Planning his trip for his sister’s wedding, Badr* knew he would be forced to use the services of an illegal broker to obtain a visa for France and attend the ceremony, organized last summer. This 30-year-old computer engineer, who lives in Marrakech, paid him about fifteen euros.
“It is impossible to find an appointment at TLS Contact (the designated service provider to manage visa applications from Morocco and 13 other countries, editor’s note) or you have to stop working to be connected all day,” he testifies for BFMTV. com. “And yet.”
In addition to the appointment, Badr’s intermediary offered to “study” his file. And he advised her to add some supporting documents: a letter from her sister who lives in France, copies of her passport, her tax return and her pay slips. The official meeting was held, but to no avail.
France has decided, from September 2021, to halve the number of visas granted to Moroccan citizens. The young man’s request was denied.
A dating “black market”?
Beyond this change in policy, it is very difficult to obtain, through the TLS Contact platform, a simple appointment to file your file, since free spaces are scarce.
The middlemen saw this as an opportunity: they raided the available quotes and then illegally resold them, sometimes for several hundred euros. Youssef El Idrissi El Hassani, president of the Franco-Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AFMDH), denounces a “black market”.
“Very few appointments, if any, are available to apply for a visa,” he told BFMTV.com. “Or some appointments are delivered dribbling in the middle of the night.”
“How is it that the intermediaries get these appointments and not the citizens?” he asks. She is concerned about a violation of access to rights and has therefore alerted the French Ministry of the Interior about the issue.
In a letter addressed to the AFMDH, Beauvau assures “to fight (r) with determination against the phenomenon of malicious recordings of online dating”. How? And why has dating become so difficult? The ministry did not respond to requests from BFMTV.com.
For her part, Catherine Colonna, the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, acknowledged in early October that the deadlines were “sometimes too long” but that they were linked to the two years of health crisis. “I have decided that reinforcements will be sent to the countries that need them most and I will quickly create a specific support center dedicated to these missions,” she told the Senate.
A source from the Quai d’Orsay also assures BFMTV.com that “cybersecurity measures” have been taken to “avoid the excesses observed by certain pharmacies that try to ‘appropriate’ appointments on the TLS site to resell them at an exorbitant price. “. Not specifying which ones.
Intermediaries connected day and night
These intermediaries proliferate on social networks, with online advertisements to offer appointments for sale. Others are located near TLS centers, in cafes that offer their services, and some even have offices. Like this pay phone manager, who BFMTV.com traded with.
Explain that five people are in charge of finding the dates, the day and the night. He assures that it is impossible for them to know in advance when the appointments will open, so these people are “all the time” connected.
“Sometimes one date is released, sometimes ten at a time. Sometimes it is in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon or in the middle of the night. They are the ones who decide.”
As for your prices, it all depends on the “work” that was necessary, if it took you one or five days to get the appointment. But it claims to be “cheap” compared to the competition: on average 50 to 100 dirhams (5 to 10 euros) if the task is easy, at most 400 dirhams (40 euros). “I know others sometimes ask up to 2,500 dirhams (250 euros) for a date,” he says.
“It’s a mafia”
It was through one of these well-established intermediaries that Samia*, a 67-year-old retired teacher living in Marrakech, was able to get an appointment. “The rates are displayed at the entrance,” she explains to BFMTV.com. “We don’t have a choice: many times the TLS platform is closed, and when we click to make an appointment, there is none, even for several months.”
Her husband needed an appointment quickly: he wanted to go to France for treatment. They approached him on the street near a TLS center: they first asked him for 25 euros for an appointment in two weeks. Then on the day of the appointment, if he wanted to retrieve the official document, this same intermediary asked him for money again.
“He told her to come alone to the meeting and demanded 10 more euros for the newspaper. It’s blackmail. He was a poor guy, but he is really a mob”.
“What have we done to deserve this?”
Especially since Moroccan citizens must also pay 33.5 euros in service charges to the TLS operator. Therefore, some pay twice for the same service.
“If we don’t pay with TLS, the appointment that the intermediary sold us is not validated,” continues Samia, who was finally denied her visa, indignantly. “What have we done to deserve this?”
Some pay even more, like Amal* who did not hesitate to pay 300 euros to an intermediary to get an appointment and apply for a return visa. Because this young woman has a French residence permit – she had also signed a republican integration contract and was summoned to training – but she lost the precious document.
The appointment, expensive, did not change anything. Lacking a visa, she missed out on training and remains stuck in Morocco when her husband, who lives in France, is on the other side of the Mediterranean.
* The first names have been changed, at the request of those interested.
Source: BFM TV
