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Dear all,
I just wanted to share my inlaw's and mother's visa experience with you all.
My husband is the only son for my inlaws and their daughter is also abroad in the UK. My father-in-law is working in India as a Technical Consultant to a company and my mother-in-law is a home maker. My father-in-law worked in Germany for 12 years before returning to India for good.
They applied for the first time in Feb 2006. They were rejected outright without any questions or explanation. They were handed a paper that said their rejection was based on article 214(B).
We applied again in June 2006. Nothing changed from the first time. The only question that was asked to my father-in-law was "do you know German?" to which he said "yes". Their visa was rejected again. My father-in-law politely asked the VO reason for the rejection. The VO was considerate enough to offer an explanation. She said that your son went to the US on a student visa and then went on to get an employment visa and now is a green card holder. He never came back and did not keep his promise. So we are not convinced that you would come back. We were very disappointed and thought that we should have applied for their visa before we got the green card. This was a new point that came up but we could do nothing about it. May be my father-in-law should have self sponsored. Or they should have applied seperately. But it was too late for all this.
My inlaws felt humiliated and did not want to go again. I dont blame them. We wanted to try one last time. We took another appointment in April 2007. We were desperate and my inlaws wanted to explore the possibility of going through a travel agent. They realized that the travel agent would only fill their forms up and take an appointment and could do no more. They decided against going with the agent. With all the information received from immihelp (thanks !) and having done this twice I was very familiar with the whole appointment taking and paper preparation process. This time we prepared a cover letter stating all the reasons why they would come back and placed it on top of all our papers. In fact we asked our father-in-law to hand it to the VO first. The other thing we were contemplating on doing was to take a letter from a US senator. Not knowing if it really helped or worsened our case we thought we will still go for it. The Senator's office did not give us a letter but said they would contact the Consulate a day before the appointment.
We do not know what made a difference, but the VO asked my father-inlaw for sponsor documents and quickly went through all the pages. Before that, my father-in-law handed the cover letter that we prepared which he glanced through quickly. At the end of it all, he took my mother-in-law's passport and said to my father-in-law that he could not make a decision on his visa at that time and that more information was required. He handed him a questionnaire. My father-in-law said he could answer all the questions right then. But the VO said they would need a written reply. And the much awaited appointment was over. We were more positive this time since the visa was not rejected outright. We sent all the replies by email. Now we had nothing to do but wait and check the consulate website for any update on our case.
Exactly 4 weeks after this and much to our relief, we saw "send passport" on the website against our case number. We were happy and did so immediately (through the local VFS office). The passport was stamped with the visa and with a validity of one year. We just received the passport last week. Not bad ! For all this effort !
And then, learning from this experience we decided to apply for my mother's visa seperately (not along with my father). In their case, my parents could not have come together anyway because my brother is studying in India. So we applied for my mother alone. This time the VO asked the following questions
Who is in the US? Answer: Both my daughters
What is their visa status? Can you show me proof of the same?
My mother handed over the sponsor documents file which the VO quickly glanced through.
Is your son sponsoring your visit? Answer: No. He is in India studying.
Has your husband travelled? Answer: No.
The appointment was over and the VO remarked "the exact duration of your stay will be determined by the officer at the airport" and took the passport.
We will have to wait and see the period for which the visa is valid.
This has been our experience with the visitor's visa (Chennai Consulate). Planning to apply for visa for my father after my mother returns from the US. Will it be okay to apply earlier (since they have all the documents right now) say in a few weeks? My father cannot come immediately anyway.
Sorry about the long post. But I thought it may be helpful. Thanks immihelp and all the members of this forum ! Your help was valuable.
I just wanted to share my inlaw's and mother's visa experience with you all.
My husband is the only son for my inlaws and their daughter is also abroad in the UK. My father-in-law is working in India as a Technical Consultant to a company and my mother-in-law is a home maker. My father-in-law worked in Germany for 12 years before returning to India for good.
They applied for the first time in Feb 2006. They were rejected outright without any questions or explanation. They were handed a paper that said their rejection was based on article 214(B).
We applied again in June 2006. Nothing changed from the first time. The only question that was asked to my father-in-law was "do you know German?" to which he said "yes". Their visa was rejected again. My father-in-law politely asked the VO reason for the rejection. The VO was considerate enough to offer an explanation. She said that your son went to the US on a student visa and then went on to get an employment visa and now is a green card holder. He never came back and did not keep his promise. So we are not convinced that you would come back. We were very disappointed and thought that we should have applied for their visa before we got the green card. This was a new point that came up but we could do nothing about it. May be my father-in-law should have self sponsored. Or they should have applied seperately. But it was too late for all this.
My inlaws felt humiliated and did not want to go again. I dont blame them. We wanted to try one last time. We took another appointment in April 2007. We were desperate and my inlaws wanted to explore the possibility of going through a travel agent. They realized that the travel agent would only fill their forms up and take an appointment and could do no more. They decided against going with the agent. With all the information received from immihelp (thanks !) and having done this twice I was very familiar with the whole appointment taking and paper preparation process. This time we prepared a cover letter stating all the reasons why they would come back and placed it on top of all our papers. In fact we asked our father-in-law to hand it to the VO first. The other thing we were contemplating on doing was to take a letter from a US senator. Not knowing if it really helped or worsened our case we thought we will still go for it. The Senator's office did not give us a letter but said they would contact the Consulate a day before the appointment.
We do not know what made a difference, but the VO asked my father-inlaw for sponsor documents and quickly went through all the pages. Before that, my father-in-law handed the cover letter that we prepared which he glanced through quickly. At the end of it all, he took my mother-in-law's passport and said to my father-in-law that he could not make a decision on his visa at that time and that more information was required. He handed him a questionnaire. My father-in-law said he could answer all the questions right then. But the VO said they would need a written reply. And the much awaited appointment was over. We were more positive this time since the visa was not rejected outright. We sent all the replies by email. Now we had nothing to do but wait and check the consulate website for any update on our case.
Exactly 4 weeks after this and much to our relief, we saw "send passport" on the website against our case number. We were happy and did so immediately (through the local VFS office). The passport was stamped with the visa and with a validity of one year. We just received the passport last week. Not bad ! For all this effort !
And then, learning from this experience we decided to apply for my mother's visa seperately (not along with my father). In their case, my parents could not have come together anyway because my brother is studying in India. So we applied for my mother alone. This time the VO asked the following questions
Who is in the US? Answer: Both my daughters
What is their visa status? Can you show me proof of the same?
My mother handed over the sponsor documents file which the VO quickly glanced through.
Is your son sponsoring your visit? Answer: No. He is in India studying.
Has your husband travelled? Answer: No.
The appointment was over and the VO remarked "the exact duration of your stay will be determined by the officer at the airport" and took the passport.
We will have to wait and see the period for which the visa is valid.
This has been our experience with the visitor's visa (Chennai Consulate). Planning to apply for visa for my father after my mother returns from the US. Will it be okay to apply earlier (since they have all the documents right now) say in a few weeks? My father cannot come immediately anyway.
Sorry about the long post. But I thought it may be helpful. Thanks immihelp and all the members of this forum ! Your help was valuable.
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