Re-Apply for Schengen Visa after rejection in a different country?

Question

My husband who is an Indian software engineer at Microsoft in Seattle with a Green Card just had his Swiss Schengen visa rejected on the basis of: "The information submitted regarding the justification for the purposes and conditions for the intended stay was not reliable".

Should we:

• Re-apply for a Schengen visa in Switzerland with additional invitation letters
• Apply for a Schengen visa in France because that’s where our family lives and we will be spending almost as much time in France as in Switzerland
• Appeal the decision

Are there risks to applying to a different Schengen country than the country we were rejected from? We don’t want to appear to be “visa shopping” by applying for a Schengen visa in France rather than Switzerland.

In only 45 days, we are supposed to travel to the UK, Switzerland and France to visit family. The purpose of our trip is to visit family. We have invitation letters and our family members are French and British. He has 3 previous Schengen visas (2 from Switzerland and 1 from Iceland) and a 2 year UK visa.

We’re spending almost as much time in France and in Switzerland, which I stated in our purpose letter. We can just skip Switzerland altogether and only visit our family in France.

Answer 1

Are there risks to applying to a different Schengen country than the country we were rejected from? We don’t want to appear to be “visa shopping” by applying for a Schengen visa in France rather than Switzerland.

Yes that's exactly the risk. If you submit the same application, it's somewhat likely the other country's consulate would reach the same conclusion and it will be very easy for them to see the earlier decision and just check the same box on the form.

In fact, an appeal is very difficult and likely to be too long to rescue this trip and both other options are risky and not particularly likely to be successful. The safest way to proceed to secure future travel to the Schengen area would be to give up on this particular trip and apply again later (in 1-2 years) making sure you have excellent documentation.

Note that “justification for the purposes and conditions for the intended stay was not reliable” is not only about getting invitation letters but also about your credibility in general, see Schengen Visa Refusal: Justification for the purpose and conditions of the intended stay was not reliable. If you already had several (properly certified) letters, I don't see how one or two more are going to change much.