H-1B Visa Advice from former Visa Officers

What goes into a successful H-1B visa stamping interview? The H-1B visa is interesting because you have to win the lottery to be eligible for this visa category. It is for highly skilled specialty workers and there are generally more people applying for this visa category than the number of slots available for the lottery, so if you won this year, congratulations! It is no easy feat. Now that you've won and you've had your petitions submitted to USCIS, the last thing that you would want is to have any hiccups go on during your visa stamping interview.  

Even though immigration attorneys call this interview a visa stamping interview; it is actually anything but a rubber stamp. These days you want to make sure that you're prepared so here are three tips for you from former visa officers.

1) Make sure that you know your visa petition, your cover letter, and any documentation that you're bringing. Make sure you know it inside and out. One of the biggest problems we used to see as consular officers was that a lot of H-1B visa applicants simply did not know their paperwork, they don't even know what their U.S. immigration attorneys wrote about them. So, when the visa officer would ask them a question for the very first time they’d have no idea how to answer.

What is your income?

What kind of responsibilities do you have?

What will you be doing in the United States?

This is a big problem in terms of credibility and the consular officer believing that you're actually, going to be doing what you say you're going to be doing.  

2) Make sure that you keep things simple. Visa officers are extremely busy, sometimes interviewing somebody every couple minutes. So, you don't have much time to talk to the officer. You want to make sure that there are no complications in your situation that would  

lead them to doubt your motives and your intentions. Make sure that you're not  

saying all sorts of irrelevant information. Keep things simple.  

3) Make sure that you're not missing anything in terms of your documentation which could put you into 221(g) administrative processing. You want to make sure that your passport has enough validity in it for a visa stamp to be put into it. So at least six months validity. Have your I-129 paperwork as well as all the documentation that your immigration attorney has prepared for you.

If you have any questions at all, or you would like to work with a former consular officer just to make sure that you have done everything you need to be successful please email Argo at hello@argovisa.com and we look forward to helping you.  

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