Live Student Visa Interview Q&A with Ex-Visa Officers

hey everyone we are live we're happy to be here today it is student visa week at argo visa and today mandy and i are going to be doing a live q a answering as many questions as we can from visa applicants like you who are going through this process who are getting ready to study in america we know that you have questions uh we know that each of you has a unique situation and you want to get an answer to your question so we're going to get through as many as we can i'll introduce myself first in case no one has seen me before my name is ben i'm the director of consular affairs at argo and i'm a former visa officer i worked with the state department doing 60 000 visas over the course of my career uh doing visas in china and in colombia and visas of every single type imaginable mandy yeah it's uh really exciting to be here with you guys thanks for spending time with us we look forward to answering your questions uh i just like ben i am a former u.s diplomat and visa officer and also a u.s immigration attorney i've interviewed about a hundred thousand visa applicants in my time in china and mexico and hong kong and again we've seen pretty much every single type of visa you can imagine dealt with a lot of prior refusals and look forward to sharing some tips and insights especially for this student visa season and we wish you uh the best for a smooth process as you go in and apply for your us visa and you know hope we can help great so let's start taking some questions okay suk tells us please tell me how to answer this question who is your sponsor uh should we talk about the sponsor's occupation income and all that stuff yeah so this is a great question um if you do have a sponsor so funding is a big part of the student visa interview so if you are going as a student you are going to have to explain to the visa officer how you plan to pay for your tuition and living expenses and oftentimes you do have a sponsor if you have a sponsor it is important to uh have context for the visa officer so they understand the relationship between you and the sponsor because really what you're trying to do is you're trying to paint a picture for the visa officer so that they can understand why this person would pay money out of their own pocket for your tuition or living expenses and keep in mind that sometimes there could be a little bit of cultural difference so you know for an american officer you know it's possible that their parents would pay for their tuition but an aunt and an uncle might seem strange so it might uh be very helpful for you to explain this relationship between yourself and your distant family member as to why this person would do such a thing for you and the question who's your sponsor the question behind the question is why should i give you the visa right and so when they're asking this they're wondering about your finances the question isn't just about tell me about that one person who you listed as your sponsor on your i-20 or on your ds160 the question is tell me about your whole financial situation so don't limit your answer to talking about one person talk about everything if it's your savings your parents savings your families your extended families give them all the information that that could possibly help them get to the decision to issue your visa all right great let's move on to another question here su j says in my passport my place of birth is given by my town's name and not by the city's name it's located in the ds160 when it asks for the city of birth is it okay if i give the city's name the answer to that is simply yes yeah you can you can uh you can put your your town's name or your city's name uh i would just i don't know why you would want to put the city's name instead of the town's name but if if the the in your passport it's listed as your town you should put your town's name the diese 160 there's some information in ds160 that's extremely important your education history your employment history um your prior travel the answers to some questions about have you been refused a visa before to show that you're being very honest other information can be changed like for instance if you're if your name is listed in a different order in your passport than it is on the ds160 you know they got the two middle names swapped or something like that that's not a big deal when you get to the embassy or the consulate when you get to the intake window window with the local staff member who's going to be putting your information into the system just let them know about this change show them in your passport how it should be and they'll change that for you there that's not a big deal okay let's move on to another question here i am applying for an f1 visa from india this year i went to singapore as a tourist in 2009 can i mention this on the ds160 though it only asks for the past five years of travel history um i would just answer the question the way that it's posed so just mention where you've traveled in the last five years it this is not really going to be all that important whether or not you put it in or not but i would always try to answer those questions uh as truthfully as possible so if it says last five years just only mention the travels in your last five years right you never want to appear like you're being dishonest on your ds160 or on any of your documents right the appearance of being very open and honest can do a lot to help you establish that rapport with the visa officer and when the visa officer trusts you the data points and the answers to the questions are not as important as that feeling of trust that they have when they're when they're talking to you during the interview okay so now we have a question here from soraya hello week ago i was rejected a second time from a bachelor's i'm applying it i'm a student studying poland two years after one year i will graduate uh what do you think can i reply again or should i try for a master's degree so here we've got a prior refusal uh applying for it looks like a second bachelor's degree or would you need to go for a master's degree so i think we're talking about um non-traditional students here right mandy yeah yeah absolutely um what do you think of this situation then well i would want to know what happened during those refusals that's really key for interpreting what was going on in the visa officer's mind and what's in their mind then goes into their notes right and that's what the next visa officer is going to see and it's going to shape the the interview from the very beginning what happened in that previous interview so seeing what their concerns were right it could be that it was going for a second bachelor's degree and you know they just don't understand why you would want to go for a second bachelor's degree um who knows maybe it had to do with funding whatever that is there is a way to try to to address that in another interview because if you've gone into your interviews and you haven't really advocated for yourself and put your highlights out there then you can get your visa issued again if you go in um now maybe there is something instrumental insurmountable and it would be better to apply for a master's strengthen that application by going for a higher degree getting into a better school you know there there's always that option too of improving your resume but i wouldn't say that this is an automatic application that you need to give up on yet without knowing the full details yeah and i think ben brings up a really good point which is when you get denied a visa 99 of the time that these officer is not going to tell you why you were denied a visa and you might think you know but you really don't know because what a visa officer does is look at your full life situation and circumstances and then they will decide more you know looking at weighing multiple factors so don't assume you know why you're refused and if you have been refused definitely work with an expert to find out why you're refused that's going to be the starting point for how you can get that situation turned around because if you don't even know and you just go in doing exactly the same thing you did the last time you will probably get the same result which is another denial and once you you know get a number of denials it becomes really difficult to come back from that and actually get that visa approved so it goes into your visa record forever it's a very high stakes interview so again if you have a prior denial definitely work with an expert you don't have to do this on your own and take you know wild guesses as to why it happened we can tell you uh to a very high level of certainty why you were denied and how we can help and give you a strategy okay we have another question here from wynn hello argo i'm a 23 year old chinese girl who just got rejected for an f1 visa yesterday the officer said he can't give me a specific reason for the refusal what would you suggest that i do the next time well mandy and i have both served in china mandy in beijing and me and guangzhou and shanghai and so we have a lot of experience in this um you know there's no there's no specific advice for someone that's been refused this is the same thing china though has a very high approval rate for bona fide students there's there's a certain there's certain places where the you know there's known high fraud um and that can cause the officers to be very cautious when issuing visas to people who come from areas where there's a lot of illegal immigration from china to the us but in general if you're able to show that you've got the means the academic credentials you can get your visa issued now mandy and i have also seen that in the last year the visa officers in china are seem to be less confident and it's because of the pandemic the pandemic shut down all their interviews they didn't do interviews for for two years so what that meant was that they weren't gaining that experience and with experience comes confidence they're lacking that and so right now what's happening is that they see situations that maybe are atypical they give them pause and they're more likely to refuse now than they would have been before but that doesn't mean that the route is closed to you if you apply again and you know what you can do better the next time you know what your highlights are you do have a chance to get your visa issued again that's absolutely right then and i think you know again this is a situation where your first step is to book an argo consultation so you can find out exactly why you're refused and we can usually figure that out from the questions you were asked what your answers were what the visa officer's concerns were and then we can give you a strategy on how to get that situation turned around so you can see if you can do better at your next interview okay let's go for this question from ishmael uh hello i got denied twice on my f visa and i'm going to apply again may i know what i should say on the ds160 where it asks what's the reason that i got denied that is a great question and i think you know it's it's it's good to just keep it short in my opinion so you can just say you know i was denied a visa um honestly sometimes that's enough i was denied a visa at this time because honestly the visa officers know that you don't really know the reason why you were denied um i have seen these applicants give these very long-winded explanations for okay well this has happened and the visa officer usually that is better for you to explain in person uh what concerns the visa officer had that caused you to get your visa denied it's better to do that in person versus on the application so for this question i would recommend that you just put something very simple about you know your denial and when it happened you don't actually have to give a specific reason because that is what you're going to go into at your next interview uh when you're actually having this conversation with the visa officer that is a very good point let's move on to another question does the university matter in a visa interview it absolutely does obviously if a university can give you an i-20 they are a legitimate university that is able to offer offer student spots and sponsor student visas but that doesn't mean that they're all equal in the eyes of the visa officer and what it really boils down to is how strict the admission standards are if you don't have to have any credentials if anyone can be admitted to a program let's say it's an english language program or a community college program where they have a near 100 acceptance rate that's going to show that's not going to tell the visa officer anything that's going to tell them all you did was go online and submit an application and you were accepted right now let's go on the far other end of the spectrum if you were accepted by harvard or yale or one of the most prestigious universities in the country the visa officer knows okay a very prestigious organization this university has already vetted this applicant and has already conf confirmed that this applicant's academic credentials are up to their standard which is a very high standard it takes years and years of academic excellence and effort to get to that standard and so the visa officer already knows okay this applicant has already proven their academic credentials now all i'm concerned about is anything else you know okay the finances how's it going to be paid for but they don't doubt that you're a legit student so yes the university does matter now that matters on those extreme ends a prestigious university and a university that has very lacks admittance requirements if there's let's say at the university of michigan versus the university of ohio these are both excellent universities and if you refused beca when you applied for the university of michigan changing your application to the university of ohio is not going to help you right uh they didn't they did the visa officer and it i mean just to be very clear with you this is how it is this is how you need to view it the visa officer did not refuse the university the visa officer refused you right so changing the university uh in a lateral change is not really gonna to help you that much going to a much better university can help you but also demonstrating all your credentials and why they should trust you is going to help you it's not because oh students can't get visas to go to the university of tennessee um so i need to apply to the university of arkansas that's not that's not the way that it works yeah that's absolutely right i would say that you know just make sure that um you are prepared for the interview and know that if you are going to a community college or for an esl program or a school that is less well known that you need to be prepared for probably a tougher interview because the visa officer is taking it upon themselves to vet you and make sure they are actually qualified as a student yes exactly so we have another question here is having an aunt in the us reducing my chances of getting the us visa basically we can boil this down to anyone that has a similar question if i have family members in the u.s will that affect my chances and the answer is always yes now it doesn't have to be a negative but this is something that the visa officers are trained to look for right there's a field on that ds160 where they ask if you have any family members in the u.s and that's immediate family members if if your sponsor is someone who's a family member who's in the u.s and you do state that in your application they're going to know this why this is important is because it shows a tie to the u.s you've probably all read on the internet um and maybe hurting your own visa interviews ties you have to have uh ties to your home country or you have too many ties to the us this is basically just kind of a technical way of them saying where are you more likely to settle down to be drawn to to to to start your your life in your career right if you've got your entire family in the u.s well that's a big incentive to try to stay in the u.s but if your family is all in your home country then you have more ties to your home country so having that aunt there could be seen as a negative so you can't expect that you can go in there and just say yes my aunt is in the u.s and then say no more because the visa officer's imagination is going to be going in every direction considering every single scenario and usually the negative ones that would lead you to want to stay in the u.s permanently right you need to follow up and let them know exactly what this situation is right what they're doing in the us are they they're legally did they arrive legally what was their immigration path etc yeah i think that's a really good point anything that is something out of the ordinary that they're seeing will increase your chances of getting denied a visa so again any family in the in the us it's definitely something that you will want to talk about in a very credible way and i have seen this be generally it's a negative factor but you can maybe even turn it into a positive factor depending on how well prepared you are for the interview what your relationship with this aunt is you know are you planning to see her when you're in the united states you know all of this is about engaging with the visa officer the right way and how you explain it which is why i think for so many of you you may have heard of people with very similar situations and one these applicant will get approved one will get denied a lot of it has to do with their preparation for the visa interview how they explain and advocate for themselves and that's exactly what we do at argo visa in helping you prepare for this important interview okay we have another question here i would like to know how strict a console is for an f1 interview for a fully funded phd at the university of florida florida mandy i'll let you take this one okay um i think that if you are um you know getting a graduate school degree in the united states especially a phd that is a very positive factor in your favor it means clearly you are you know you have a lot going for you you um are doing extensive research and so however it doesn't mean that the visa process is going to be a rubber stamp for you it hardly ever is for anyone so again if we're just looking at this one factor that's positive but jose i don't know everything about your personal life i don't know you know do you have family in the united states um has anybody petitioned for an immigrant visa for you uh are you in love with them with an american citizen so these are all things that we need to know about your life to make an accurate assessment for how tough your visa interview will be i will say though for just this factor if you're a fully funded phd you probably have a good chance barring other um sort of complicated situations but again you know your situation best if any other complications up you know affect your case or apply to your case please book a consultation it is better to be well prepared than to get to the interview and realize that you actually had red flags in your case that you could have been prepared for okay is the process for phd students fully funded easier than masters and i'll just give you a very simple answer to this yes it's easier the the the greater the prestige of what you're doing the easier it's going to be to get approved so a phd is more prestigious than a master's it requires more work it requires more commitment more dedication uh the the requirements for for being accepted and especially to a fully funded program are more strict so yes it is always going to be seen like you are a more qualified student if you're going for a phd program rather than a master's program okay let's go for another question here um so this is something we touched on earlier but we can talk about it in terms of being a non-traditional student so mandy what are the chances of getting a second f1 visa for a second masters so i'm assuming that they already did one masters in the us on an f1 and now they're going for a second masters this is a really great question because we see a lot of international students in the situation and i think the crux of what's going to happen at this next visa interview is being able to adequately explain why this master's degree differs from the first one and what changes in your circumstances have caused you to need a second master's degree i think for a lot of students they think well i've already been a good student i'm just you know doing this thing and you assume that the visa officer will already know or will just go ahead and approve your case but in fact the visa officer will be very inquisitive and want to know why another master's degree you already have one so does this make sense for your career trajectory does this make sense for what you're intending to do in the future so i would highly recommend that you think about what your future plans are and how the second master's degree fits into those plans so that you can prepare a well-rounded response for the visa officer all right let's go on to another question here good day ben oh okay question for me is it okay for me to state to the visa officer that i'm choosing a particular university because of its low cost of attendance the answer to that is yes now before i get into why that's a good answer you might think it's a bad answer because it shows oh i'm going for a cheap program because uh you know maybe uh you know we don't have a a ton of funds but this is something that my family can afford but here's the thing that you should consider is that the visa officer that you are doing your interview with also went to university i i'd say 99 of them went to the university in the us right and they they took into the same took into consideration the same factors that you're taking into consideration when you choose which university you're going to right now what are those considerations the cost for sure did you get a a scholarship or any other type of funding a graduate assistantship something like that 100 they're going to consider that the the major the program is it a prestigious program at that university right um is there if you're at a higher level of study let's say masters and phd who's the professor what type of research are they engaged in right other extrinsic factors like um do you have uh people that you know that went to that school and recommended it to you and that's why you've heard that it's good right um maybe your family has friends that live there and because you've never lived alone before they want you to be close to to somebody who can you know can help you out in a new country all of these are very practical reasons and in the us students are considering the same types of things so giving a real reason like this and talking about it not just saying i chose this university because of low cost no tell them a story right it's pretend like you're speaking to your cousin and you're you're talking about why you made this decision right you're going to give them the whole narrative the whole background that's what the visa officer needs to hear they need to hear what your thinking process was because that shows that you're actually intending to go to university there there was a real decision process that took place now the opposite of that i'm going to give you what a bad reason for you to give and that's what we heard so many students do when we were visa officers they give these memorized answers that have nothing to do with them and are just facts that they've memorized from the university's website or maybe a wikipedia article saying i want to go to the university of kansas because it has a very good student faculty ratio they have a campus of 130 acres and they have a 1.7 million dollar endowment for the laboratories some answer like that which is not the way that american students choose the universities that they're going to attend it's also not the way that we know that you choose the university you're going to attend so giving one of those memorized bland generic answers is never going to benefit you always the practical answer that's personal to you is what you need to be answering when they ask you that question and i will just add one thing to ben's um answer which i think is a very good answer is that if one of the reasons why you chose a particular university is because it's low cost um you should still probably work with an expert to make sure that you are presenting the situation the right way because anytime you talk about low cost or some special reasons for funding it could be taken it could be taken badly and it's a very risky sort of response to give again just like ben said you want to flesh out your answer and whether or not it's good enough you're never going to know but what we can do is tell you okay that was a great response that was a very well-rounded response you know highlighting this specific reason and so don't think that just because we say it's okay to mention that it's low-cost that you know you can just say it and it'll be accepted well there is going to be importance placed on your response and you should be prepared okay how much information is too much information i know you encourage more than one sentence or one word answers but i don't want to say too much mandy yeah so this is a great question um i think oftentimes people give too much information and this is why it's important to strike a good balance you don't want to give one word answers but you also don't want to ramble on and on um providing a lot of information that is irrelevant that will just cause the visa officer to a tune you out uh to not have a very good impression of you and think okay i'm never going to get the right information out of this person i'm just going to go ahead and deny the visa keep in mind that it is always easier for the visa officer to deny your visa than it is for them to actually take the time to understand your situation fully and give you a chance so definitely you can give too much information i would say a good balance is finding you know two or three sentences very concisely explaining your situation bringing always bringing the positive aspects of your case to the forefront of the mind of the visa officer and we can give you good feedback on what is relevant and not relevant okay let's move on to another question here kenny says i was denied earlier i don't know why but i attend the attended the interview about two weeks after the start date okay so this is very key and this is very simple for everyone you must be able to get to the us before your program start date as it is listed on your i-20 that means that your visa interview needs to be before that start date not just before it by one day it needs to be before it by at least a week and that's going to involve also asking them to expedite the printing preferably by two or three weeks because they're going to look at that and they need to know that they can approve your visa wait for all the clearances to come through print your visa and return it to you with enough time for you to then get on a plane and fly to the us to get your program right so if you arrive after your program start date is passed you're done you're toast they're not going to even consider it if you arrive with just a few days maybe you'll be able to convince them to do you a favor and they will consider it a favor to expedite everything but maybe they won't maybe they'll say no there's not enough time for you to get to the us um and so they're going to refuse it but yeah this is something that there's nothing that can be done about it everyone should know it's very clear they cannot issue your visa after your program has already begun okay let's move on to another question from tanya does the number of universities that a student applies to and the number of admittances affect whether they get the visa or not mandy i would say it could um you know you don't have to go crazy and just say okay i'm going to apply to 20 universities in hopes that this number is important and the more i get the better i think uh this is important if you are only applying to one university which i know is true for some of you then you have to have a very good reason for why that specific university if you're going all the way across the world to attend a school in the united states and this also has to do with an american visa officer's personal history with applying to schools most americans don't apply to just one school they apply to a number they shortlist and then they pick the one that they want to go to so if you're someone going to just one school you know you'll want to be extra prepared in responding to why that won school but at the same time it doesn't mean that you have to apply to as many as possible um i think there's no magic number but whatever makes sense for your personal situation is the right way to go okay let's move on to another question here how to prove strong ties to your home if your parents don't own land or businesses right your funding however does come from a graduate assistantship so this is key they don't just give visas to affluent people to people from rich families abroad okay now that does help 100 we need to be honest about that if your family does have money that shows the peace officer that you are less likely to stay in the us unlawfully right you won't have employment authorization the work that you'd be able to engage in is usually low wage low skilled work when you don't have any official status in the us and being from a family that does have means makes them more likely to think that that's not something that you would engage in right now on the other hand the us you know the the values that the u.s peace officers hold are equality equal opportunity you know being able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps make yourself into something from nothing so they are not going to just discriminate against you if your family doesn't have means it will affect their thinking though they 100 will consider it but they want somebody who's coming from no means to be able to succeed and and you know and excel in their academic career so if your family does not have the resources that are not going to be enough to convince the visa officer well then that's not what you need to focus on that's not one of your highlights that's actually one of your hurdles you need to recognize that your highlights are that you are a strong enough student that you got a graduate assistantship that's funding you to attend this program right so some students maybe they want to focus on their parents income or salary or their businesses you in this case need to focus on your academics your strong academics your commitment to academic excellence how well you've done in every academic program that you've been in in your life any awards you've won things like that that's what you need to show because if you're showing look how good of a student i am right the best indicator of future behavior is prior behavior so if you're showing them look all the way up until now i have been a top-notch student they're more likely to believe that from now on you're also going to be a top-notch student so you just got to know what your highlights are and focus on those and know how to defend against your your your your disadvantages your hurdles if you are questioned about those in your visa interview okay mandy another china question there are five u.s consulates plus the embassy in china i want to know if the location of the embassy plays a role in the approval or denial of an f1 visa wow that is a great question and kind of a loaded question so if you are someone who's applying for a visa we always recommend that you apply in your home consular district okay so there is a specific consulate or embassy assigned to you and that's where you should apply however there is you know rumors out there that okay certain embassies or certain consulates are easier than others it doesn't really matter you should apply where your home consular district is so for example in china you know if you live right outside of shanghai that's where you should be applying for your visa unless you have a good reason to apply elsewhere and the reason why i answer it like this is because it's kind of a slippery slope if you think that one consulate is easier quote unquote easier for getting your visa and you try to just apply there yes you are technically allowed to do so but what the visa officer is going to see or assume when looking at your case is well this person came all the way over to shanghai from shenyang because they think that it's going to be an easier place for them to get their visa approved i'm going to show them how they're wrong and so there is this concept amongst these officers of uh you know applicants visa shopping so you always want to start with your home consulate however sometimes if you have a good reason perhaps you know you were uh born right outside of shanghai but you have been in beijing attending university for the past four years and you actually reside in beijing and that would be considered an okay reason to apply in beijing versus shanghai and i don't know if you have anything to add ben yeah well with china specifically right you know just last week or maybe it was the week before uh the the consulate in shanghai went on um ordered departure and so they're not going to be doing visa interviews there for a while even once they they open back up it's still going to take them a while to rip up so probably even if you're if you're from suzhou or somewhere around there you're going to want to go to a different concert or embassy now where you have to um but yeah what mandy said is exactly right you what you the way you should think about it is like this there's no consulate or embassy that's going to be easier for you just because people say it's easier people say oh you know uh embassy x is easier than embassy why that's not true for you for you with the embassy that's going to be the closest one to you where they they where they're going to know why you are there that's going to be the easy one to use china as the example if you're from guangzhou live your whole life in guangzhou went to university in guangzhou and then you show up in shenyang for your visa interview they're going to think why is this person from guangzhou up here in shenyang right they don't know anything about guangzhou but let's say that you're born in guangzhou uh you went to elementary school in guangzhou you went to college in guangzhou but then you got a job and you've been working for two years in china then yes you can apply in china because why are you there you have a job you have a reason to be there right and it's intuitively understandable so it's all about thinking about you know that these officer needs to think yes i belong here right and you need to help them understand why you belong there you can give them those reasons that tell them why you do belong there okay let's go on to another question if i lived all my life in a country that isn't my nationality is this country considered my home country so like let's say for example someone who's from uh india who's lived their entire life in uh dubai for instance mandy yeah i would say uh yes but you're going to have to explain that to the visa officer it's not going to be immediately apparent to them because the first thing they're going to see is your passport and they're going to assume okay this is way where they live so you're going to have to want to weave that into your story about uh you know why you have lived in dubai your whole life and that's going to become a part of your narrative depending on the type of visa you're applying for and what you would want to do is have a strategy where um you know it makes sense and so basically keep in mind that this is not something automatically known to the visa officer and you will have to explain it okay let's move on hello i have a seven year gap between finishing high school and going to undergrad how's that going to affect your application so this is one of these situations that we as visa officers consider a non-traditional student a traditional student is one where there's no there's no gaps to fill in there's no questions about what's going on it's high school to college to grad degree to phd right and especially that that undergrad to grad degree to phd it's all in the same field anything where you're going to see a change of field that's not traditional anything where you have a gap between studies where you worked for a few years in between that's non-traditional anything where you're going to repeat the same level you've got one masters and you're going to go back for another masters or drop down and get a bachelor's after having gotten a master's these are all non-traditional situations and what that means is that you just need it's a specific situation to you they're going to be details that you need to explain to the visa officer so that they feel confident about your situation okay uh a student that's just you know high school undergrad grad school there's no explanation needed this is just a student on their academic career path when you have a seven year gap though between high school and college you were doing something right and now it makes sense to go back and get your your your college degree what's that reason right because not everyone does it that's why you can't we if you're a non-traditional student you 100 cannot go in there and give short answers and give no information the students that are on a traditional path it's a little bit more acceptable for them to be passive in their interview because it's more likely the peace officer is going to imagine a very conventional academic career path but if you have an unconventional one the visa officer's imagination is going to be going wild if you don't fill in the gaps for them they're going to fill it in and not necessarily with good information so you've got to let them know what happened what have you been doing for the last seven years why now do you want to make the change and go back and stop working stop your career make a make a hard turn and pay money for a degree that's going to put you on a different track right so the key in this situation is you've got to tell them the story about how this came about why you're making this decision why does it make sense for you why is it going to be better for you afterwards not just oh i want to learn right students who are traditional students who are younger they can just say oh i just want to learn i'm interested in this if you're mid-career and you're making a change it can't just be because you want to learn it has to be because it makes sense for your career for your income for your profession for your for your prospects right there's got to be some real tangible benefit to you okay ella's mere choi says i reapplied for an f1 after one refusal but the vo started and his colleague came to him and said that he that i'd been denied last week and so there was no need to interview why is this and we'll get to the second part of the question afterwards so ellsmere i'm so sorry that this was your experience um unfortunately things like this happen every now and then that is not the normal way that these officers handle cases like this so um it probably was a mistake if you have been denied a visa before um you should be getting a what they call a fresh look at your application which means that you should be interviewing with a different visa officer which is what it sounds like happened to you um it's likely what happened in this situation is that the colleague came to him was the officer who previously denied you and he should not have done that so again i'm sorry that this was your experience um you should be given the opportunity to interview again and get a fresh look uh in your situation and so i would say we can help and actually we have an officer who speaks cantonese and so you know if you need our help we'd be happy to provide it okay let's move on here my sister is in the usa and she is on an h4 should i mention it on my ds160 absolutely you should the question is do you have any immediate family members in the u.s and if you do not state that well think about it you're interviewing with a visa officer your sister who's in the u.s on an h4 also interviewed with a visa officer they have access to those same records they can verify that your sister is in the u.s with a few clicks of a mouse and then if you've not listed that even if it was innocent it's going to appear like you were trying to hide that fact and that's not going to look good so you do need to list that and also if she's on an h4 she's the spouse of somebody that holds an another type of h visa i'm assuming let's assume that's an h1b you have to have very high qualifications to get an h1b this is not you know kind of like a low-wage unskilled job and so that means that you've got family members who have these types of credentials that can they can they can get because they can um qualify for an h1b visa so you're showing that your family is of a certain you know status in terms of education level and income level that can work to your benefit okay so listing that is a must but also explaining it in a way that paints you and your family in the right light that's going to be really important to you okay why the embassy is not releasing slots for previously refused students how long are they going to make us wait um the reason for this is because because of the pandemic they have gotten very behind in their visa interviews they have long wait times and they've made the decision to prioritize first-time applicants instead of letting applicants who have been refused apply multiple times and that's why they're giving the priority to new they're not just saying you can't apply they're saying we need to give that slot to someone who hasn't even had a first chance to apply yet and that's why some posts around the world this is not worldwide but some posts around the world are not allowing recently refused visa applicants to apply again there is an option which is to apply in another country where they will give you a visa appointment you can do this however it's risky uh it's it's risky to apply in another country at any point other than the one where you actually reside and have a reason to be there uh it's even riskier if you've been denied in your own country and now you're showing up abroad because they're gonna think okay well the peace officers in country x know about your situation because you are a citizen of country x and they refused you who am i someone who does visa visa interviews in country why who am i to then say that i know more than people in country x right so uh you can try this it is kind of a last resort your chances are lower you do need to be very well prepared this is the type of interview where if you don't go in there uh ready to advocate for yourself and tell your story that you're not going to get much of a much consideration at all so you've got to be extremely well prepared for one of these types of interviews okay mandy please what do i reply when they ask why i switched from nursing to economics as an undergraduate because my work experience is as a financial assistant so basically you know like a career change a change of major or discipline so i would say you know take the strategy of what would you say to a friend if they were to ask you hey you know you used to be studying nursing and now all of a sudden you're studying economics like what are your reasons and this is because you really want to get to the root of why you're doing this change and give your own authentic reason um instead of something that's just memorized or you think that there is a right response there's really no right response but there is the right response for you um depending on what your personal circumstances are so i would say in this situation just imagine what you would be telling someone not a government official but telling your friend and so you can explain exactly what happened i'm imagining just from the circumstances that you mentioned that you had some work experience as a financial assistant you got really interested in finance and that's why you made the career change but that might not be why and so what we would love to hear from you and if you were to do an argue consultation is i would want to know why you made that change and how can we phrase it in a way that makes sense to the visa officer excellent okay let's move on here so can we ask the visa officer why we were refused you can try you can try they most likely are not going to give you a satisfactory answer and the reason for that well it's there's multiple reasons for that one reason is because once they've made that decision they're done thinking about your case right so being very passive in your interview and just giving one word answers and then they say i'm sorry i can't tell you your visa and then trying to say oh no but i didn't even tell you about my my my finances i didn't even tell you about my scholarship it's too late you missed your opportunity when they asked you what are you going to do in the u.s that was the time that you had to give them your evidence so once they've made that decision they've clicked a button that is going to take them too much time for them to undo and they're not going to do it for you they're not going to tell you why you were refused because they have no responsibility to they're not going to spend the time on it they will probably just tell you look at this piece of paper it's going to tell you something generic they may tell you because you don't have ties they're going to tell you something simple they're not almost never going to tell you the exact reason i would say in my time doing visas i in very rare occasions would actually take the time to tell someone what their situation was just because i i i felt like this person didn't know what was going on and why they were encountering this this wall in their visa path and they were applying over and over and there was something that was never going to be overcome and so then i might take the time to tell them why they couldn't overcome this right instead of just refused and go but honestly i think i was probably a little bit more benevolent than the average consular officer and you can't rely on a peace officer doing that for you so you probably will not be able to ask them uh unfortunately we as consular officers we know when we hear a story we know from our experience you know doing visas ourselves listening to our colleagues we know what it was when we hear that but you're probably not going to know just from from uh from interpreting the interview because many we do have a lot of clients that they think they know why they were refused and it's because they were refused right after they were asked a specific question yeah but that's not really how it works right it really isn't and um usually there's multiple reasons for someone being denied a visa it's usually not just one specific factor which is what people tend to think it is and i would say that you know these officers they actually can explain they just choose not to and actually as a as a young visa officer when i first started on the line i used to tell people why they were denied and then you immediately realized the mistake in doing that because as soon as you start giving reasons then people start arguing with you or they'll say well you didn't really understand my situation can you please give me another chance i have more documents to show you and just like ben said you know at that point that these officer has already made a decision which is final um they're not interested in arguing with you and they've realized that the easiest way to get you to leave their window an exit is by giving you a letter and saying hey i can't approve your visa and this letter will explain why and the letter doesn't say anything of course yeah that letter is going to tell you that it's 214b that you didn't overcome the presumption of immigrant intent which is just the standard refusal for anyone that they just don't feel comfortable giving a visa to okay so here's a good question for you mandy does not being confident affect the interview how do i appear more confident wow who this is a great question and not being confident absolutely affects the interview i like to say that confidence is probably 50 percent of the battle perhaps even more and in order to be confident you have to know what to expect and you have to know how a visa officer is going to look at your case what are they going to focus on what are going to be the most important things for them and what questions might come up um i think often times visa applicants are not prepared for the visa interview they get a question they're like during headlights or they don't know how to answer and that hesitation or lack of confidence will lead them to getting their visas denied now if you're prepared if you know what is going to come up if you can be truthful and yet give an answer that fully satisfies the visa officer then you can get that visa approved and that's what we do at argo okay let's move on to another question can you give an example of strong ties to your home country if the applicant doesn't have any property or land a good example of this is well they're not going to ask the peace officer is never going to ask you what are your ties to your home country there i've never asked that question mandy have you ever asked that question no they're not specific like that that's not a question that you're ever going to be asked uh however every question that they do ask is related to this concept of ties to your home country what's going to lead you to return to your home country after you study right and so if you don't have property or land right then well what what is going on right uh do you have um do you have a job offer when you return to your country some people that are going for master's degrees they have a a job that is supporting them as they go and they have a job waiting for for them when they return uh some people have their family their entire family maybe their elderly parents who are in the country and they're responsible for taking care of them maybe culturally it's uh it's unique to your country where you know some some member of the family will need to be there to be with the parents to take care of them whatever it is it's the ties to the country it's not so explicit as like this one thing is a tie to the country the ties of the country represent the feeling that the officer has that they can trust that you're going to return to the country right that that can be as much as yeah i think this is a good student they seem to be a really good student and that they're they're going to do what they say that can be enough right without having any property income whatever reasons are are are associated with a tie you don't have to have any of that it just has to be that feeling okay mandy i've been rejected in 2014 for a tourist visa visitors visa b1b2 let's assume how is that going to affect me when i apply for an f1 will it have an effect it will definitely have an effect and there will already be notes in the computer system about your prior refusal and so you're going to probably you might be indirectly asked about that or the visa officer may ask questions to try to understand what has changed in your situation so definitely be prepared um to explain you know changes and especially if this was back in 2014 you know that's a long time ago so i'm sure you might have changed careers you might have you know maybe you're growing your family all sorts of things and those will be important to highlight when you go in for your interview okay is it true that a decision is already made even before you attend the interview the answer to that is a definite no we get this question all the time i know the rumors are the rumors are out there i know that sometimes you know a lot of our our readers and and uh and viewers they they they contradict what we say and say that's not true that's not what everybody says on the internet well those people on the internet are just random people on the internet we are former visa officers you can look at our credentials we have them on our website our diplomas our our consular commissions our diplomatic commissions you can look in the senatorial record where we were confirmed as foreign service officers diplomats of the united states of america and also as consular officers you can look up our credentials and you can trust what we tell you because we've actually been on the inside and when i tell you that the decision is not made before your interview you can trust this in fact in 99.9 percent of cases the visa officer has never looked at your case before you arrive at the interview they take your passport and they scan that barcode and they start looking at your application no one has looked at the case before that in 99.9 percent of cases and so yes you are the 99.9 don't give me the question well what's the 0.01 that doesn't apply to you trust me that's that's that's some that these are random random cases that's basically just saying anything can happen however the standard way that is going to apply to every single one of you is that you're going to submit your application you're going to get an interview date you're going to show up at that window and that is the first moment that you have ever entered that visa officer's mind when they see you standing behind the applicant that they're already interviewing they see you standing behind that applicant they're they're already starting to subconsciously form an opinion about you everything goes into into play there your demeanor your dress the way you speak your confidence your posture um the way you know the the way that you filled out your ds 160 the way that you're responding to the consular officer's questions everything is going in to affecting whether or not they feel that they want to give 214b or issue your visa right and they're trying to get there as fast as they possibly can sometimes people think that a decision has already been made and it's because the visa officers make a decision so rapidly right now having done tens of thousands of these visa interviews you get very good at what you're doing if you've done anything ten thousand times you get very good at it let alone sixty thousand or a hundred thousand times so you get very good at scanning that ds160 extremely quickly for important pieces of information that you know you're going to be considering for asking pointed questions that you know from what you've already gleaned from the ds160 what else do you want to to know to build a better mental model of this applicant right you're trying to get maybe two three data points that are going to support your decision to issue or refuse the visa and then you make that decision and move on that's that's the way that the managers force the visa officers to work because there's time constraints it's not just the managers it's because there are so many applicants and so few resources they have to go quickly like that and so yes they're moving quickly but they are reading your information in real time asking you questions interpreting it and then making the decision there's no you know they don't get a note saying hey refuse this person that's not how it works okay mandy why the peace officer rejects just after asking one or two questions without listening to the applicant's answer properly okay i love this question because i actually made a video about this specifically um i would say that the first question that the visa officer asks you is the most important question and your response to it because that sets the tone for your entire interview visa officers are on a time crunch they have to interview a lot of people so they're always looking for those fast approvals and fast denials and so when they ask you that first question and they listen to your response they're gonna have this urge to either deny you right away or maybe they're like oh that was a great answer approve you right away and so you definitely want to be in the category of people that they want to approve right away and um you know you say without listening to applicants answered properly they're listening to your first response and that's going to be important um you know at argo we really believe that you take a very proactive approach so again at least in my consultations i don't know about you ben but i feel like we practice the first question a bunch of times because you really want to start off on the right foot with a visa officer yeah this is this is one of those things they they only ask one or two questions well the lesson that everyone should take away from this is that they may only ask one or two questions and so you have to be ready you need to know what your highlights are and in that one or two responses that you have you've got to get your information out there because if the decision is made and you're sent away from the window refused and you know you never even got you never even presented your strong information it's your responsibility i don't want to use the word fault but it's definitely your responsibility because they're going to let you speak at some point they will they will let you speak maybe not for a long time if you go on forever but they will definitely let you speak and that's your opportunity that's the chance you only know that you're going to be asked one question that's one thing that you can be guaranteed when you go to a visa interview and you have to be ready to take full advantage of the time that you are given to answer that one question and you don't have to just answer what they ask if they say oh you're from honduras you don't you don't have to just say yes let's say you're applying in mexico you don't just say yes i'm from honduras well they already they already know you're from honduras they asked you the question because they saw your passport so the question in their mind is oh you're not from mexico you're from somewhere else what's the reason you're here in mexico applying for a visa so the answer to oh you're from honduras is yeah actually i'm here in mexico because i've been i've been studying university here uh for the last three years and now i've been accepted into the university in the u.s i actually got a full scholarship i've got all the the documents here for you if you want to see it all of a sudden they've got a bunch of good information why are you in mexico what are you doing in the u.s and hey look you've got scholarships so you've got it you've got to take advantage you're your only advocate in there you have to take advantage okay i've been accepted to a masters with a teaching assistantship but when i was nine i went to the us in overstate so an underage overstay who's now trying to go back to the us for an f visa how should they approach this gosh okay so if you have a complication in your history um i would say to not shy away from what happened because it's possible that there's information in there that the visa officer already knows one of the things that really peeves a visa officer is if there is a serious situation like an overstay or an arrest or something but the visa applicant isn't forthcoming and doesn't bring it to the officer's attention if the officer realizes it during the interview then they're gonna think wow this person was hoping that i didn't notice or was hoping that i just would miss it and that doesn't really you know give them a very good impression of you and whether or not you're a credible person that can be trusted so if you're someone that has a complication you want to bring it up right away address it head on directly explain it in a way that is easy to understand um but it's it's delicate right because this is something that you've done before uh perhaps you've broken the law even if it was not your own fault and you're going to want to be prepared to defend that um and i would say that if you're someone in this situation uh you know don't just wing it and hope that it makes sense definitely try to work with someone first uh because you just want to make sure that it's coming out the right way and you're being heard um correctly by the visa officer absolutely and that's what we can do we're gonna wrap it up now this has been a great hour of questions with you uh but that's what we can do all of these situations that you're in are very unique to you we can give general information to you we can give you tips that we know apply to most people but we can't identify your specific highlights and your hurdles and your advantages and disadvantages just in this format that's why mandy and i and our team of over 20 ex-visa officers who have served in over 35 countries around the world and speak 14 different languages dedicate our time to doing one-on-one consultations with you to help you identify what's the best way to maximize your chances of getting a visa uh there's no one else that can do it like we can we are the ex visa officers who are behind the window making those decisions we have the expertise and the knowledge in the uh in the regulations uh that have to be fulfilled in order to get these visas but even more importantly we know the thinking of the visa officers and we know what affects their thinking and what's going to lead them towards issuing and what might lead them towards not issues so follow us on youtube on facebook we have a group on facebook that's very active with people exchanging information back and forth about their visa journey on on tick tock on instagram go to our website argovisa.com uh send us an email at hello at argovisa.com we have a bot which is designed with the ex visa officer's knowledge to help you assess your chances of getting approved for your visa you can check that out at bot.argovisa anyone that completes that bot during this week will be entered into a raffle to get a free consultation so be sure to check that out take the bot take the assessment get entered into that raffle and reach out to us if we in any way can help you with your visa journey we really look forward to helping you and be successful in your visa journey and thanks so much for spending time with us asking all of your great questions i hope our tips and insights were helpful to you today and um you know if we didn't answer your specific question you can send us an email at hello at argovisa.com or just go straight to argovisa.com and book a consultation and we really look forward to helping you be successful on your visa journey great so like and subscribe to our channel also hablan espanol manana vamos a serum live con preguntas en espanol thanks everybody we look forward to doing more of these in the future

Channel: Argo Visa

Views: 70,580

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Id: rSM11vQdlvI

Length: 64min 23sec (3863 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 20 2022