Austrian Visas for American Dummies

Introduction

I am an American citizen and a researcher who's going to spend a year abroad in Austria at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information. On this page I hope to document in painstaking detail the process of getting an Austrian Visa D, and a Residence Permit (Researcher), for others who find themselves in my position. I have acquired the Visa D at the Los Angeles General Consulate of Austria, and I plan to apply for the Residence Permit when I arrive in Vienna.

National Visa D

(Lead Time: 5 weeks, start 9 weeks before you leave home)

A National Visa D allows me to be in Austria for up to 180 days and in the Schengen Zone/EEA for up to 90 out of those 180 days. The most annoying part of this process is that applicants must make an appointment to appear in person at the Austrian Consulate to submit their application for the visa. I was lucky because the Consulate General of Austria nearest to me was in Los Angeles. I booked an appointment in LA online a month ahead, but spent only thirty minutes at the Consulate talking to the staff and showing them my documents, and received my passport with a shiny new visa page in the mail a week later. The Consulate staff were extremely courteous and professional, and speak fluent English. They are firm but are quite patient and understanding: if you forget to bring certain documents, they will simply request that you email the missing documents over. Stick to the bureaucracy you know: if you're applying in LA, don't fall into the trap of using the New York Consulate's slick and shiny website.

Book an appointment slot. Since the booking must be made so far in advance, I highly recommend using the online appointment system and booking an appointment as early as possible if you think you might need a Visa D. It is easy to cancel your appointment later on if your documents are not prepared, etc. (Of course, if one makes an appointment in haste, one should also cancel appointments as early as possible so that other people can have the time slot!)
Book your flight both ways. Having a plane ticket is part of the application and it'll be cheapest in advance. I was asked many questions about the duration of my stay in Austria, which is why having a round-trip flight is useful. Certain people (including researchers like myself) are eligible to apply for a Visa D and extend their stay once in Austria. When I booked my flight I had the intention of staying for a year, but I could not book the return flight on the date of my intended return, because aviation regulations prohibit booking flights more than 330 or so days in advance or something. The Consulate staff know of this requirement and will understand.
Book travel insurance: This is tricky as there are many companies out there and it's not clear which ones are accepted by which Consulate. There is no clear answer here because most companies that I saw had their fair share of horror stories about filing travel insurance claims with terrible customer service representatives. In the end I bit the bullet and went with InsureMyTrip's Travel Visa Medical. A few minutes later, I got a bunch of confusing emails from InsureMyTrip as well as SevenCorners, which was one of the companies that I heard horror stories about. I brought all of these confusing documents to the Consulate staff, and they simply flipped through it to see if there was $0 deductible, which is one of the requirements as stated here.
Once you do these things, the rest is more procedural: simply go down the checklist of required application materials. You'll have plenty of time to wait before your appointment. And if you're like me and trying to get a Residence Permit as well, bear in mind that for a Residence Permit, you'll need to have documents certified with a fancy stamp (aka an Apostille) at the Secretary of State's Office, which also happens to be in Los Angeles, so it might be advantageous to also get your documents certified while you're in the area.
Bring a UPS or Fedex Priority Mail envelope with you so that they can return your passport to you with a visa page. For obvious reasons, make sure that you can track the package. :)
When you go to the Consulate, bring a laptop with you if you can, especially if you have a smartphone data plan which you can leverage as a WiFi hotspot. If you are missing some documents (I didn't have my bank statements on me), they will still accept your incomplete application and you can email them the required documents. I am somewhat obsessive so for me it is vastly preferable to resolve any issues on the spot. I sat at their table and emailed my bank statements and graduate school admissions offer on the spot, and they confirmed the receipt of those missing documents a day later. This put my mind at ease if nothing else.
They gave me a $0 receipt (the application fee is waived for researchers) which I held onto until I was safely reunited with my passport about a week later. Next step: apply for a residence permit in Austria!

Residence Permit - Researcher/Special Cases of Gainful Employment

(Start < 2 months before you leave home; Lead Time: 2+ weeks)

A Residence Permit allows one to live and work in an EU country for up to two years, and allows one to enter and exit the EU without restrictions. The application process is, generally speaking, more rigorous and lengthy than the application for a National Visa D: in general it can take several months to obtain a residence permit. However, certain groups of people may not only apply for the Residence Permit after their arrival in Austria, but also experience a magically expedited application process that (in my case) can be as short as two weeks between submitting the application in person and getting the Residence Permit card. Scientists, exchange students, visiting lecturers, as well as "special persons" (broadly speaking) are among these groups of people that can apply in person after arriving in Austria with this short lead time--of course a National Visa D is a prerequisite for being employed in Austria in the first place.

There are more documents needed for a Residence Permit than a National Visa D, and the application form is only available in German. If you are in one of the aforementioned groups, the OeAD is your best friend when it comes to preparing your application: their website is written well and in English. But the good part is that unlike at the Austrian Consulate, Vienna has an army of bureaucrats that keep the city running, so no appointment is needed. You simply show up at the immigration office, MA 35, which is a massive seven-story building on the outskirts of the city. If you bring the complete set of documents, they give you a piece of paper which tells you when you should come back--in person--to collect your shiny new Residence Permit!

Paperwork (before leaving home)

To go about applying, it's not easy to figure out what to do because there's the OeAD website and also the MA35 website for applications in general. While the OeAD website only covers certain cases of applications, I found it to be accurate, easy to use, and more helpful than the MA35 website. Both websites say you need to have certified German translations of your documents. This scared me a whole ton, because translation services are expensive and there are many documents required for an application. However, I gave them all of my documents in English and they did not complain a single bit. While I have unofficially heard that any EU language is accepted, I have not experimentally seen confirmation that this is true for any language other than English.
Before you leave home, it is necessary to prepare a certified letter of clearance from your local police station (in non-Austria). This letter of clearance is a necessary part of the application and at the time of the application it must be less than three months old. This requirement is as unreasonable as it sounds, but I unfortunately do not make the rules. You will need to get an Apostille (a fancy rubber stamp) that makes that letter recognized internationally, and to get that Apostille, you may need to have your clearance letter notarized. I had to hire a mobile notary to come with me to the police station: the notary watched the police chief sign my letter, notarized the letter with her magic stamp, and gave the letter for me to bring to the Secretary of State's office for the Apostille stamp. After all this work, MA35 keeps the original letter of clearance. I made a copy of it (and all my other documents) before going to MA35.
Before you leave home, you will also need an Apostille for your birth certificate. Your birth certificate may also need to be notarized as a prerequisite to obtaining the Apostille, depending on who signed off on your birth certificate when you were born.
Proof of housing/income/health insurance. Having a Hosting Agreement, for example, from a university or research institute, counts for all three of these. My situation was slightly abnormal since I was funded by a United States graduate fellowship. Hence I had to prove that I had housing, income, and buy my own health insurance, rather than being auto-subscribed to the public health insurance plan (Wiener Gebietskrankenkasse).
1. For housing, I had an apartment at an OeAD Guesthouse, and showed them my housing contract and my housing registration (Meldezettel), which you obtain after you arrive in Vienna. OeAD Guesthouses are cheap apartments utilized by international/exchange students across the city. The apartment itself comes furnished, the rent is reasonable, and you are pretty much guaranteed to have decent living partners. However, I have heard many stories that end in the OeAD saying "well, it sucks to be you!". For example, my suite mate was locked out because his key broke (due to normal usage) and OeAD made him pay 40 euros for the key even though he was not at fault. It also cost him 90 euros to be let back into his room by the cleaning staff after a night of sleeping in the kitchen. Quite humiliating, if you ask me.
2. For income, I simply showed them my NDSEG graduate fellowship offer letter. There is a minimum income requirement, but if your rent is more than 284 euros a month, the minimum is higher. I don't know where the cutoff is. But an income of ~2800 euros a month (thanks, NDSEG!) and 360 euros a month for rent turned out to be a winning combination.
3. I ended up getting a basic student health insurance plan from FeelSafe.at; they sent me a confirmation for my visa application within hours (as promised). However, I seem to have lucked out because I was lucky enough to be in good health. Your visa confirmation may be delayed if you have to check "no" on any of their questions listed below, which is a fact that they conveniently forget to advertise on their polished, English-friendly website (which is again much appreciated). But it is cheap and the coverage is as good as WGKK so I am complaining on principle, not on my own behalf. They only accept payment by direct bank transfer so be sure to have an Austrian bank account.

The Extremely Fun MA35 Experience (After settling in Vienna)

Head over to MA35 early in the morning to minimize waiting. I arrived at 7:30 AM, half an hour before the office opens for business, and there were already fourteen people in line ahead of me! A vending machine gives you a number once you're there (top left picture).

At 8:00, the screen turns on and they call numbers one by one. This proceeds pretty quickly: I was at the desk by 8:10. At the desk, show your passport and your completed application form to the staff (who thankfully speak English). They then give you...another ticket (bottom left)! According to your ticket letter, you go upstairs and wait again in your designated waiting area (top right). The place looks really clean and really sterile and is generally a bit creepy (bottom right), but the staff who I met were extremely nice and spoke good English. They call you into their spacious offices and you can sit down and lay out all of your documents on a desk to spare you the embarrassment of fumbling with your documents in front of a bunch of people who are waiting there with nothing to do. This was much appreciated.
Because I was not funded by an Austrian institution, they redirected my "researcher's residence permit" to a "special cases of gainful employment residence permit". Thankfully I did not have to fill out any extra forms. They informed me that my application would be accepted (hooray!) and that I should wait around a bit longer to get my confirmation documents.
After waiting around for half an hour or so in the second waiting room, I saw my number appear on the main screen again. I went to a different room this time and picked up a document saying when and where to pick up my residence permit card. I went to another floor to pay the hefty application fee, and was out of there by 9:30, 150 euros lighter.

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