.....

[probe]

[...]

It is more likely than not that you will not be granted the student visa [...]

[...]

All in all, you can give the student visa a try (you've nothing to lose) but unfortunately the CIS does not really care you may have been accepted by a recognized school.

Actually, for the sake of truth, it was more likely than not that s/he WOULD be granted the student visa...

The CIS does care you are accepted by a school, be it a brand-name one or not.

The fact that all the tuition money would have gone by the time the student visa app would be adjudicated is a strong indicator for the immigration that you are not just filing to be in legal status (although that is a possibility, it is more likely than not that the visa will be granted, as I said).

[füle]

Some really good advice, are you a lawyer, probe?

[mini 6]

"If they come into the United States to pick tomatoes, they can't go out and work at McDonald's," said Nancy Alby, an assistant center director at the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Naturalization Services, who spoke in general about H-2 visas and did not comment specifically on Schwarzenegger's case. "They have to do exactly what they were let into the United States to do." The immigration issue fires up a debate over Schwarzenegger's support for Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot measure that sought to keep illegal immigrants from receiving some state educational and social services. He also vows to fight a new law that allows illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses. Schwarzenegger has said that immigrants must follow the rules like he did.

Schwarzenegger is a complete a s s h o l e that could became governor only in America! ONLY IN AMERICA!

Amen, Kari!

[R Deutch]

Some really good advice, are you a lawyer, probe?

What difference does it make, füle, whether s/he's a lawyer or not, as long as is giving good advice?!

[Lovdie]

Be careful, however! My neighbor is being deported back to his native Check Republic because during his AOS procedure they discovered he had entered the country on a fake B-2 visa. They were reviewing all the visa applications made in Prague between 1999 and 2002 at the time when Alexander Meerovich served as a consular officer (eventually he pled guilty to visa fraud). He acknowledges that he sold at least 85 fraudulent visas over a two year period while serving as deputy consul general at the US Embassy. This neighbor tells he paid a Check citizen working in the Embassy some $10,000 to get the visa. Looks like they were all in the game, the consular officer himself included.

Nothing surprising! The State Department actually CLOSED the US consulate in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico some years back for similar reasons. It investigated allegations that the consulate illegally sold visas to a number of people. It was the 6th busiest US consulate in the world, issuing 117,000 visas. According to Mexican police, they heard rumors that Mexican citizens were being approached by consulate employees with offers to sell visas. They passed the information on to the US government. The most of the documents sold were either tourist visas or border crossing cards. The names of those who bought visas were entered into lookout lists and distributed to law enforcement agencies.

Miguel Partida, a visa officer and a US citizen, was charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud while working at the consulate. Three Mexicans were charged in the case as well. The defendants were Sergio Genaro Ochoa-Alarcon 31, Benjamin Antonio Ayala-Morales, 34 and Ramon Alberto Torres-Galvin, 34. The men worked as visa clerks at the US consulate. All in custody.

According to the indictment against Partida, agents of the Diplomatic Security Service initiated an investigation the previous year into allegations that Consulate employees were involved in a scheme to provide visas and border crossing cards in exchange for money. Visas were apparently bought for around $1,500 without the required interviews and without a determination that the person was qualified for a visa. The US consulate in Nuevo Laredo issued 100,000 visas, but federal authorities have refused to state how many visas were sold in the alleged scheme. Authorities did say, however, that they believed the scheme was directed by a woman in Mexico named Margarita Martinez Ramirez.

They say the Tijuana consulate is notorious when it comes to this stuff!

[say it dont pay it]

Be careful, however! My neighbor is being deported back to his native Check Republic because during his AOS procedure they discovered he had entered the country on a fake B-2 visa. They were reviewing all the visa applications made in Prague between 1999 and 2002 at the time when Alexander Meerovich served as a consular officer (eventually he pled guilty to visa fraud). He acknowledges that he sold at least 85 fraudulent visas over a two year period while serving as deputy consul general at the US Embassy. This neighbor tells he paid a Check citizen working in the Embassy some $10,000 to get the visa. Looks like they were all in the game, the consular officer himself included.

Nothing surprising! The State Department actually CLOSED the US consulate in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico some years back for similar reasons. It investigated allegations that the consulate illegally sold visas to a number of people. It was the 6th busiest US consulate in the world, issuing 117,000 visas. According to Mexican police, they heard rumors that Mexican citizens were being approached by consulate employees with offers to sell visas. They passed the information on to the US government. The most of the documents sold were either tourist visas or border crossing cards. The names of those who bought visas were entered into lookout lists and distributed to law enforcement agencies.

Miguel Partida, a visa officer and a US citizen, was charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud while working at the consulate. Three Mexicans were charged in the case as well. The defendants were Sergio Genaro Ochoa-Alarcon 31, Benjamin Antonio Ayala-Morales, 34 and Ramon Alberto Torres-Galvin, 34. The men worked as visa clerks at the US consulate. All in custody.

According to the indictment against Partida, agents of the Diplomatic Security Service initiated an investigation the previous year into allegations that Consulate employees were involved in a scheme to provide visas and border crossing cards in exchange for money. Visas were apparently bought for around $1,500 without the required interviews and without a determination that the person was qualified for a visa. The US consulate in Nuevo Laredo issued 100,000 visas, but federal authorities have refused to state how many visas were sold in the alleged scheme. Authorities did say, however, that they believed the scheme was directed by a woman in Mexico named Margarita Martinez Ramirez.

They say the Tijuana consulate is notorious when it comes to this stuff!

Some months ago a Russian couple (young professionals who could have had some kind of future in their own country) moved in the apartment building I live in with my family. They are very open people who do not hesitate to tell one some pretty fine details of their life - so there you have it: they told us they came from Russia on temporary tourist visas that they bought $10,000 a piece from the US Consulate people in their country. They sold their house for some $30,000 and used that money to buy two tourist visas and pay for their travel expenses to the US.

Now I understand that the US is considered to be by many people around the world as the place where their dreams will come true and where they will be able to better themselves (in all meanings of the term). But is that really the case? My question is, how do these people decide to go ahead and sell their house to buy a tourist visa to enter this country - and go underground for years working menial jobs, hoping they will be able to "make it"?! (I have heard it may well take some 5, or even 10 years, for illegal immigrants to get permanent residency (green card) - how much are they supposed to pay for it, I'd guess there is another fee to pay to get it, isn't it?) I mean, you have here a lot of American folks who are having a hard time keeping their houses, having to go thru foreclosures - are you trying to tell me these new immigrants are going to have a better life here, although it may take some 10-15 years?!

Even if they do, it's just not worth the trouble to go that route, taken into account the enormous amount of time to adjust to the new culture and establish themselves economically. To me, it's simply incomprehensible that one would pay $10,000 to buy a visa to enter the country, only to subject oneself to a calvary of pain and suffering to make ends meet for years and years on end!

[Question or Answer]

I have been admitted by a great program -- the thing is that I need a student visa and I was told I may face difficulties to get it given the fact that a family member of mine has already filed a petition to get me a green card (immigration considers it proof of intent to remain in the U.S.) Do I go back to my native country to apply for the student visa as per the standard procedure, or do I apply for the visa from within the U.S., no matter what? Also, will it make a difference that I have been accepted at a well-known, brand name school?

From outside or inside the US you're gonna have a hard time getting a student visa because of the petition your relative has filed on your behalf. The standard of review is the same in both cases (consular processing or CIS processing), the only difference is that if you apply from within the US you can stay here even if your student visa application gets denied.

It is more likely than not that you will not be granted the student visa, I had a friend of mine in the same situation and he was compelled to stay illegally in the country for years before he adjusted status to permanent resident after his relative petition became current and he could actually file for AOS (adjustment of status). He couldn't go back to his native country as he was already illegally in the US for close to a year and he would trigger the 10-year reentry bar had he gone back to his country and process the green card from there.

All in all, you can give the student visa a try (you've nothing to lose) but unfortunately the CIS does not really care you may have been accepted by a recognized school.

If you have an immigrant petition already filed on your behalf, you should apply for an H1-B (work) visa which is considered dual-intent by the immigration, as opposed to an F-1 (student) visa which is a temporary non-immigrant visa.

[surepiro]

From outside or inside the US you're gonna have a hard time getting a student visa because of the petition your relative has filed on your behalf. The standard of review is the same in both cases (consular processing or CIS processing), the only difference is that if you apply from within the US you can stay here even if your student visa application gets denied.

It is more likely than not that you will not be granted the student visa, I had a friend of mine in the same situation and he was compelled to stay illegally in the country for years before he adjusted status to permanent resident after his relative petition became current and he could actually file for AOS (adjustment of status). He couldn't go back to his native country as he was already illegally in the US for close to a year and he would trigger the 10-year reentry bar had he gone back to his country and process the green card from there.

All in all, you can give the student visa a try (you've nothing to lose) but unfortunately the CIS does not really care you may have been accepted by a recognized school.

If you have an immigrant petition already filed on your behalf, you should apply for an H1-B (work) visa which is considered dual-intent by the immigration, as opposed to an F-1 (student) visa which is a temporary non-immigrant visa.

I've worked for a while as leg assistant for a couple of immigration attys. Here it is my take on this: to get an H1-B visa, one has to be in legal immigration status - that is to say, not be in the US illegally (without any status at all). That said, one would also to take into account that, while it may seem a good idea to switch to H1-B visa status (in which one can be for up to 7 years) until time to adjust status based on the relative immigrant petition comes, getting the actual H1-B visa stamp to reenter the country may be tricky.

Let's assume one is here on a B-2 visa status (the B-2 tourist visa is the most popular visa used to enter the US to visit and tour) and finds an employer willing to file an H1-B petition on his/her behalf. Foreign citizens in the U.S. under the B-2 visa are expected to be in the country only for a short, temporary visit - with the foreign citizen having made statements to the consular officer regarding the recreational purposes of the trip and its temporary duration. When one seeks a change of the visa status after entering the U.S. while being on a B-2 visa, the application filed with the Immigration Service for the change of status to H-1B may be approved - the problem, however, can rear its head when the foreign citizen goes abroad and seeks a new H-1B visa stamp in his passport.

At that time, a consular officer may examine the previous B-2 visa stamp. He may note that the foreign national now has H-1B status and then assume that person, when applying for the B-2 visa, intended all along that s/he would change his status. The officer may assume that the foreign national never intended to return home at the end of the B-2 duration and pretend that the applicant acted fraudulently, and finally decide to deny the application for an H-1B visa stamp leaving our H-1B guy/gal stranded overseas. 

To avoid this, it is important that when one plans to work or study in the US, s/he should not use the B-2 tourist visa as an initial way to enter the U.S. Rather, it is much less risky to apply for an H-1B at the outset, prior to entering the US.

[surepiro]

That does not mean, of course, that there's no other way to handle the matter. The H1-B visa is usually the first option given to foreign citizens since it is relatively easy to get. However, the foreign citizen may decide to go for the green card option right from the beginning, bypassing the H1-B process. This is done via the Labor Certification petition filed on behalf of the immigrant by his/her employer.

Until the grandfathering 245(i) section expired, one did not even have to be in legal immigration status (that is to say, s/he could be in the country even illegally) when filing the actual Adjustment of Status (green card) application with the Immigration Service, as long as the labor certification application was filed on or before Jan 14, 1998. Furthermore, the "alien-based" reading of the section provided that the pre-January 15th filing allowed the foreign citizen to use 245(i) as the vehicle for adjustment, with the basis for the adjustment having been obtained through a different filing, such as a family-based, labor certification petition or a DV (diversity visa) lottery application, submitted and approved AFTER January 14, 1998. The foreign citizen paid an additional $1,000 penalty fee to the Immigration under this section.

It takes several years for a regular labor certification application (EB-3) to mature into an actual green card. Your attorneys, though, should be able to handle the matter expeditiously by looking into other categories such as EB-2, for instance, which do not necessarily require a Labor Certification to be filed beforehand. Applicants may apply for an exemption, known as a National Interest Waiver. Professionals holding an advanced degree (beyond a baccalaureate degree), or a baccalaureate degree and at least 5 years experience in the profession fall in the first subgroup. The other subgroup is for persons with "exceptional ability" in the sciences, arts, or business, with the "exceptional ability" standard set not that high, as one would tend to think at first.

[Incitatus]

Wow - some great posts related to immigration matters here. My husband and I came to the U.S. on immigrant visas after hubby won the D-V (Diversity Lottery) several years ago. I was not legally married to my husband (had not yet gotten a marriage license) by the time he got the notice he was assigned a visa lottery. Neither did we legally married when he sent the first response to the (NVC) National Visa Center shortly after. We only got legally married in August of that year, 4 months after he listed me as her spouse on the NVC forms. The reason why I did not legally marry to my husband from the very beginning (since I began to live with my-hubby-to-be, in August) and my mother left for the States (September), was that I was counting on my parents who went to the US to get me too there, after my permanent resident mother (she won a D-V Lottery the year before) would have hopefully arranged something for me; although all she's able to do, in actuality, was just petitioning on my behalf in January of next year - she filed the I-130 with INS, immigrant relative petition for an unmarried child 21+

That petition would take years to mature into an actual green card, but we all were optimistic nevertheless; and there you have it - in April, my husband gets that notification letter from the NVC letting him know he had won the D-V lottery. From that point on, we were concerned that the Consular officer would accuse my husband during the interview for misrepresentation because of my hubby having claimed me arbitrarily as his wife on the NVC forms (initially in February when originally applied for, and then again in May) - given the fact that we only got the marriage license 4 months after he made the statements on the NVC forms (August). We remained anxious 'til the day of the interview, April of next year, but the Consular Officer was surprisingly over-friendly towards us, with him granting us the immigrant visas and without enquiring at all as to our marriage timing.

Truth-be-told, we were anxious also because we could not disclose to the Consular officer that the two of us had lived in a neighboring country for some time - my mother-in-law paid a friend of hers for us to be issued two brand-new passports, so that we did not have to show at all the neighboring country's entering visas we had gotten during the years on our old passports. We had been on and off illegally in that country, so we could not get clearances from that country's police for the time period we lived there. This is something that almost all the people who win the American green card lottery do - it's not smth we did to hide some kind of "major crime" committed or anything like that. We were hearing that those people who admitted to the Consulate that they had been in other countries, besides their home country, were required to submit police clearances from those neighboring countries' authorities, something difficult and time-consuming, since we had also been there illegally - the way such a thing is handled in our native country is to simply pay the municipal employees for a new passport (easily accomplished and for not too much money) and then appear with the new passport before the Consular officer.

We also arranged for (fake) Employment Verification Letters where it was stated by (fake) employers that we had been employed in our home country (having had, thus, lived there all the time), so that it would appear that we had not been outside our home country at any time (to put it differently, we covered gaps in our employment history). These latter two are done regularly by almost all people who win the lottery in our country, and the consulate people themselves know deep down themselves that such things happen all too often.

Now, this piece of neighbor * & ^ % keeps telling me what we've done is considered "fraud." I mean, come on, a lot of water has flown under the bridge, not to mention the fact that we have by now 2 children born in this country (US citizens). Do you think we might be having problems were someone to reopen the case and note these "minor inconsistencies"?