221g Administrative Processing | The ultimate visa journey guide presented by Ex-Visa Officers

[Music] hi everyone this is ben with argo i'm excited to welcome you today we've got a panel of ex-visa officers who all work with argo to help clients like you pass their visa interviews with us today and today we're going to be talking about 221g what many of you will know as administrative processing ap it's when your case is pending it's when uh you go to your interview and they don't give you your visa immediately and they don't refuse you immediately you are just stuck in limbo and a lot of our students a lot of our clients get in this situation they don't know why they got into the situation they don't know what their next step is they don't know how to interpret these papers that they've been given or the status that they find online about their case so hopefully today we're going to be able to shed some light on all that and we're going to be drawing on the experience of of three of my uh my colleagues here at argo i'm ben and just so everybody knows my background i was a visa officer with the state department i worked in guangzhou china and in bogota colombia as a visa officer i worked in the non-immigrant visa unit where we do all the visas like tourist visas and student visas temporary work visas like h1bs and ls i also did immigrant visas uh while i was in china where uh that's with if you're a spouse if you're a fiance if you're a family member getting a permanent immigration visa to the united states i also worked in the fraud prevention unit while i was in china where we do the investigations into any cases that you know raise a lot of red flags and they want to do an additional investigation into the case before they make a decision on the visa so yeah let me throw it over to my colleague swati hi everyone my name is swathi i have been working with argo consulting for them i was an ex-visa officer in honduras and also in india as well as other assignments i did a lot of non-immigrant visas but in india i focused a lot on immigrant visas because of the language skills as well and prior to state department i worked as an immigration officer as well all right anna or cat yeah go ahead cat hi my name is kat i worked in beijing primarily um and uh during that time i did all almost all non-immigrant visas so i did pretty much the entire alphabet of visas so f's h's anything hi hello everyone i'm anna um i'm a former uh consular officer in both mexico and the uk in mexico we did rotations in both the immigrant and non-immigrant visa section so you're in each of those sections and then the uk my experience was similar it was in both of those sections as well um and also the e2 visa officer in in both mexico and in the in the uk and currently i'm an immigration attorney so today i'm excited we have uh we have officers that represent a really broad swath of of the visa landscape because obviously um the number of visas that are processed in india and in china is huge and actually while i was in colombia in bogota we were the number two or number three um most uh most most busy visa post in the world while i was there too and also anna's experience in mexico obviously in mexico there's so much movement across the border and there's a lot of special visa classes going on there but london's a really interesting case too because in london you see people from all over the world every type of visa and so you you know you got to see stuff that people wouldn't see in china we just see chinese visa applicants but in london you see people from all over the world right yes correct yeah and a lot of transit visas for airline employees and crew members and yachts and things that you wouldn't see probably another another post yes right so let's get into it let's talk about two two one g um there are a couple different reasons why somebody may be put into two to one g you know i think our applicants they see oh i got two two one g i think it means one specific thing but really it just means the decision was not made in that day right on that on that day at your visa interview they didn't make the decision there could be a lot of reasons why that didn't happen um and you're going to get a sheet of paper that says you've been refused under 221g does that mean that your visas refused and it's done swati no not necessarily at all actually in fact it means that the visa officer wants to approve you but they can't approve you for some reason uh there's either and if it's specific reason that you are missing something they will also let you know you know you still need to provide uh more evidence of your marriage or um the more information about your company so they put you in this administrative processing but technically in the law it's considered a refusal in the system and therefore it says you're refused but you're just basically put into a pending status until the information needed is basically submitted required etc so that they can actually process it and then approve your visa interestingly this is a recent development that came about um after after we all had left the state department there is now an online way that you can check the status of your of your visa application and it will tell you if it's been issued uh if it's been refused it says issued and refused and it'll say refused but maybe administrative processing if that's what the officer told you and so it's just really confusing for a lot of our clients they send us screenshots of this of this page and they're like i thought that i was being issued but now it says refused what does it mean and like like everything in the government it's not exactly it's not going to be as um as as efficient or as well developed as something maybe in the private sector and so that system i want to let everybody know it's it's this you check the cia it's cac.gov and you go and you check your your visa application when you go in there the status that you see there it really wasn't designed for applicants to be checking that multiple times a day and trying to interpret the the the recently updated date and try to interpret that new status because as they move through the system so because in some cases for instance if you're going to uh apply for a waiver your case has to be refused first not just 221 g but actually finally refused before they then give you the waiver and so what this means is that you're going to see that your case is refused online but this is just part of the process it hasn't gotten to its final state yet so when you check your application status because i know it's impossible to not check it right this is such high stakes you're going to go onto that website and see what it says about your your visa application take it with a grain of salt you you don't know exactly what what that status means um and it's not representative of really the final state of your case uh so that's just that's just a tip because i know that a lot of people run into that when they're when they're in 221g and uh and you know get get have a lot of stress and lose a lot of sleep over that status that they see there on that website um cat i know in china we have a lot of cases where people go in and they're studying degrees um you know they're studying masters or phds in different different fields and they get put into 221g a lot of times our clients you know they think that they've done something wrong if this happens uh is that the case no generally it doesn't mean you've done something wrong so generally a lot of most of the time it just means that the officer needs a little bit more time or they need to talk to someone with a little bit more expertise about your particular case so you know back when i was in china we had lots of people come in who were nuclear scientists or they were going to study mechanical engineering i myself do not have that background and so a lot of the time when i was given a resume or i was given a study plan i knew what i was looking at i could understand the words but i couldn't understand the substance of it and so a lot of the time the officer will say you know what i need to take a closer look at this case just a little bit more on my off time because three minutes just isn't enough to cover this case and so i'm going to give you 221g and i'll come back to it and usually the officer will also tell you hey i need some more information from you or i'll be in contact with you and during that time you know make sure to send whatever the officer has asked for yeah and and a lot of a lot of our clients you know they know that they study a field where a lot of people get put into 21g right because of whatever they're an expert in uh whatever their degree is going to be in um and and they come to us wanting to know how do i avoid getting put in 221 g because of this and i always tell them that's not the thing you need to worry about right uh if you get put in 221g because of the field that you're studying that means the officer wants to issue your visa but there's this mandatory process that they're going through so that means you succeeded at getting them to recognize that you overcome 214b and you can watch our other videos if we won't talk about 214 b today we're just talking about to do 1g it means that they've recognized that you overcome this and then they're just putting you through the mandatory processing before they can issue your visa there's nothing you can do to prevent it it's an automatic thing uh it's going to happen no matter what what you can do to make sure it goes as fast as possible is make sure that you have all of your documents prepared uh you need to have you know all of your resume your your cv with all your publications uh your advisors information resume all their publications your study plan etc the sooner that you just provide all this information the sooner that they're going to begin your processing and the sooner you will be able to get your your visa once that does begin though uh there's no way to really speed it up you can't say oh my program start date is on this date can you please speed it up for me it's it's really just it's just going to happen and it's going to take an indeterminate amount of time you can at the time of your interview ask for them to expedite it for you um but unless you have a really exceptional circumstance it's probably just going to be normal processing so uh what's the what's the takeaway from that is be prepared with all of your information when you go in for your interview and two book your visa interview as early as possible the earlier you get your your visa interview before your program start date the better because there's no telling you know what what additional processing might be required um and just so you know the limit on that is four months you can you can apply for your program uh you can get a visa appointment for your program four months before your program start date now um let's talk about um when people get put into 221 g though when when you go into your interview and you sense that the officer doesn't believe you and they're asking questions probing questions questions that you didn't expect that you think what why is he asking questions about my dad's business i'm going to study in the us right what's it have to do with my dad's business or or or anything like this where you can sense that there's some some probing going on and then you get put into 221g and they're requesting certain documents like i want documents uh showing your you know your work history and your qualifications and then the description of this job that you're going for the h1b on right um anytime that you get this type of 221g what's going on there anna um again as cat said a lot of times it's just because the officer needs more additional information to be able to rule out something that might be in the system or or additional information if you are if you're a renewal and you've been in front of these officer before and you said something during your review that might be in the prior officer's notes or there might just be additional information from a security perspective that the officer has to be able to rule out before they can issue the visa so they're asking for those additional documents in order to to be able to justify their decision and be able to eventually issue the visa but they need to be able to document that and that's why they need that extra documentation when i was in india go ahead sorry swati yeah a lot of times here in india because it's the number one country for h1b applicants a lot of them get 221g for and if they're asked for additional stuff about their uh profession or the company so sometimes that's because the the visa officer needs to make sure it's a legitimate company that they're actually going to be working for for so sometimes you know um that 2201g it's not maybe something that you're missing on your end but they need to verify that this company is a legitimate company so you may be asked for other things you know from the company which you then would coordinate with the company and get so a lot of h1bs do get two to one cheat for uh for to determine the legitimacy of that person actually being the right applicant for that either blanket or that individual h1b petition it's okay we're going to jump but we're going to talk over each other the whole time we get a little bit of lag we'll go ahead anna i was just going to add to swatis that that i think that is often common if you're not going to also work directly for the h1b petitioner so if you are going to be working for a contractor in a contract capacity you'll be working on a third party location chain i think that also causes you know the officer wants to confirm that you have that hiring firing authority and that direct relationship with the petitioner so oftentimes those cases will also get 221g for that additional information i think the key for everyone to remember is that if they're asking you for more documentation in some cases it may be let's say you're um you you you don't have the correct i20 or something like this right where it's like oh you need this specific document but in many cases it's they're just saying i don't know i don't know what to do with you yet i want some more documents before i can make a decision so what you should keep in mind is that the interview isn't over yet they haven't made a decision you're still trying to influence their decision and in the same way that we coach you when you come to us to present your case proactively when you have your interview right you don't just passively wait to be asked questions because they might not ask the question that's going to let you give the best answer right to show your your the best highlights of your of your application you need to proactively give it to them when you get 221g they're asking you for more documentation it's still your opportunity to present them with some information that's going to influence their thinking right if they say okay 221g for you know some bank statements that might be something that they that they ask for well you know what they're asking for is more evidence that you can financially fund your studies in the us right and they took some notes during the interview about what you told them but maybe they didn't didn't take thorough notes right you might want to remind them so when you send that in you might not just want to send oh a bank statement and that's it you might want to send in a statement talking about the full scope of your finances or your family's finances right if you're if there's a business or there's there's in your parents income or there's real estate whatever it is you want to send all this in because you don't know if they took accurate notes during the interview they're moving very fast right but you know they still have doubts about your finances send them everything right send them everything they need right there's no reason why you can't now maybe they don't want to see it maybe they're like no i just needed the bank statement and they'll just look at the bank statement but if you send them a summary of what your family's finances are that might be what it takes to sway them and convince them and push them over that line of of being convinced that you've actually got the funding to fund your studies i think for a lot of applicants part of the reason why 221g is such a frightening experience is because they don't know exactly why they were refused they were maybe told something vaguely maybe asked a few extra questions about something but you don't know for sure in the 221g cases where the officer actually tells you exactly what they want you've gotten lucky like you that's great fantastic he just wants one more thing from you but generally that's not going to be the case they're going to give you something a little bit more vague something like i need bank statements well who's bank statements you have to think very carefully about how you want to organize this information if you send them 50 attachments that's not going to help them you know having a cover letter or something that can really organize what it is that you're trying to present to them would be very helpful in helping them parse that information because maybe they missed something the first time but the second time around if it's just right there they don't need to ask you again and there's no doubt left and that will really help speed along the decision because administrative processing really can take a very long time that's a good point cat it's and also i think what's in the background of all that and what people need to keep in mind is that uh there's always the presumption that you are going to use your visa incorrectly until you convince the visa officer that you're going to use it correctly right so it's the opposite of of of you know the the innocent until proven guilty concept that we have when we're in the u.s it's more guilty until you can prove yourself innocent and it's on you to convince them so you convince them in the interview you convince them with the documents that you send in and it's not like oh well they requested it and i sent it in why didn't they give me my visa it's no it's you gotta think of yourself as you are pitching yourself as a visa applicant you're pitching yourself as a a good a good uh holder of that visa you're going to use it well and you need to present that information to them in a way that they're going to see it they're going to intuitively understand what they're looking at they're gonna get the information they need within the first 15 seconds of looking at it so that they know how that you basically make their job easy you make it easy for them to say oh now i see this information this shows me that this person has the funds or you know has the skills has the background and i can i can write my notes and i can issue this visa easily the visa officers want their job to be easy right uh we don't want applicants that come in and give us vague information and give us short clipped answers without actually telling us what's going on when that when that's going on basically we're just seeing a hazy outline of an applicant and we don't know anything about them we don't we can't fill in any details if an applicant walked in and just told me hi i'm going to study this at this university and i've received a scholarship of this much money and my father earned sixty thousand dollars a year and my other mother earns seventy thousand dollars a year doing this we own a home in the city here and and they're going to be funding my education and afterwards i'm going to come back and i i'm going to apply for a job at you know so and so steel company in my home country i would think that's great i'll type that up in my notes and i will give you your visa right you just made my job extremely easy because now i don't have to just ask ask question after question probing trying to and just trying to get you so to give me some of this information that makes my job easier um i don't know in your in your in your uh experience as visa officers how how could an applicant make your job easier exactly don't make them teeth just like i said even in all the argo consults i advise everybody look you have one or two minutes you know like every question is an opportunity don't waste your opportunity that's where you want to tell additional information and a lot of clients ask okay you know because they read on forums or somebody else told them just answer directly don't say anything more and i can't tell you know them or emphasize enough how much it works against them to do that you know because they sound rehearsed they sound robotic they're making it frustrating for the visa officer when they have to ask a follow-up question to a related question so you know like if i have to ask for questions just to kind of understand why you want to study what you want to study uh instead of you know you being able to give me a complete answer then you're wasting that your time your precious limited time and also the visa officer's time and instead get you know if the visa interview can be done in one or two minutes and one or two questions the visa officer is very happy you know and uh yeah so happens i always tell my clients like you know you don't know who you're gonna get as a peace officer and oftentimes you know we're all generalists the officers are all generalists and they probably so if you have a very specific scientific or technology you're going to have to be able to kind of yeah you absolutely don't want to rehearse like the swati said but you want to be able to be comfortable and confident enough to be able to explain it in very simple terms so the officer understands what you're going to be doing because that's i've seen many cases get denied where the officer simply just doesn't understand it's too technical or too specific um an officer doesn't have that background and they just can't they just don't know what's going on so as simple and straightforward and as as complete as you can make the picture um you know that's going to make a stronger um case and and going to enable the officer to to hopefully issue the visa easier if if they were provided with a more clearer explanation of what you're going to be doing in the united states a lot of the people that come to us have these fantastic and amazing backgrounds and i think one of the things that's really important is that just like we said that 221g is a continuation of your interview you know your interview is a continuation of your education so if you have you know if you had to interview to go to school or if you had to interview to get a job for example for an h1b this is a continuation of that interview you want to present yourself you want to paint a picture of who you are as a person and who you're presenting and you want to lean into that as much as possible so you can show the visa officer who you are you know clipped answers don't help anybody because they don't tell the visa officer who you are and they don't provide the information that you need so exactly what everybody else said it's much easier if the answers are really clear it helps to think a little bit before you go into the interview about what it is that you want to say before before you actually go into the interview because you really only have three minutes and so if that's the case you got to take your time and you got to use it well that's a very very good point um when we when we work with our clients that i've been put in 221g for instance and and you they're they're fretting over and they don't know what what happened and they're they're coming up with all these theories about why they've been put into 221g um and maybe they've got some people that they've been working with who've been telling them what they think um how how often are they correct about why they why they're into doing g and and and also how how intuitive and obvious is it to you why people have been put into 2j1g when you work with your with your argo clients can you tell immediately why someone's been put into 21g when they tell you what happened in their interview and you see what document they were given do you do you know why they're in 221 g even if they're not very clear about it yeah sometimes it's pretty evident right even if they're not told so excuse me so there was a a recent argo client that had an h4 that was in a t21 g and as soon as and but they were now applying for an f1 um and so as soon as they started kind of giving me the background the history of it during the consult it was very obvious that you know he said oh and so we had because it was covered we had an online wedding and it was an arranged marriage and it was online and obviously i already knew what he was going to say later you know he was 221g because the officer asked him for more evidence of the wedding the actual marriage photos so um you can you can tell what's coming when they as soon as they say it pertinent to their case right mm-hmm yeah that's right i think it's it's just because we've done tens of thousands of these and so we know yeah yeah and just to follow up on that one you know and for that client and maybe there's a lot of clients that are like that where if you get a 221g it could be in any category and then you think okay well i'm two to one cheating that but i still really need to get to america for xyz reason so let me try to apply for a different visa category now what's going to happen is your other visa category if you actually do do that interview you're probably going to be 214 b then because they haven't made it you haven't completed your 221g case so and it you don't want to come across as well i'm just you know let me just kind of throw the dart and get whichever visa i can get because that's going to actually work against you so you're better off resolving the issue of why you have been 221g'd and satisfying the officer for that particular case than then harding yourself and harming yourself further by just you know visa shopping for a different kind of visa category because then you will have a denial in the system a 214 b denial and then you'll still have your 221g case pending so you don't want to do that to yourself right and i often tell my clients if it's depending on the reason for the 221g it probably is likely going to apply to a different type of visa class anyway right so we have a 221 g pending you're probably not going to jump ahead in the queue um if you apply for a different visa class because likely depending on what what the reason for the 221 g is you're going to get 221g again and then you just set yourself back even further if that happens that's the best scenario what swag is describing is the worst case scenario so either of those you know you're not achieving your end goal um by by applying for another class before resolving the 221g i wish there were just a blanket statement a blanket advice we could give everyone like if you're in 221g can you re can you apply again for a different visa class or apply somewhere else right but it really isn't so clear it's each case is different we would we would be able to talk to you and figure out why you're in 221 g what's the nature of this 221 g and if it's something that you can do anything about or if it's something you just have to wait if you can reapply for a different visa class i had a client who applied in in china in guangzhou um applied for a visa and was put in 221 g um basically just for just it was the the type of 221g which is where they asked for some more information and they and they weren't ready to make a decision yet right um and so he submitted this information but then the pandemic hit and his case got caught up with probably a bunch of other cases that just didn't get dealt with when they you know people stopped coming into the office and then you know things got misplaced the people that were in charge of these kind of just lost track of where these cases were in the system and he and he didn't know this you know they don't they're not going to contact you and tell you hey we've lost your case right um actually a lot of people contact us and they say i've been in 221 g for three and a half years what do i do in these cases you know definitely get in contact with us because i can assure you they are no longer processing your case it is it is in the bottom of a drawer somewhere um so uh what happened is he had been waiting and waiting and waiting and didn't hear anything and these days there's they've cut down on the number of concert information units where uh there's actually emails arriving into the consular sections that then you can they can you know see what people are saying they have local staff who understand visas who are then funneling this information to officers who need to make decisions on on on inquiries and new information people submit now all these inquiries are going through the third party contractor that just sees in the system that there's a two to one g and they just respond with a template email that says your case is in 221g it doesn't matter it because we we all know that if an lds received an email sorry this is the local staff at an embassy or consulate if a local staff receives an email and they see that a case has been pending for three years they understand the process to the point where they will they will tell an officer hey they say their case has been pending for three years and an officer will think oh gosh that let me take a look at this but this third-party contractor never actually deals with the visa processing at all and so they don't know that and they're not even going to see that this has been going on for three years and they just send back nope you're into 21g so a lot of people have no way to get any forward momentum on their case this guy was in this in this situation so he just scheduled another visa appointment in beijing had a different post right because that's where he was living at the time two two years over two years had passed um and he went in um and he got two to one g there because they said well you've got another case in pending and guangzhou in beijing they didn't know how long his guangzhou case had been pending they just knew he had a case pending so he had this situation going on in two different posts and i was able to work with him to be like okay listen here's what's going on you know let's let's go for the beijing case we're going to we're going to try to abandon this this one in guangzhou and just get beijing to move forward and basically with submitting some more information to beijing we were able to get beijing to realize guangzhou had basically just dropped the ball on this guy's case and then beijing is willing to like move forward on the case when they realized that guangzhou hadn't actually processed this case correctly right if they thought guangzhou was doing something with this they would have they would have said no no guangzhou needs to do what they're doing with this but they could tell okay guangzhou actually dropped the ball and so we're going to move forward on this right so in each case we can kind of see the dynamics of what's going on of how of how the officers will react um of how we can get them to move forward it's not always easy and oftentimes we have to be very creative in how we do that um but there there there oftentimes is a way forward um it's just you know we we rely on our years and years and tens of thousands of visas that we have under our belt to to try to find that way forward maybe it's a congressional inquiry um you know maybe maybe it's legal action maybe it's a legal net maybe it's one of these things but there there's often times a way forward um even if it's not uh immediately apparent so uh if if you've been to 21g let's say you've been 221g for a while and then you get the notice saying that you've been 214 bead right but you've got your program date coming up in a month or so um do you need to wait to reapply if your program date is in let's say it starts in january we're filming this in december if you're if your program starts in january should you wait or should you reapply again what would you say cat are there situations where you should reapply again uh yeah um if there are situations where you should reapply again um sometimes and i find that the applicants especially the ones that come to us at argo are generally pretty good at figuring out exactly what went wrong in their interview they're very good at picking up these micro expressions or the questions that were asked a few too many times and they can usually help us when they come to us and tell us you know this is what i think it was is this am i right and generally um we can either confirm or deny that um based on our experience if you are you know a legitimate student and you're going to the united states and you want to study of course um you want to apply again now what we always advise people is we would prefer if you could give it more time between the two applications especially if you just bring refused because think about it from a human standpoint if the if the officer has rejected you the person who you're trying to go to for an approval probably sits two windows down from this person and has dinner with them every night and so this creates an awkward situation where you're trying to uh get your case through by someone who knows the person who rejected you in the first place that's especially the case if you stay with the original place that you had applied so what you need to do is you just need to prepare much more carefully so you take what you've already learned from the original interview and you go through and you figure out if there's anything that you can do to mitigate this rejection and i think that's really difficult and it is very nerve-wracking um for for applicants because they don't know for sure what it was that sent them to 214 b but you know if you're a legitimate student and you're going to united states and you want to study of course you want to apply again you know and um one of the first things the officer is probably going to ask you is what has changed well you need to figure out very carefully what it is that you missed out in your case that really made the officer say this is not going to work for me right and find a way to get them get the next officer to push through that approval and that's what we would suggest so a lot of times like yes for students obviously you have a start date right so you're going to want to reapply right but you then where it really boils down to is uh it's how you're interviewing that really makes a big difference right and um it just if you go back and back back to back to back um and especially when these client clients come to argo and you see the ones that have been denied several times and when they recap the uh interviews to you or you see kind of the questionnaire uh you see you know what the difference is and it's how they're interviewing and they're and and what they're not saying and what it useful information they're not saying so when the officer's asking you what has changed there's a different way to be able to answer that right and legally you can apply for a visa the next day you can if you have an appointment slot you can book it for the next day but we always advise people you know you can do it but ideally we wait for you to wreck you know we recommend you wait for six months or a year so um usually for students that's not always possible but for a lot of the b1 b2s um that that can be helpful and i know when you said weed then swati i know i just want to make sure the listeners know when we when you said we there you're referring to like the state department saying oh you need to wait but what i like to remind our clients is when they say you need to wait it's because they assume that you do not qualify for a visa that you're not a good visa applicant and that your situation does not merit giving you a visa and so they think you need to wait and you know get a better job or have something change in your life to then change your circumstances but if you know and we know talking to you that you actually do qualify they just didn't see it because they didn't ask the right questions and you didn't give them the right information then there's no reason to not reapply immediately because let's say you go in and they don't ask you did you have a do you have a scholarship and you know that you have a full scholarship and they never ask that question and they don't know that right well they don't want you to not reapply again if that's if that's the case right if you come in and they say well what's changed since your last application and you say the last time i was nervous and i didn't tell you about my full scholarship right now obviously you had the scholarship in the first interview you just didn't say it so the situation hasn't changed it's just your your the way that you're going to represent yourself is going to change but once you give them that information they can't erase it out of their head there's no there's no legal requirement that they refuse you because you were refused last week right administratively that's what their managers want you to do it makes their job easier it lets them push push applicants through the through the waiting room right they get through they get through all this workload they have to do but they don't have to do that and and i would say all my colleagues that i worked with uh like in in the end they were all very earnest and want to do their job well and if you if they see that you've been refused before but you immediately tell them something that sparks in their mind the question huh why would they be refused if they have a full scholarship they're going in most cases to give you do consideration and actually consider your case even if you've been previously refused would you agree with that i would just add i worked at a post that had a a very strict manager and and anytime that an officer would overcome a prior refusal she would call that officer into her office and ask and demand you know for why did you overcome a prior refusal and there are some legitimate reasons for that right they want to maintain consistency within the judication process right but that's why on this side of the the aisle i always tell my clients you have to give the officer you know that reason to put in their notes for why they're going to change a prior officer's decision because they're worried about their own career right they want to be able to justify it they want to be able to be eligible promotions and so they're not going to take a chance on you if you don't give them the information they need to justify their decision and make sure that they look like they're doing their job so it's really important you know for for you to give them that extra piece of information that you know two or three words that they're going to put in their notes to justify because if it is that you applied yesterday and you're coming back you know in two or three weeks time now with kovid that doesn't hardly ever but you know if um if you do apply immediately after refusal you have to really be able to be much more prepared and be able to have like a full scholarship or something really dramatically different than the last time to be able to to allow that officer to that jump and and change their decision i would say in my experience yeah i always tell uh the applicants that come to us uh especially when they have a prior refusal or student or something along those lines that um they not not only have a refusal problem now you have a human problem because you have to give the officer like i said the officer down two windows they know each other so if you if you want them to overcome a refusal that was given to them by someone that they know that's a human issue you need to give them something that's going to let them jump through that hoop for you and be able to justify it to their manager or to that person um if that comes up in a meeting or something along those lines because it makes it you know just from a human standpoint makes it quite awkward between the officers if if someone is constantly overcoming other people's refusals it puts them in a really tough spot so it's not only just that you have to present yourself in a slightly different light or you have to find the information that you were missing and present that but also that you have to overcome this human problem yeah there's so much going on just on the personal level um and i always i always stress to people no one can guarantee that your visa will be issued because every single visa officer is empowered to make that decision right there's it's not you can't present one document that oh well now it's automatic there's nothing like that it's that officers it's up to their discretion and their judgment and they're empowered and authorized to make that decision uh without any interference right if you've been refused previously depending on that person's personality and their work style and their habits they might be less inclined to to consider uh a a pro a recent prior refusal they're i don't know let's say this is just an estimate let's say there's 20 of officers that hardly ever overturn a recent prior refusal that's just that's just how they they'll do things but then there might be 20 that really want to give that case an extra look oh they've been they've been prior refused but they paid their 160 they've waited in line they get my due consideration as if it's their first time like any time right and then maybe there's the the 60 in the middle where it's kind of variable like uh maybe they're just going to try to get you through as quick as possible but if you present some good information maybe they'll give you some more consideration and actually you know give you give you an opportunity to present your case so there's there's a there's a spectrum of officers there also i will say we as officers know each other very well working together day in and day out talking about these cases um seeing the way that other people adjudicate and we see when someone comes in and has been refused we see who who who interviewed them before like you said ken you said maybe you had dinner with them and right you've got that human relationship but you also you also know how how reliable their decisions are so i knew that there were officers who if i looked at their notes and i saw something that was written in there i knew okay i know this person lived in china for five years they speak chinese very well if they put this information in there i know that it's because they they very um confidently obtained this information and it's accurate and i can rely on this and their judgment and there were other officers who i knew did not speak chinese that well and i if you've been in an interview you may have encountered this that the officer you interviewed with did not have a lot of linguistic skills and so when they put something in there i might think well maybe they maybe they didn't really understand because their language skills are not that great right so i can kind of interpret oh who did this previous interview so there's just so much going on that you shouldn't give up hope right because you don't know what the situation is in that office where you are what you do know though is that there's no legal requirement that they that they refuse your visa again they can take a look at your application again listen to what you have to say and decide to issue the you the visa even though you've been refused you know they they can do this there's it's there's nothing automatic the decision is not made before you go into the interview uh you do you know that you'll be able to walk up to that window and you know they'll say one thing to you it might be it might be what are you going to study it might be oh you were previously refused it might be what's changed since your last application they're going to say one thing to you and they're going to give you a chance to say something and that's your opportunity right that's when you can say something you'll have 10 seconds you can say something that could influence their thinking and they do have the power to overturn that decision and issue your visa is there anything you guys would like to add to that no that was a lot of my own personal experience what if um what if you've been refused what about uh choosing a different country because in this day and age if you get a you know an emergency appointment uh to attend your studies on time and you've been refused they will not grant you the emergency appointment again they'll see okay you were just recently refused you can schedule an appointment obviously everyone is able to pay their fee and schedule an appointment but they won't grant you the expedited appointment so maybe your appointment would only be a year in advance a year a year out you know way past your your planned date that you want to start studying and so a lot of our students now are going to other countries to apply let's say first what if you've been 221g and then you decide well i i want to go to another country to apply now because i've been 221g um and i'm just pinning in 221g what would you recommend in that situation the 221g if they're 221g then decide to go to another country i would not recommend it because it's just going to add a layer of complexity to your case because you're now a third country national and you know if your host country the peace officer your own host country like your your country refuse you or in a 221g status they've already you know they're asking for something or they need to get some some additional information or do some internal processing so you're it's been a bit of a wait in the watch so they will the officers in that country will know best at that point so if you're now going to another country they don't really know there's now questions of okay well what are the ties also to your home country you know you're adding layers of complexity if you go somewhere else just to kind of circumvent and don't i don't recommend it at all especially in a 221g status yeah definitely frivolously going to a new country to apply is not what you want to do you definitely want to apply in the same country to the greatest extent possible you don't want to be just hopping around from country to country in your home country you're going to have the best shot um if you've got long-term residence somewhere else you know that's gonna that's gonna set you up for a good a good chance there um but even then sometimes it's still it still might even be better to go to your home country just because the officers issue visas when they are comfortable uh when they're encountering of this applicant that that looks familiar to them right uh that they it's someone that they've encountered you know dozens and hundreds of times before in the exact same situation it makes it easy for them all of a sudden you're from a different country well they don't know anything about that they don't speak that language they've been trained in that and all of a sudden they're in they're in you know in murky waters and they don't know what to do so definitely in your own country but there are some times where let's say that you can't get an appointment in nepal for instance um because we do have a lot of clients like this who then will apply in india because they can get their appointment in india if your if your program starts in january and you can't get an appointment until november of next year then you've got to do it you know it's we're not going to say don't do it we're going to say okay do it but you got to be well prepared to go in there and answer what are you doing here you're from nepal what are you doing in india right uh and and so you you definitely you know there's that role that if you go in passively and you're just going to present your ds160 and walk up to the window and stand there it's a roll of the dice right it can be a roll of dice and the dice are going to be loaded against you if you are going in as a third country national so you've got to go in ready to stand up for yourself from the very beginning and be able to simply explain what you're going to do again because now you're dealing with you know like everyone else has said another layer of complexity where you know the officer is not going to be familiar with your culture maybe indian nepal not so much but if you're going to another place where the culture is completely different i always tell my clients translate you're bringing statements into us dollars especially if you're going to a third country because you know the officer if you tell them i make x member dollars and you know whatever currency and that's not where they're living and they have no idea what that translates into u.s currency they don't know whether or not you're gonna be able to support yourself once you come to the united states so you know if you go to a third country you're going to have to simplify everything in terms of the officer can understand um because they're not going to be familiar with your background or your or your culture in some cases yeah absolutely you know i even hear a lot of uh argo clients that ask uh because in india in mexico also there's lots of there's options for other consulates and you know and also obviously in china right so you're you're still applying within the country but you have options of where you can apply so obviously with covert you know bookings and stuff you can apply to you know a different consulate within that country but ideally you still want to even justify in that jurisdiction that to where you belong normally so that that is something to consider because a lot of clients do ask you know well um should i make the appointment in kolkata or mumbai you know and so if it's kind of all the same it's kind of you know if there's a minute difference then you try to ideally go in your uh home jurisdiction because it makes it even stronger for you because you've probably got family there you probably studied there your job is probably there so anything that helps you is the decision you want to take to where you apply the the way that i presented to um our clients is if you go to a visa interview you have a picture of yourself it's it's like you have a picture of yourself and you're presenting this picture to the visa officer if you're in your home jurisdiction just like swati and i said um they already have some parts of you filled out because they know your area and they know kind of uh the people that they're dealing with because they've already seen it a whole bunch of times you go to another country there's just so much more that's just not visible they have no idea there's going to be extra questions there's going to be extra scrutiny and if you can handle that pressure great but if you can't and you get nervous this is not going to be a good experience for you and it's not going to be a good experience for the officer and that's why we really recommend if you can really go back to the same jurisdiction even if that that was a place that refused you the first time around and you're in china and you got refusing guangzhou go back to guangzhou because again if you're from that place they've already got some of your parts filled out you only need to emphasize and to present the parts in the three minutes that you've got that they don't know and you have a much better chance at presenting those parts in your three minutes where they already know you than if you go somewhere else and that's and that's really the danger you just bring so much more risk upon yourself of course there are there are of course reasons why you would do it but you just got to be so much more prepared yeah yeah you don't want to be considered as a visa shopping right like like okay you know uh the rumors are oh everybody's you know the visa officers are a lot more strict than x uh consulate so let me try the other consulate or let me go to this embassy and because that will again backfire against you thinking like i'm just rolling the dice to see if i can get lucky with a better or nicer officer in a different consulate but then you're considered like then the desperation and all that kind of stuff can come like okay why can't he just apply in his you know home jurisdiction if the appointment time that he's the same what is it really what is the real intent of this applicant so that's the other layer of complexities that you're adding to yourself yeah and just so everyone that's listening you know might might think oh but i i received different advice you know when i had my we're always going to give very personal advice to you based on your situation right sometimes i've had a client that maybe they're chinese right but then they applied in ecuador because they were in the us and they left the us to go to ecuador and apply and they got refused in ecuador then i'm not going to tell you to reapply in ecuador i'm going to say no no you were refused as a third country national now it's time to go back to your home country because they are going to feel more comfortable looking at your situation and overturning a decision made by a consulate where they know that they don't know anything about chinese applicants it's always going to be very personal to your situation there's no way to to just say okay blanket this is how it is it's more looking holistically your entire situation and that's what we do when we do a consultation with you if you've got a situation you know reach out to us send us an email at hello argovisa.com we're on facebook instagram we on our website you can submit your your inquiry to us and we'll get back to you and we'll let you know exactly what we can do for you and how we can help you in a consultation uh because really we we want you to know exactly what you need to do if there's no golden you know there's no silver bullet there's no golden ticket uh you need to know what what's going on with your particular situation and what you need to do in order to get your visa and it's different for everybody uh thanks everybody for tuning in and watching thanks swati ana and kat for being here with us today i know that our listeners are our viewers all probably got a lot out of this i really appreciate you all taking the time to share your experience with everybody thank you ben thank you bye everyone [Music] bye

Channel: Argo Visa

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Id: R2RjsaHOzjE

Length: 52min 26sec (3146 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 24 2022