Tourist Visas Approved!

[satraylor 0]

Satraylor, (Attorney at Law),

I agree with almost everything you say, but don't be such a "spoil sport". Yes, a tourist can't be coming to visit ten times a year or stay six months at a time. I think most people here on VJ have enough smarts to realize points such as these that you mentioned. After all it is a Tourist Visa.....and yes the custom official determines the time of stay the visitor will have here and he can deny it. But like you said that rarely happens and as long as the Tourist are prepared for the entry, by letting customs know that they are only here for a few weeks visiting their relatives it really should be no problem. The people they send back, which is rare, are the ones that are hiding something or acting suspicious.

Reach449 (Aircraft Maintenance Technician)

Mr. Reach:

In my 25 years as an immigration lawyer I have encountered many cases where people thought that a tourist visa qualified to do anything, to stay as long as they liked, and to enter as many times as they cared to. Sometimes a person on a tourist visa will get xis months on his I-94 and stay until that time is almost up. They s/he will come back a month later and stay another six months. This is all in good faith thinking that they are entitled to do this. When they come in the third time, or if they have to go the Consulate in their country to renew the visa they are sent back or the visa is denied, even though they fulfilled the terms of the I-94. These are people who honestly think that they have done everything right and don't understand why they have been detained.

"Acting suspicious" is a difficult term to define. Good people with legitimate visas are often nervous when they step up to the immigration officer at the airport. Yes, some do try to hide something, and sometimes they get away with it. But if they enter frequently sooner or later they will be caught. I have been in the secondary inspection area at the Newark airport. There are a lot of people there, some who have just gotten off of flights from as far as Asia that have lasted 20 hours and who have to spend the night. Its no fun. Many, but not all, are eventually sent back. satraylor

[Mitchamy 0]

Hi,

It is simply a letter inviting them to come visit you. You can add what ever you like that make the interviewer feel "more at ease" with approval. I am not the LPR, my wife is, however I wrote the letter. I explained that I would be responsible for their healthcare, sustenance and housing while they were visiting my wife and I. And most important, I promised to have them on an airplane back to Thailand at the end of their stay. I explained how important I feel that they be able to share the cultural differences here in the USA as I had shared when I visited Thailand. I also explained how I was welcomed into their home and I would like to return the favor. The letter was only a page with all the headings and stuff.

I am a Veteren of the USAF and I metioned that. I don't know if that information helped and probably never will. If I can, next week when I am off of work I will try to post my letter here on this forum if I can figure out how to redac it and post it. I hope this helped.

Reach449

Thank you so much.

Amy

[reach449 2]

Mr. Reach:

In my 25 years as an immigration lawyer I have encountered many cases where people thought that a tourist visa qualified to do anything, to stay as long as they liked, and to enter as many times as they cared to. Sometimes a person on a tourist visa will get xis months on his I-94 and stay until that time is almost up. They s/he will come back a month later and stay another six months. This is all in good faith thinking that they are entitled to do this. When they come in the third time, or if they have to go the Consulate in their country to renew the visa they are sent back or the visa is denied, even though they fulfilled the terms of the I-94. These are people who honestly think that they have done everything right and don't understand why they have been detained.

"Acting suspicious" is a difficult term to define. Good people with legitimate visas are often nervous when they step up to the immigration officer at the airport. Yes, some do try to hide something, and sometimes they get away with it. But if they enter frequently sooner or later they will be caught. I have been in the secondary inspection area at the Newark airport. There are a lot of people there, some who have just gotten off of flights from as far as Asia that have lasted 20 hours and who have to spend the night. Its no fun. Many, but not all, are eventually sent back. satraylor

Satraylor,

I guess I was a little "hard" on you with my first response. I would like to apologize for that. In your quote above you offered a lot of good information and it is all true. I guess when I first read your response it just seemed a little negative to me, among all the positve responses. I agree with you as we all know here on VJ that the USCIS and US Customs are in constant change and never really close to 100% consistent. The employees of these agencies are humans and have their bad and good days just as we do. But a bad day for them can really affect someone who is just trying to "do the right thing". With exceptions, as in every situation in life, I feel that mostly the US Custom agents do a good job screening people. It is that those few times when they make a big mistake is what we hear about the most here on VJ.

Entering the USofA legally is always a challenge and there are just to many "built in variables" that should not be there. But I guess everyone just has to live with it all. It is always that way when human beings and their emotions are involved. When my wife arrived for the first time, the Customs agent made some of the most un-needed stupid remarks to her, I almost wrote the goverment about it. He told her she was marrying a "rich guy", (which I am not); he said she was a very attractive woman and if her marraige did not work out to contact him,(he actually gave her his phone #)! There were more remarks and my future wife handled it the best way she could and made it thru the checkpoint. We were so happy she made it and just forgot about it. I never even mentioned all of it in VJ on my Entry evaluation.

Anyway, enough of my ranting. Thanks for your information. We will press on with my in-laws visit in November and hope everything will work out. We try to plan for every situation they might encounter on the trip over to entering the customs area. That is all we can do.

Take Care,

Reach449