Travelling Legally Abroad: Traveling is a great hobby to cultivate. After all, you learn plenty of new things when you go travel to a new place, like abroad. You learn a bit about foreign culture. You learn how people from other countries perceive things that you might have taken for granted in your own hometown.
There are so many great things that you can enjoy when you travel abroad. However, in order for you to fully enjoy your trips to other countries, you must make sure that you get past all the legal hurdles associated with traveling. When you travel legally, you don’t run the risk of getting into problems in that locale where you’re heading to. Bear in mind that travelling illegally can result, at the least, to deportation while in some countries it could result to imprisonment. You don’t want that on your record, do you?
In order to travel legally abroad, you would need to prepare the necessary documentation. These documents will be requested from you on your points of departure, entry and in the many places where you will be going to on your travels.
Passport
Your passport is the most important document that you need to have on your person when you travel abroad. The passport will signify that you are a legal citizen of the country where you live. In most cases, it is perhaps the only valid form of identification that a foreigner can present when asked for it. Hence, you should make sure that you always have a valid passport with you when you travel. Valid means a working and non-expired passport, so you must make certain that your passport’s expiry period does not fall within your travel dates to avoid problems. In this case, passports must be valid for at least six months after your travel dates.
Visa
The other document that you must have in order to travel legally is the Visa. Visas are issued in order to signify that you are allowed to travel to the country of your destination. You can treat it as a letter of permission, so to speak. Visas can be obtained from the embassy of the country that you are traveling to. There are many types of visas that can be issued to a person depending on the intent to travel. For instance, student visas are issued for students who wish to take up education abroad for a certain period of time. Work visas are given to people who need to travel abroad for employment. There is also a specific visa called a tourist visa for people who travel abroad simply for leisure.
There is a specific process for applying for a visa that needs to be observed by travelers. The application process would differ from country to country, of course. Visas also have durations of validity which must be observed, and this piece of information is also important when traveling to a specific country. There are also countries that require no visa for U.S. citizens, while others issue visas only upon arrival that are valid for a specific period of time and for an amount of money.
Traveling legally abroad is not that difficult, but it does require research. It is advisable to perform research before hand on which countries would require a U.S. citizen to apply for a visa before arrival, which ones issue visas only upon arrival and which nations led U.S. citizens to visit without applying for a visa.
Michael is currently taking Law at the University of Southern California. In his free time, he writes articles for discussing his opinion on current events that touch on American rights and American law. Hope you love reading “Travelling Legally Abroad” please your view in the comment section.
