Visa requirements!
 

İ want to visit Paris for 1 day, ftim London by Eurostar. İ am holding a Russian passport. And İ do gave a UK visa for 2 years. Do İ need a Schengen visa to vidit Paris for 1 day?

Yes.

Yup. Any time you enter a Schengen country, you need a valid visa.

Yes. You should tell the UK to join the Schengen zone and everything will be so much nicer.

...Or ask the French to accept UK visas.

Just as logical.

If France, and the rest of Schengen accepted UK visas, the UK would have to accept Schengen visas. Ain't gonna happen, anymore than the UK will join Schengen. In fact if it did happen they might as well join Schengen and be done with it. It will never happen.

Poor Ireland!

Why are citizens of some countries not required to obtain a schengen visa? Such as USA

I suppose it is for the usual reasons that citizens of certain countries don't have to get visas in general to most countries they travel to, versus citizens of other countries who always have to. It has to do with probability of a person violating immigration laws and illegally staying rather than just traveling. There are certain countries where many people want to get out and go live elsewhere, legally or not. Those citizens usually need visas. Americans are not usual illegral immigrants to western Europe so it's not a big risk. Russians are a big risk, as would be citizens of lots of countries in Africa and Asia and the mid-East. PRobalby most except for N America and western Europe. Generally citizens from N America, Europe, Australia and some countries in South America don't require Schengen visas for travel (like Brazil and Argentina). But all countries in Africa and Asia do, I think, except maybe Japan and some minor exceptions.

At least I assume illegal immigration is the reason, there are some countries that require visas just to make money (like Egypt), not becuase they think everyone is dying to live there (when I was there, everybody I ran into was trying to get out, at least young men).

Yes, it is assumed that americans are tourists with reasonable financial resources - so no visa required. Although young people with limited funds often face a lot of questions at the by immigration officials in both the UK and Schengen.

That makes sense! Thanks for taking the time to answer.

Cindywho: illegal immigration...immigration in general...is a huge international issue in today's world. Not just the issues that we Americans typically think of like Mexicans coming over the Texas border, or that French people worry about with all the people coming from North Africa, but far more complex instances like migrant workers across the CIS countries who account for remittances back to their home countries that amount to a significant portion of the country's entire income.
And attendant issues like child slave trade and prostitution and arms trade. You have to weave a lot of things together to get the big picture, but imagine super trucks waiting at a Russian/Asian border, filled with illegal underage girls, ready to pay a big bribe to get into Country X, with fake papers. It happens every day. It's no wonder that the industrialized countries pay attention to who's coming and going and are cognizant of who the most likely violators are.
Western Europe in general isn't probably much worried about Americans wanting to relocate to Europe (though in my case they should be).

All but two EU member states—Ireland and the United Kingdom—are required to implement Schengen rules.

I guess the benefits of being Islands is that you can actually have some security from the stuff mentioned by StCirq. Having been to some of poorer borders of Poland, Romania and Greece I have complete confidence in their weakness which will only get worse.

Modern-day slavery is a terrible thing http://www.antislavery.org/english/

To reduce this I think a certain inconvenience is a small price to pay.

Norway and Switzerland are in the Schengen zone, but not members of the EU. It's better to think of EU and Schengen as two separate entities. :-)