In Senegal, the difficulties in obtaining a visa for France arouse concern and exasperation
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Obtaining a visa for France has become a veritable Stations of the Cross in Senegal. Aïda*, 39-year-old Frenchwoman, had never imagined that the procedure would be so long for her husband, father of her 3-year-old child, with whom she is in a relationship since 2010 and married for a year. The long-stay visa application has been submitted to the Dakar consulate June 20, 2022, but since then, no news.
“I keep sending emails, but they don’t even answer me”complains the mother, domiciled in the Paris region, who is worried that her son will make his first return to school, Thursday 1er september, without his dad. “I don’t know if they realize the impact of their delay. Families are separated”rattles Aïda, who multiplies the round trips between France and Senegal so that her husband can see her little boy.
Delays recognized by the French Embassy in Senegal in a press release published on social networks on July 26. “The Consulate General is facing an increase of more than 250% in short-stay visa applications compared to the pre-Covid situation. We understand that this generates a lot of impatience and frustration, which we regret”justified French diplomacy, which did not respond to the requests of the World.
“We are really doing everything we can to reduce processing times and return passports as quickly as possible, in a completely new context of business resumption”, she assures. The pressure is particularly strong in Dakar with the multiple requests for study visas which must be processed during the summer, to which must be added those of the many Franco-Senegalese families.
“Disarm the consular services”
For Karim Ben Cheikh, MP for the ninth constituency of French people living abroad (Nupes), “consular staff do not have the means to do their job well”. Having just been appointed special rapporteur for the State’s external action budget for the finance commission, he points out the responsibility of a “Policy of staff reduction in consulates, with 30% of posts cut over the past ten years. »
During a hearing in the Senate on July 28, the Minister Delegate for the French Abroad, Olivier Becht, had himself observed that France had “disarmed [ses] consular services in recent years”.
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