white Australian coming to the UK and doing that I seriously doubt there will be any negative consequence (source: an unofficial comment during an unfortunate visit to the Home Office). People in other situations may not fare as well.

[seanmcdirmid]

> That is immigration fraud. If you’re a white Australian coming to the UK and doing that I seriously doubt there will be any negative consequence (source: an unofficial comment during an unfortunate visit to the Home Office). People in other situations may not fare as well.

Speaking of Australia, it isn’t clear to me at all if the e-visa Americans have to apply for to visit covers conferences or not. It is weird that Americans require a visa to Australia for a short visit (we don’t have a visa waiver agreement for some odd reason), but at least they make it easy, but if it involves a conference…well, I didn’t look into the e-visa terms very closely on my last visit, and very well could have violated visa terms.

[ghaff]

>What's the rationale for not allowing business travel but allowing the same people to travel for tourism?

Many countries don't draw the distinction at least for people with the right passport. But to the degree there's a real rationale (beyond possibly charging more for a business visa and red tape), it's probably something along the lines of the boundaries between routine business travel in another country and working in that country are blurrier than in the case of tourism and therefore some countries think it should attract more scrutiny.

You're right that I could (and have) attended tech events on my own time and my own dime and that seems like tourism by any reasonable definition but does that fact that I didn't take vacation time and maybe submitted an expense report really fundamentally change that?

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> Long weekend "city breaks" are pretty common amongst the UK middle classes.

In Europe with a 1-3 hour time difference and a 1-4 hour flight, yes.

In New York with a 5-hour time difference and an 8-hour flight, not so common. I'm sure that it happens, but it's not at all common. Jetlag alone would make that an athletic event, if your "leaving front door, returning back to front door" time is under 72 hours.

[vladvasiliu]

I'm not saying you're wrong and that I'd do that. But I've seen many travel agencies offer "New York weekend" package deals here in France. If they're doing that, I assume enough people take them up on it.

[youngtaff]

Long weekends in NY aren’t that uncommon from the UK

[madcaptenor]

I remember at one point seeing ads in Boston for Icelandair that pretty clearly implied you might go to Iceland for a long weekend. It seemed a bit preposterous, but I was in Boston for just a couple days from San Francisco, and Iceland is actually closer to Boston than San Francisco is. And in the summer the Boston - Reykjavik time difference is only four hours.

If you google "long weekend in Iceland" there are articles (https://www.travelandleisure.com/weekend-getaways/long-weeke..., https://inspiralized.com/lifestyle/a-long-weekend-trip-to-ic...) that suggest doing this. It actually sounds not unreasonable if you can manage to power through that first day.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

Not nearly as common as long weekends in Paris, Spain, Italy, etc.

Now extrapolate that to "long weekend in California." and it's again much less common.

[jprete]

IANAL, but I think this would very much qualify as misrepresenting the purpose of the trip.