Tourist / Visitor Visas (Part 2)

Author: Joseph P. Murphy, Esq., Allegheny Immigration Group

Release Date: 12/27/2019 (YouTube)

Author’s Statement:

This is part 2 of a transcription of my video on tourist visas which you can see here. If you, or someone you care about need legal services related to filing for, extending, traveling on, or any other matter related to a B Tourist Visa, please call my office at (412)521-2000 or my cell at (412)973-3442. You can also email me at jmurphy@jmurphyfirm.com. Please visit, like and share the Allegheny Immigration Group Facebook page and the Allegheny Immigration Group Youtube Channel.

To get a B Visa, there is no invitation required at all. The foreigner goes online, fills out a DS-160 application for non-immigrant visa, uploads a photo as part of the process and then there will be an appointment at the embassy or consulate. Have to print out the cover page when they do the online application and take that with them. It’s got a barcode on it. When they get to the embassy or consulate, they are going to be questioned about non-immigrant versus immigrant intent. Do you have a family here? Do you own real estate here, meaning here in the home country. What’s your purpose in the United States? Where do you intent on going? In many cases, people seeking a B Visa are fraudulently trying to get in the United States on the easy and then they plan on doing all sorts of things to permanently move in and stay. USCIS is pretty good at weeding that out. If you appear at the embassy looking for a B Visa and you have no plans, you are going to go live on your friend’s couch, this is not going to bode well for approval of your application. If you show up at the interview with an itinerary of hotels you are gonna stay in and activities you are gonna engage in perhaps Broadway Shows you’re gonna see or attractions you are going to visit, that would be more like you actually are tourists. If you have no family in the home country and all the members of family are in the United States, that will bode not so well for the grant of a B Visa. Even though you may otherwise show that you are just a tourist, the fact that you are moving into the United States and there is you are leaving nothing behind and everything that’s important to you, your children and grandchildren are here in the United States. They are gonna presume immigrant intent there and they are gonna deny B Visa. That doesn’t mean you can’t get in the United States. That just means you can’t get in as a non-immigrant on a B Visa.

So, I had some other tips here. Overcoming the presumption of immigrant intent is very difficult where the home country is a mess, where it’s at war, where it’s in civil war, or where there is insurrections and horrible crime. Again, that’s not necessarily simply pulling you back there or pulling you here. But it’s certainly something pushing you out of that place and certainly something you wouldn’t wanna go back to if you didn’t have to.