Live Q&A with Ex-Visa Officer | Come ask your visa questions to an Ex-Visa Officer

all right hello everyone welcome to our youtube live here i am ben arderburn i'm a former visa officer i worked as a visa officer around the world in the u.s consulates and embassies doing every type of visa imaginable i was posted in china and colombia and back in china doing these visas non-immigrant visas like tourist visas and student visas temporary work visas like h1bs and ls and also immigrant visas like spouse visas parental visas sibling visas investor visas uh and visas immigrant pieces for for uh aliens of extraordinary ability every type of visa that you can imagine so today we're going to do a q a we're going to just go through the comments that we're getting in the chat and i'm going to answer as many of them as i can for you trying to be specific for you who are asking the questions and also trying to be as general as possible so that some of you who might have a similar situation can really learn something from it as well i do always say to everyone that i'm giving general advice to when i'm doing videos or writing articles the general advice applies to everyone but that's it's also its limitation is that general advice only applies to general situations and you as an individual have a specific situation and the advice for you is going to be much more specialized maybe you have an uh you're an exception to the rule maybe there's just more detail so different things need to be taken into consideration so take this general advice but know that this really can only be applied broadly for you personally you do need to address the the specifics of your case personally to really know exactly how it's going to affect your application and your visa interview and your chances of getting your visa issued okay so let's start off with some questions um let's see harsh uh chaleri says duolingo is acceptable for uh usa f1 visa the visa actually doesn't have any language requirement there's no language test ever required for an f1 visa it's that the school will have a language requirement and they might require the toefl because of the pandemic many schools have been accepting duolingo certificates as evidence because they haven't been able to sit for the toefl exam um or the tesla exam and so yes duolingo has been accepted by schools but in the visa interview they're not caring very much about your your toefl scores they're mostly concerned with how you actually are able to speak english in your visa interview everyone that's listening this is not for every type of visa but for student visas if you're going to the us to study in a program that will require you to speak english if you are unable to speak at least passably in your visa interview they're going to take that as a sign that you might not be qualified for your academic program and then maybe you don't intend to actually engage in the academic program that you're actually intending to do something different once you get to the united states so you do need to prepare obviously it's a very high stakes situation people get nervous you do need to prepare though to speak english when you go in for your student visa interview okay let's see let's go for some some more questions how to prepare for an interview for an mba and what should be said on why the why going to the u.s okay this is a question that many visa applicants i'm going to say yeah they mess up when they answer this question when they say why'd you choose the usa there's no correct answer there's no right answer or wrong answer to why did you choose the usa all there is is your answer okay and your answer needs to be specific to you if you're not talking about yourself when you answer this question then you're answering it incorrectly if you say because the united states has one of the best educational systems in the world it's uh the graduates from the us have the best opportunities to advance their studies and the research system et cetera et cetera et cetera well these are all facts that you could have found on wikipedia or on a university's website my university has a campus of 150 acres and has an endowment of three billion dollars etcetera etcetera and has a student-teacher ratio of of nine to one this is all stuff that one could just find on a website it does and it also doesn't talk about you why is it good for you the better the better decision is because the better answer that question is because this somehow benefits me right because most other countries don't offer scholarships to international students but i was able to get a scholarship at this university in america right that that's why it is best for you so you that answer the answer to that question about why the usa why the school that you chose your answer needs to pertain to you specifically not just general points okay [Music] are there any particular points to focus on for a j-1 visa graduate or intern visa a j-1 program for a graduate or an intern yes for j1 in general you have to overcome 214b which means they just need to trust you that you're going to do what you say you're going to do but in addition to that for a j1 you need to be able to discuss the specifics of the program that you're going to engage in right if you're doing it for uh if it's for research you need to have the uh the research plan um [Music] you need to know it front to back you need to be able to talk about it about your advisor who's going to to oversee the research you need to know everything about that program that you're going to engage in that's the only thing that's different about it let's head on to some more questions okay we have a question from nigeria in the eb3 interview can you be asked about a previously cancelled b1 b2 visa yes the eb3 visa is an immigrant visa for anyone who doesn't know uh and usually it's for non-skilled workers who are going to work in fields in the us that are relatively low wage um some examples are janitorial work uh or food preparation um in areas where there just aren't enough workers in the u.s now this is a visa class that does have a relatively high amount of visa fraud where people apply for these visas but then once they get to the us they actually never show up for the job that they're supposed to show up for they go and they find another job somewhere else that's going to pay them more right and so the main concern that the visa officers have for an eb3 visa is whether or not the visa applicant does intend to go to the u.s and do the job for which they are being given the visa if the peace officer doesn't believe that you're going to do that job and this could be for a number of reasons you've got family members that all live somewhere else in the us and you could just go get a job you know making more money through connections that you have with them or perhaps the reason might be that uh you are um very overqualified and compensated in your own country maybe you're a doctor or an engineer in your own country and then you want to come to the us and and do a janitorial job they might think that that's not very plausible that you wouldn't actually do that so it's a visa class that can be refused quite easily and having a previously canceled b1 b2 visa if it was canceled usually canceled means that something was done something uh in your in your past in your records caused them to cancel it right so they had a they had a doubt that or they or they know something derogatory about your your behavior or your use of your visa in the past and so they've canceled your visa that 100 makes them trust you less and will make them trust you less on your ev3 interview so you do need to be very well prepared if you go in without preparation without knowing how specifically you're going to handle talking about whatever happened that caused that b1b2 visa to be canceled you are going to have a hard time getting that visa issued let's move on to james singh who three times in a row posted the exact same question um which is not a good thing to do for your visa interview these types of things these gimmicks like posting the same question over and over again these are the types of things that are going to annoy these officers and get your visa refused but let's go ahead and read your question here i got rejected um there were three mistakes on my ds160 now i'm trying for a summer intake i have an interview and i booked appointments as a fresher will it create problems yes you have booked an appointment um under false pretenses you have said that you are a fresher which to anyone out there that's not in india that means someone who is a first-time applicant but you have been refused previously so you have lied on your application they will know this immediately that you have applied as a fresher and now that you are applying um again um they're going to view you as someone who is not being honest and you will not get your visa issued let's move on to the next question i am a fifth year medical student in ukraine i've got one more one more year left so i couldn't finish because of the war currently i'm in germany should i apply for a visa from germany yes i'm very sorry about what's happening right now in your country and that um you know if you if you have family members that are still there i feel for you my thoughts are with you and your family you're in germany right now you can't apply for your visa in germany i would recommend berlin um that is from what i have been told from my contacts that is where a lot of the processing for people that are coming from ukraine is being done the state department is moving a lot of people around right now i personally i do know people who i used to work with who are still in the state department who are being sent over to poland and to germany right now to deal with this influx of migrants and refugees who will be applying for u.s visas i will tell you it will be hard to get a visa and it's because the u.s laws are slow to change and the regulations are slow to change the us government has currently not implemented any special program to handle ukrainians who have fled ukraine because of the war and because of the way that 214 the regulation that governs all visa issuances to non-immigrant visas is written if they don't believe that you have a tie outside of the u.s that you are willing to return to they are supposed to refuse your visa that means that if there are applicants from ukraine um who they don't think would return to ukraine because of the war the war and the situation right now then they would be forced by the regulations they would be guided by the regulations to refuse that visa i do have some anecdotal evidence though of some people that i do know of uh through some immigration attorneys who have had their visa issued despite having just fled ukraine into poland so there is the aspect of the visa officers using their better nature and their judgment to give the benefit of the doubt to the ukrainian applicants who have said to them yes i have flooded ukraine now because of the war but after the war is done i will be going back to ukraine i'm not abandoning my country i will go back to ukraine and they've had their visa issued so it is possible to get your visa issued in that situation okay let's move on the same the same uh inquirer says should they apply in germany or poland um there's not enough information yet to know about that in warsaw i know that they have i don't i don't actually know what language you speak from your name i'm assuming you're not actually a ukrainian national but you can apply in either place okay double masters i completed my masters in networking in 2019 from au from australia i want to apply for an f1 visa to the us for masters in cyber security in the fall how should i justify and answer the question about why a double master's anything that is a non-traditional non-conventional career path or academic path is going to raise the concerns of the visa officers if you are applying for a second bachelor's degree a second master's degree if you have a degree from 10 years ago and you've been working for 10 years and now you want to go back and get another degree anything that is not the expected career path is going to cause the visa officers to be a little bit more suspicious and what's a conventional career path it's basically going to high school graduating from high school entering college as an undergrad university studying for four years as an undergrad and then going straight into a master's degree then going straight into a phd graduating and working until you retire and then yeah that's your conventional career path that they are most familiar with that's the career path that they are on um and so they are going most of them not all of them um and so that's what they they see as something that's a very expected situation they can put you into a very uh very neat box where they understand what your decisions are what your career path will be so anything that you're doing that's outside of that is going to raise their suspicions and how do you dispel their suspicions by giving them details about your plans if you just say yes yes it's the second masters i'm going to study it to learn to learn more skills these answers do nothing to shed light on your situation about why personally for you this is the best decision what you have to do is enlighten them you have to make that visa officer understand that peace officer has to feel like they know why you're doing what you are doing and the way you're going to do that is you're going to explain why this second masters makes sense for you right you got this first masters but now you're going through a career change right there's a better opportunity in a different field you know you you're being more practical now and you're looking for a job that's going to be able to get you a better salary maybe that's the reason maybe um maybe it's that you have your master's degree from your own country and getting a master's degree from the u.s is basically the same as is going up a different level and getting a phd it's going to raise your earning potential by a lot because you're getting a degree from abroad that's viewed as more prestigious right whatever this reason is you need to make sure that they understand why you're doing this just saying double masters raises the suspicions so you have to meet that raised bar and you have to convince them of what your plans are samuel says i am a nigerian residing in nigeria i do not have any travel history and i want to study for a masters in luxembourg can i apply with my family best of luck to you applying for a master's degree in luxembourg samuel we are u.s visa officers we do not know anything about the luxembourgian visa system but i do wish you the best of luck hello i am from azerbaijan and yesterday from 28 students got refused who had applied j-1 visa for work in travel some of them say that they were not given a chance to say something okay so i think what you're saying is that many students were refused their j visas for summer work and travel yes that can happen and it seems like from this experience we can assume that in azerbaijan they have a high bar for issuing summer work and travel visas summer working travel is a j-1 visa for the summer where students full-time students abroad can apply for this program they go and they work for an employer for a certain number of months during the summer time it's meant to give the opportunity to go to the us earn some money improve your english skills maybe travel a little bit to students abroad in the same way that i've already said multiple times on this live you're going to think that i'm giving you the same information over and over again you have to bring your situation to life right so these these 28 students uh applied and they were refused without having the chance to say something there's the different there's a difference between being asked the questions that you want to be asked and having the opportunity to say something you cannot control what questions the visa officer will ask you you can't control how many questions the visa officer will ask you however you can control what you say in response to whatever question they ask is let's say that i know that the highlight of my visa application is that my parents own a concrete factory with 600 employees right i haven't traveled that much i'm honestly not a great student but i've got this this is all hypothetical i have this my family's finances are very strong okay well when they ask me okay well um what um what school are you enrolled in right okay well i'm going to say well i'm enrolled in a johnson community college i'm not just going to stop there because that's not my highlight i'm going to say i'm enrolled in johnson community college but officer i also wanted to tell you about my family's finances my parents actually founded a concrete factory that has 600 employees uh we're very fortunate i'm very fortunate my parents are very successful now they didn't ask you that question but that information now is in their mind and they're now looking at you as a very affluent student which is definitely putting you in a different box in terms of how you're being considered as a visa applicant okay we have more okay we're going to [Music] put mr james singh in time out for for posting the same comment far too many times in a row let's get to some other questions hello there five months ago i submitted a ds-160 for tourism but never paid to schedule a visa interview now i'm applying for j-1 visa will they see the previous ds160 even though i didn't go for the interview they can access all of your visa records all of your interactions with the us immigration system are are available to the visa officers when you apply again okay you should not think that you're able to submit different information submit new information that contradicts what you put into a previous application if someone else prepared a ds160 for you in the past and was an agent and they put in false information you will need to be able to explain this if you have an application with significantly different information when you go in for your next visa interview um unfortunately there are agents that do that and it's it's not really there's no real way for you to to to prove that that wasn't you that did it other than trying to convince the visa officer that uh that you had nothing to do with it i know i have a friend personally who this happens to um there are unscrupulous visa agents out there you need to make sure that everything that's being done on your behalf is under your supervision and control don't let anything be submitted without you having the final say-so and the final approval of it okay says my question is for f1 category when the visa officer asks why the usa why do you want to go to the usa why do you choose to study in the usa that's the same question and the answer is what i said before the answer has to be personal to you right don't tell me something about the usa like the u.s has a has a top education system in the world tell me about what that means to you if i get a degree from the usa i'm able to get a much higher income when i go back to my country right uh my uh brother my siblings have all gone to the usa for their degrees it's and so i feel i feel comfortable going there right um i've been preparing for the u.s education system the you know the education systems in different parts of the world or are different and the u.s education system is the one that i'm comfortable with it has to involve you your answer has to involve you don't just recite facts that anyone could find on a wikipedia article you need to be able to talk about why this is the best situation for you okay ali khan accused says in the usa applied for i'm sorry this looks like a little bit of gibberish we're gonna have to skip that one and move on to some other questions okay i'm now going to okay okay i am just so everyone knows um i am going to put uh people who post the same comment over and over i'm going to hide your comments and put you in timeout and so your questions will not be answered because we do want to try to get to as many questions as we can and we want to give everyone an equal opportunity to get their questions answered with multiple posts like that it doesn't help me run through this this is also a good lesson for applying for your visa if you try to do things that are very obvious tricks and loopholes you will not be looked on favorably by the visa officer um and so you know you have you have to you have to enter into it as if it is a an interpersonal interaction that is a good point that i do want to make the entire decision that's going to be made in your visa interview is a personal decision the visa officer is going to decide if they trust you all they have to go on when they make that decision is what you write in your ds160 and what you say to them in your interview that's all that they can base it on that's all the information they have many people out there think that the us government is is keeping all the track of your personal life and everything you're doing and they have all this this data on you before you even show up to your interview no they do not right i mean if you've if you've been arrested if you're an international criminal then yes perhaps they do but if you're just a regular person no you walk in and the only information that's being considered is what you put in your ds160 and what you say in your interview and they have to trust you right so you basically need to approach this in the same way that you would approach any interaction with a friend with an acquaintance uh with a colleague with a family member with the the the tenets of of honesty trustworthiness respect respect their time respect their intelligence respect their their intentions now maybe they're not going to be in the best of moods but they are in complete control of the situation and that is exactly how you have to approach this interview so in the same way that's what how we're going about this you know a lot of what i have to coach my my clients about is what is uh what is the concept right it's not how do you answer individual questions it's how do you approach the interview so that regardless of what question you're asked you know naturally how to answer that question because you're in the right mindset right if you have the right mindset and you know the details of your program your studies your your job your investment whatever it is if you know the information and then you have the right mindset then the correct answers will come naturally to you okay okay yunus gassama asks what's the difference between call you community colleges and universities in the eyes of consular officer that is a very good question and very simply a four-year university is looked on much more favorably than a community college uh you can get an f visa for community college obviously this is a this is a qualified uh purpose of of getting an f visa however when you apply for a community college the standards for admission are lower that means that you haven't already demonstrated these academic credentials this academic commitment the time that it would have taken to be dedicated to your studies to be able to get into a better university with the better grades with the better test scores with the better toefl scores right so it's basically it's it's that you're lacking that vetting that getting into a four-year university that has admission standards that are higher would would naturally already intrinsically present to a visa officer so when you go to university there's also different gradients of universities right let's say i'm going to say harvard as an example if you've gotten into harvard the visa officer knows that you have some of the highest academic credentials in the world right that's for your university but it's also one of the most prestigious in the country and in the world if you get into let's say um [Music] let's say university of kentucky right if you get into university of kentucky this is a four-year university that has admission standards you do have to meet a certain minimum requirement in order to be accepted at this university but those requirements are lower than they are for harvard right so while it's better that it's a four-year university it's still not as good as if you can get into a more renowned more prestigious a more elite university and then going down from there then you've got a program where it's community college then and below that on the bottom rung of the ladder are english language programs because you don't even need to be able to speak english yet to get into them so you haven't demonstrated any type of this academic commitment that's going to convince the visa officer that you are a qualified visa applicant okay let's move on uh uchihaitachi says sir is it easy to pass us visa for the son of a u.s citizen okay so general general concept here is family members in the u.s family members in the u.s are ties to the u.s if you have a family member in the us and the closer the family member the closer the thai that means that you have some connection to the u.s that could very plausibly draw you to the u.s permanently and the visa officers will view it as such they will think okay well if you have a parent for instance in the u.s what's stopping you from wanting to immigrate permanently to the u.s along with this other family member right so you need to be able to very proactively demonstrate why that is not your plan why what you actually want to do is go to the us temporarily and go back to your home country especially if this is if it's a visa for you know a non-immigrant visa now is it easy to pass us visa for your son of a u.s citizen i think maybe you're talking about an immigrant visa in which case yes it's usually quite easy as long as as you have the real parental child relationship which can be confirmed by dna in the worst case scenario and then you would get your visa let's move on here khanwar says i'm a doctor and went to go to the u.s for my exam but my visa got rejected due to a green card petition can i still get a tourist visa this is the same thing with a green card petition it is probably a family member that's in the u.s and the green card petition actually does show that there is a path to immigration um and perhaps the intent even though you don't personally file that petition for yourself a family member files it for you so yes you can still get the tourist visa you have to prove to the next visa officer's satisfaction though that you do not intend to stay in the us permanently on that b visa and the way to do it is going to be to lean into it and say yes i have an immigrant petition pending now this i'm inventing some situations for you this may not be your personal situation right it could be different for anyone but one plausible strategy for someone could be to say yes i have an immigrant visa petition pending my relative filed it for me x number of years ago and i i do plan to use it when it becomes current but that's in x number of years from now that's in the future i'm a doctor i'm not going to do anything that's below this i've worked very hard to become a doctor i want to go and get my my usa usme i believe it's called exam past the past the certifications in the u.s but if i'm in the us without without proper documentation i can't work as a doctor i want to get my doctor's credentials and i want to be practiced and licensed and practicing and then in the future right so you have to demonstrate this dual intent where yes you have that petition that will become what we call current in the future however for now i intend to use this tourist visa as intended right let's move on paula says thank you for the great consultation that she had with catherine hoping to get her visa on the 23rd great i'm glad that you you enjoyed your your consultation and that you found it very useful and best of luck to you on the 23rd catherine is one of uh one of my colleagues at argo uh she's another ex visa officer who has a lot of experience who's very good at solving problems for for clients and helping them figure out what their strategy needs to be in order to present their credentials best and get their visa issued matuse also a client who had a consultation with us i believe with jenna um and asks if we have any further tips for an 0-1 visa i'm sure jenna went over this with you very well she's very skilled with the uh the aliens of extraordinary ability type visas the o is for a uh a non-immigrant alien of extraordinary ability and the main thing in this is that you have to show them you have to show the visa officers that you indeed have extraordinary qualifications that match what was on the petition that was filed for you right they are they are told the petition's already approved right that's approved by uscis in the u.s but then the visa officers are told in the regulations that what they need to do is is confirm using their local expertise and their local language skills that all of the information submitted in that petition is indeed true and that you do possess all those credentials so you need to be prepared that petition once you go into that visa interview it was prepared by lawyers however you are the only person who is there at the visa interview you have to know everything that's in that petition just because the lawyers prepared it now it's your responsibility you're the only person that can advocate for yourself in your visa interview okay ishmael saki says i got denied in march 9th for an f visa when is it appropriate for me to reapply for an interview since my school start date is in uh is in august so if your school start date is in august you can only apply for an f visa 120 days that's four months before your program start date so august we're going back july june may april april 22nd thereabouts it's not exactly 120 days but around april 22nd is when you can apply for your visa uh for a program start date that's on august 22nd okay now from april until august you might be wondering when should i apply between april and august it doesn't matter it does not matter apply in april apply in august i would say because visa appointments are so hard to come by right now what you should do is apply as soon as possible right because let's say that um you know just hypothetically if you're refused the first time you apply in april you want to perhaps have your the opportunity to apply again right so you want to apply as soon as possible many people ask if you've been refused a visa how long do you have to wait to apply again the answer is you do not have to wait to apply again you can apply immediately the visa officers and the visa managers and the consular sections will tell applicants you need to wait until something has changed in your situation when you go in for a visa interview after you've been refused they will ask that question what has changed since your previous interview however that really is is self-serving for them because they don't want to have to interview the same people over and over again they're trying to make it so that someone who they've refused once does not apply again um because they want they don't want to to have that that extra that extra workload coming in right and they do want to be consistent in their decisions however they have a conflicting goal with that is in that they also want their decisions to be accurate and they do make inaccurate decisions right that's i mean they they themselves would have to admit this because they refuse visas and then they issue visas right which is just an admission that the system is not perfect it's based on individuals judgments and their judgment can be flawed right so if your visa has been refused and you know that you do have the true honest intent to use that visa correctly you do not have to wait any time at all to apply again what you do need is a strategy for when you go in the next time to apply for your visa how you are going to avoid getting the same result that you did the last time if you go in without any change in your strategy and when i say a change in strategy i do not mean filling out the ds 160 differently giving different information changing schools changing programs right no i mean your strategy in terms of how they're how you are going to represent yourself your finances your plans your ties in your visa interview that's what you need a strategy for when you're refused a visa it's you who are refused they have not refused the university that you applied for they did not refuse your major they did not refuse your program start date they refused you and so it's you who needs a different strategy you can go into the same plan the same the same university the same program the same program start date the same scholarship everything but if your strategy is different in the interview the way that you're going to get them to view you as a visa applicant is different how you're going to present yourself and your credentials is different that's what needs to change when you go into that next interview okay let's move on to another question farooq says does the visa officer look at the social media of a visa applicant the answer to that is yes they can um in the same way that you can walk in with a bunch of documents that you've prepared for your interview and they may want to look at them but then oftentimes they'll say no i don't want to see your documents i don't want to see your bank statements your housing deeds your academic records i don't want to see any of it in the same way they don't have to look at any of your social media but if they want to yes they can review your social media miss pedia says can i say that my parents will only fund my tuition where my sibling will provide the remaining expenses in these cases do i need to have proof of financial support during a visa interview this brings up the topic of sponsors sponsors as they are you know requested on your ds160 or on your i20 are not as important as the word it's not as strict of a role as many visa applicants seem to interpret it as let me let me put that into other terms many visa applicants think that okay you need to choose one sponsor who do i choose my father or my uncle or my mother or my or myself who should i choose as my sponsor to put on my on my visa application because if it's one maybe it's better than the other you do have to put a name right and especially when you're doing your i20 like the source of these funds is important however in the visa interview it's your entire financial situation that's important okay they do not care if it's you your your father or your mother who's the sponsor right what they care about is your entire financial situation that's what you need to prepare to present to them when they ask you the question how are you going to pay for this the the correct answer is not my uncle is my sponsor okay well how's your uncle going to pay for it don't make them ask that obvious next question give them the information that they need when they ask who's going to to pay for your education give them the information they need which is do you have the resources to pay for this how do i know you have the resources to pay for this how can i trust you why would the person who's going to pay for this pay for this for you right these are the things that you should answer preemptively without making them have to ask this question as a follow-up okay continuing on i'm going to go down to the bottom now we're over halfway through i'm going to go to the bottom and then work my way back up so that if there are people that have joined later on uh and i'm going to so hemant car key i'm going to put you in timeout and it's because you've posted the same post over and over again please everyone do not post the same question over and over again you will not get your question answered okay rudolph serrano can i change my visa class upon the interview i selected b1b2b so when it ends when when i typed b2 only there's there's there's honestly for most people's purposes there's no difference between a b1 b2 and a b1 or just a b2 it's the same thing you need to just go into the visa interview b1 b2 is actually the best one to select when you're applying because it covers everything unless you're doing some very exotic type activity where you're getting like a b1 in lieu of h1b visa then you don't need anything specific like that you can just get a b1 b2 okay amazon counselors here's your question can a visa officer listen to my two-minute interesting answer or cut me down of course yes a visa officer can interrupt you anytime they want do not be dissuaded from giving your information you do have to stop if they ask you to stop right but when they ask you another question then you have another chance to continue giving them information and you should continue to give them the information that you know is important the shawl says i had the interview twice at the same university and got rejected should i change the university and program or have a major change i want to tell you again they're not refusing your university and your major they're refusing you so if you just change the university in a major that doesn't mean that okay now it's good now it's all good there's no list of okay we approve these universities and we refuse these we approve these majors we refuse these no however here's a caveat let's say that you're applying to community college and you've been refused and then you get into a renowned four-year university university of michigan for instance yes then if you change your i-20 and you show that you've been accepted into one of these more prestigious more elite more renowned more respected universities then yes you'll have a much better chance of getting your visa issued if you make that change but a change a let's call a lateral change from one program from industrial engineering to systems engineering not gonna it's not gonna affect your visa interview let's say that you go from uh um let's say um university of missouri to uh university of tennessee no they're both big state schools that's not really changing anything you're not going to be able to fish for a different answer by making those changes my father is retired and he will be sponsoring my education is this a negative no it is not a negative but i think you already know what i'm going to tell you you have to explain the situation you explain the situation and that is what's going to get the peace officer to trust you to feel like they know what's going on in your in your situation to feel like they know why they should feel confident about issuing your visa okay jonathan jonathan says i'm nigerian and i want to apply for undergrad in the us though i finished high school in 2015. so you've got a gap you've got a gap between your previous studies and your current plan that is what we call a non-traditional student i've gone over this it's what we call a non-traditional student it's what's going to make the visa officers more suspicious from the very beginning and so you need to know that you will have to convince them of your intent why does your plan make sense right you're not going to be as easy to get a visa as someone who's you know straight out of high school going to college straight out of college going to a master's you're going to need to explain why going back to school after seven years is a good idea okay once again let me remind you please do not post your question multiple times it will not be answered that is going to be considered negative information and it will preclude you from having your question answered live on youtube okay moving back does sat or scholarship matter asks subaru chan the sat is not something that i or any police officers that i know of would ask for many times however scholarships yes having a scholarship shows first of all academic excellence right if this is a merit-based scholarship which is a good thing for getting your visa it also shows proof of being able to pay for your studies right it also shows um commitment to actually engaging in the studies that you say you're planning to engage in right if you've gone the extra mile the gone to the extra effort to apply for scholarships that's something that someone who is just putting together a ramshackle application for a university to be able to get to the us to engage in unauthorized work would not do so having that scholarship is great all around scholarships are great evidence in favor of issuing a student's visa okay someone asks a very good question what is the cause of the ds5535 maybe many of you have heard of this people are asked to fill out a form or to answer a questionnaire that then is put into this form you might not be told specifically that you're being given the ds5535 the ds-5535 you can you can search for it in google and you can see what this form is and you can read about what the background of it is it is the extreme vetting that was implemented a few years ago any peace officer for any case can request that the applicant fill out the ds5535 which is going to then cause a check to be to be done um just to verify that you are not a person that should not be given a visa for any number of reasons mostly security related um this is something that you cannot do honestly very much to avoid once it has been requested all you can do is submit the information as thoroughly and as quickly as possible in order to start the check and then get the result back as soon as possible it does take a long time there are people that i've heard of who have been waiting for you know upwards of six months for this check to come back and there's nothing that can be done to speed it up the only thing that can be done to help you avoid this check is if you give as much thorough complete information to the visa officer during the interview as possible because it can be a lack of information that causes them to want to request a ds-5535 if they feel like they have thorough complete information from you and then they feel like they don't need to request this then you could possibly avoid it right so all you can do uh with regards to that is provide as much information as you can so that that information can perhaps prove to the visa officer that they do not need to request that form with regards to your application why pablo asks why do peace officers interrupt when someone is talking because they and the answer to this is because they're in a hurry they don't have much time they're trying to go as fast as they can they don't have the time to give you 20 minutes to speak during your visa interview they are trying to get through visa applicants one every two minutes and so they think that they want to get certain pieces of information from you to then make their decision and if you're giving them information that isn't relevant to that then they'll interrupt you and ask you a different question that doesn't mean that you should just give up and say well i guess i can't tell them my information no they'll ask another question hopefully and you'll be able to answer that question and you can pivot your answer towards giving the information that you know is the best supportive supportive information that will help you get your visa issued okay sir says that cbp canceled his visa can you get it back a lot of people have this issue where they arrive in the u.s and then they are removed from the us by cbp they may pull you off to a room where they then interrogate you they ask you a lot of questions uh they may confiscate your your electronic devices and search through them there are different ways that they can then deny your entry into the us uh one way is that they can allow you to withdraw your application for admission which means that they found no solid evidence that you did not that you were intending to break the law however they are suspicious of you and so they give you the opportunity to withdraw your application which means saying okay i don't want to enter the u.s then your visa is canceled you're sent back to your home country but you don't have a ban you can reapply for a visa and there's no ban the visa officer can't just issue your visa outright if they so decide to however in other instances they do apply a five-year ban that's when they don't give you the option to withdraw your application for admission and that results in expedited removal and a five-year ban on being able to re-enter the u.s to be able to enter the us earlier than that five years before that five years has expired you do have to get a waiver for for a non-immigrant visa you have to get a waiver uh and for a uh for a immigrant visa you have to get an i212 um you have to submit the i1 212 which is usually going to be submitted by a lawyer on your behalf as uh consent to reapply before you're able to get another visa issued community asks do they ask why you were rejected earlier they usually will not ask why you were rejected for a visa because they know that visa applicants do not know why they are rejected to 14b they know that they don't tell them this is the reason you were refused if your visa was revoked or cancelled by cbp or something like that then they will ask if that's a very it's very specific to individual situations um so that's one where you need to know you you need to get the professional help which we can provide to figure out exactly what you need to say in response to uh to having something happen previously like a rejection i got rejected because of a spelling error on my ds160. i doubt that is true if you just misspelled something on your ds160 that is usually not not usually that would never be the sole reason why a visa officer would refuse a visa however you say and your bank statement so if there was a spelling error on your bank statement that would definitely make a visa officer consider refusing your visa because banks do not usually misspell words on their statements and so a misspelling on a bank statement would make a visa officer suspect that perhaps that bank statement was fraudulent counterfeit falsified bahram sire says why after a rejection of the visa does the officer not share the main reason just like for the other reason why i said why they interrupt you because they don't have time they don't have the time or the uh the obligation to tell you why also uh the why would not be satisfactory to you they would tell you because i just don't believe you and then and then what would you say right so uh they will never tell you the main reason i and my colleagues who have done tens of thousands of these interviews we've done cumulatively all of the visa officers that work with argo the ex-visa officers have done over a million visa interviews our experience doing this for years and collectively when we hear what happened during your visa interview what questions were asked how you answered and what the content of your visa application and your visa application history is we know nearly immediately with uh with a high degree of accuracy what the reason was that was in the peace officer's head without them ever having told you we're just relying on our intuitive uh knowledge of how this this process works how the regulations work and most importantly how visa officers think in order to deduce what the reason was for your refusal my f1 gita says my f1 visa was denied two months ago on a 214 b what changes should i make and can i book the interview as a fresher no you cannot book it as a fresher if they check they will refuse you for disingenuous disingenuously applying as a fresher despite not being a fresher this should be very clear to everyone right if you do anything that is inaccurate or untruthful and the visa officer knows about it they will not believe anything else that you tell them right so if you've been refused and then you apply as a pressure the visa officer will think this is a dishonest person i cannot believe anything that they're going to tell me and they will refuse you right this should be very clear to everyone right this is just basic interpersonal skills right basic interpersonal skills apply to visa interviews we have a question here saying my husband is on an h1b and i'm applying for an f1 visa will that affect my visa acceptance the answer is yes however it's not necessarily going to affect it in positively or negatively it definitely will affect it the way you present this is going to determine whether it's going to be positive a net positive or not negative in its effect on your visa application one you have your closest family member in the u.s that's a tie to the u.s however they're there on a valid legal visa and ostensibly with an h1b they're very highly skilled right so you can you can present this in such a way that you're presenting yourself as a very successful um qualified um law abiding couple who's going to the u.s right um so you can you can present that in a way that it's going to help i'm looking a lot of questions that uh are similar to the ones i've already answered like you know what you do if you have a gap um madrine says how can one avoid anxiety during the interview it's a very good question i'm not a psychologist or a therapist and so i don't think i'm the best person to tell you how to avoid anxiety however i can tell you just in the context of a visa interview it is very common for people to be nervous and anxious about their visa interview because it is such an important interview and the result of it is going to affect your entire life if you're going for studies or a job and so it is understandable that you will be nervous don't get mad at yourself for being nervous right uh for me what what would work is thinking that okay i'm going to be nervous i already know i'm not going to be surprised i'm not going to be angry at myself for getting nervous i'm not going to be disappointed in myself i know i'll probably feel a little bit nervous and when i feel nervous i'm just going to take a moment acknowledge that i'm feeling nervous but that's okay take it take a deep breath and then if i need to ask the officer to repeat their question um maybe even i should say i'm sorry i'm i'm not i'm kind of nervous um could you repeat your question to me right the visa officers know that the the visa applicants are nervous um and so it's not uh it's not the end of the world if you're nervous uh but definitely be prepared to be nervous even if you're not normally a nervous person when you do get into a situation like that where it's high stakes and it's happening in very rapidly it can be more nervous than you might expect and let's take one more question i'm going to look here find us a good one to finish up on one more question you we're looking here we're going to find one amazon counselors you've you've continued to do this this entire time you are in time out for for that okay here's a good here's a good one my next interview is monday who's michael i know michael this uh my next interview is monday what do i expect after two refusals after you've been refused a visa once what can you expect going in with a prior refusal it's very important that you know that you're starting off with a strike against you what does that mean you're starting off with negative information against you in your visa interview why why is that it's because that previous refusal is on your visa record the visa officer will open your case and they will see that you were refused previously this is going to affect how they're going to think about you right this is going to affect their their their judgment of you their initial impression of you and so you're going to have to to fight an uphill battle to get them to think about you positively right that's why when i prepare my clients i always teach them that after you've been refused the first thing that you say is the most important you have to say something that gets the visa officer to reconsider your case from a different perspective even though they know that their colleague refused you previously that's the most important thing that you can do if you've been previously refused all right that's going to be it for today everyone thanks so much for coming i i love that we got so many participants and so many questions today um if you've got a visa interview coming up and you want help and you want to know how your individual situation should be best handled what your strategy should be reach out to us send us an email send us a message our email is hello argovisa.com send us a message on social media uh you know comment on this video uh afterwards we get to those you know it's we try to answer everyone's questions individually given the very the very minute amount of information that we're actually able to consider if you want real comprehensive help book a consultation with us i help my clients one-on-one i have colleagues that speak 15 different languages and have worked all over the world in 35 different countries we have experience with whatever your situation is and we can help you get your visa everyone thanks for tuning in and i will see you next time bye

Channel: Argo Visa

Views: 72,128

Keywords:

Id: MzCElwQKA-0

Length: 62min 22sec (3742 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 16 2022