Experience: Abandoned green card holder, later B2 visa approval as Third Country National

[garebear397 68]

Wanted to share our experience, as its a bit of a rarer situation that I didn't see a lot of information about beforehand. 

 

TLDR: wife was a precious green card holder, voluntarily abandonded it, not able to use ESTA to visit the US, was recently approved for a B2 visa through the Bolivian US embassy (though we live in Chile) because the Chilean embassy has been closed to B2 visa interviews due to COVID. 

 

As in the title my wife was a green card holder (approved in 2017), then we left the US to live in her home country Chile (in 2019) and voluntarily abandonded her green card, because her father got really sick and later died. We ended up staying here in Chile, with no explicit plans to come back to the US. But we have had lots of issues visiting the US as a family since moving here. Chileans can use the ESTA, but once when my wife was 16 she accidently overstayed her tourist visa in the US by a week , because she didn't really understand the process well, but for that reason she can't ever use the ESTA (its an automatic rejection). Soon after we got back to Chile, COVID hit and the US embassy here closed to all B2 interview visas and have been closed until november of 2022. So she was unable to get a visa for over 2 years and we were unable to visit the US as a family (us and two daughters). I made a couple trips by myself but never with my wife or daughters (they are very young and if something happened my wife wouldn't even be able to enter the country). 

 

So in January of this year (2022) I started contacting US embassies in other countries, to see if they were open and if she could do her interview there. The Bolivian embassy said she could, so we scheduled an interview and the soonest we got was today (December 2nd). So she flew to Bolivia and had her interview today. The interviewer was rejecting the majority of applicant withs 3-5 minute interviews, but after asking just a couple questions mostly about her overstay and her green card story (it was important to him that she voluntarily gave up the green card) and without even looking at single one of the documents she brought (we prepared a whole folder of job contracts, rental agreements, car ownership), he approved her. 

 

We are waiting to get the visa back to see how long the visa will be valid for. Luckily Chileans can visit Bolivia with just her country ID card, so she can leave her passport there and it will be mailed to a friend in Bolivia. 

 

So just wanted to share our story...and give hope to anyone in similar situations! 

[Boiler 45,442]

The VJ experience suggests that the deciding factor was filing the I 407.

 

One minor comment, an overstay meant she was not eligible to use the VWP so ESTA is irrelevant.

[garebear397 68]

14 minutes ago, Boiler said:

The VJ experience suggests that the deciding factor was filing the I 407.

 

One minor comment, an overstay meant she was not eligible to use the VWP so ESTA is irrelevant.

Yeah the I407 for sure helped. 

 

And yes, technically correct. Though also the way we even found out she couldn't travel via the VWP was because she completed an ESTA application.