How to Answer Visa Interview Questions

The visa interview. What is the visa interview? Everyone applying for a visa has to overcome before they can get that visa in their hand and be able to travel to the U.S. Not all countries do this, but the U.S. does. The U.S. has a policy where everyone who's going to obtain a visa to travel to the U.S. has to go for a visa interview. There are a few situations in which you might be eligible for a visa waiver, but if you're here today, it's because you know that you do need to have your interview. Okay, well, what does that mean for you then? It means that you're going to go, you're going to submit an application, the DS-160, you're going to pay the fee, you're going to schedule a time, you're going to show up at the embassy, and then you're going to walk in and you're going to have a brief conversation with someone who is called a consular officer or a visa officer. This person is a U.S. diplomat. That's their job that they've been assigned to abroad. If in your country the language that people speak is something other than English, then they will have been taught to speak that language, and their job is to interview each and every visa applicant and then make a decision either to issue the visa or to refuse the visa. Now, how can you affect their decision? How can you get them to lean towards issuing your visa and not towards refusing your visa? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today. Many people go into their visa interview, and what do they do? They're passive. You don't want to be passive because what does that mean? It means you're leaving it to chance. If we pick a country randomly off the list of countries where the U.S. is doing visa interviews and we look at what the refusal rate is for a B1, B2 visa, and we see that it is 25%. That means 25% of people applying for a B1, B2 tourist visitor's visa are getting refused their visa. Now, if you walk into that visa interview and you are just an average person from your country with a very similar situation to many other people, well, there is a 25% chance you might get refused, especially if you don't do anything to boost your chances. Because what we want is to go into that visa interview and know that we're not just going to have a 75% chance of issuance. We want to raise that as high as possible to 90%, 95%, 98%, 99%. I would say 100%, but it's hard to ever get to 100% because there is that human decision involved. But you can raise your chances. And how can you do that? You can make their job easy. How do you make the visa officer's job easy? You make the decision obvious. Now, they're trying to pick out who is a legitimate visa applicant and who's an illegitimate visa applicant. Who is telling the truth and plans to do what they say they're going to do? And who's lying to me? Who's not qualified? Who's deceiving me and has a different purpose of travel? You can answer their questions in such a way as you can give them that confidence that you indeed are going to use your visa as it is intended. You are going to use it legally, and then you're going to return to your home country. Now, how do you do this? Don't give one-word answers. This is top tip number one. Do not give one-word answers in your visa interview, especially to those general, very broad questions that are going to begin the visa interview. At the beginning of the visa interview, the visa officer is most likely going to ask you something very general. What's your purpose of travel to the U.S.? What are you going to study in the U.S.? Why do you need a visa? Something like this. If you just answer tourism, study, these shed no light on your real intentions. They don't bring to life any of your character or your story or your individuality. You're still just a blank slate. There's nothing about what you've said that guides the visa officer towards issuing your visa. Now, what can you say instead? You can say, oh, I plan on going to the U.S. for tourism. I've already been to X, Y, and Z countries, and I work as an accountant in my home country, and I have just purchased a home with my wife. There, you've given them the answer to their question, which is tourism to the U.S., but you've given them a lot more, too. You've given them a history of international travel, right? You say you're going to be a tourist to the U.S.? Well, having been a tourist to other countries bolsters that resume of being an international tourist. Two, saying that you have your job, right? You've got a professional job. That is a tie to your home country. It's bringing you back home to your country. So is having that home that you just bought also indicating your financial stability. You also mentioned your spouse, another tie, which indicates that you would want to return to your home country rather than remain in the U.S. unlawfully. Okay, so those short answers are the first thing to avoid. You want to give longer answers, not just interminable, long, endless answers, but rather you want to give full answers, answers that contain a lot of relevant information, a lot of meat that are going to help convince the visa officer that you are a legitimate visa applicant.