Hi everyone! My name is Mandy Feuerbacher and I am a former visa officer with the U.S. Department
of State. I have made decisions on over 100,000 visa applications on every type of visa there is.
And now i'm the Executive VP of Argo, a company of Ex- Visa Officers who prepare with clients
one-on-one to ace their visa interviews. Follow us on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter,
where we will bring you never before shared insights on the US visa interview process from
behind the visa window. Hi everyone today we're going to talk about the serious topic of waivers
for non-immigrant visas so these are for temporary visas like if you're planning to go to the United
States to study or for your H-1B or even for a tourist visa but something happened that means
that you're not eligible and you have potentially a permanent ban to keep you from going to the
U.S.. This is not the same as a waiver for an immigrant visa or a green card where you're
planning to permanently relocate to the United States, that's a completely separate process
that I will probably touch upon in a different video. But, today we're just talking about
waivers for non-immigrant visas. If you have a visa ineligibility it's very likely that your
visa officer will let you know at the interview and you will get a letter that will tell you
under what section of the law you're ineligible for a a temporary visa. So. this could mean
a permanent ban for you to keep you from going to the United States or it could be something that
is uh fixed in duration, you know, maybe it's just for a few years, uh you have a three-year ban, or
a 10-year ban, all of these are possibilities but you will usually know that at the visa interview.
So, the good news is even if you have a visa and eligibility uh ineligibility or a permanent ban
you may still qualify for a waiver, dependent on a number of situations. So this is going to
be a very important interview for you because the visa officer will probably drill down and ask you
lots of questions about what exactly happened. If this is the first time you're applying for a
visa since you've gotten the ineligibility they will ask you about you know when it happened,
what happened exactly, what did you do, you know, what was sort of your uh role in the entire
situation are you responsible, was it a decision that was made by a judge in the United States,
you know, was this something that happened in your home country that made you ineligible.
So, all of these will be questions that come up dependent on what the situation was that caused
you to you know be in this much trouble. So, um I know that there is a lot of this misinformation
out there about visa waivers, you know, sometimes there are people out there telling you that they
can prepare for you a visa waiver package, um or you know put together an entire folder
for you so you have everything you need at your visa interview. And while that could be helpful
what's really important is how you handle that visa interview because there's not really a formal
application process for a waiver. Basically, how visa officers view it is, it is going to be an
interview where they find out what happened and they decide if you're eligible for a waiver. It's
not going to be something where you can walk in and say Hey I request a waiver or I'm applying for
a waiver. These officers do not see this process like that they see it as just them getting to the
bottom of what happened during the visa interview and then deciding whether or not you're eligible.
So, once they finish the interview, which could take anywhere you know between five to 20 minutes,
or even longer depending on how complicated the situation is. If they decide to support
your waiver request and basically ask or seek a waiver on your behalf they will put that in
through their system and it will go to an office in DC that will make a determination whether
or not you're eligible for the waiver. Usually this process takes between four to six months,
so keep that in mind when you go in for your visa interview that even if the interview goes well
it's not likely to be right away that you'll get your visa approved, um it still needs to go to the
office in DC, and they make the final decision whether or not you're eligible for a visa and
that decision will come back to the embassy or consulate overseas. And, then you will end up
getting a visa in your passport probably with some text in it with some annotations that tells you
you know that you have a waiver approved, so that you can enter the United States.
While it is helpful, sometimes, you know immigration attorneys do put together packages for
clients. Um, a lot of times the only people who really know how waivers can be granted are these
officers themselves, you know I was a Visa Officer for over seven years at the State Department
and I have made many decisions whether or not to um you know support or deny waiver requests,
so you can see your visa officer as the the first hurdle that you have to overcome that you have to
convince them to basically decide to support this waiver request before they send it to DC.
If they decide not to support it or they decide that you're not eligible for a visa waiver then
that is the end of the conversation right there and you'll end up getting that letter again that
tells you you have a formal ineligibility, um, so there could be many reasons why you have an
ineligibility. Some common ones I've seen have been for you know misrepresentation or 6-C1,
perhaps you know you overstayed your last visa and you stayed in the United States
for a really long time and now you have you know a duration ban so that you can't go to
the United States for a certain amount of time, um you know perhaps it's for alien smuggling,
perhaps it's for you know a number of other reasons. There's a whole list of ineligibilities,
uh in the foreign affairs manual that might apply to any one specific situation so if you're in
this situation just keep in mind that this visa interview will be extremely extremely important
it's really hard to give one-size-fits-all advice for such a serious situation so if this is you
I would highly recommend that you sign up for a consultation with one of our Ex-Visa Officers,
we used to make these decisions all the time, we know exactly what goes into a successful
visa interview for a waiver, so we would be happy to help you try to understand your situation and
see how you can present the facts to the visa officer. Because, a lot of times they're doing
a lot of interviews in a very short period of time so they may be impatient or they're
looking for specific information that is relevant to what happened to you and this is what we can do
to help you prepare for this very important visa interview. I hope that this video was useful to
you and if you have any questions at all about waivers or ineligibilities please feel free to
send us an email at hello@argovisa.com and you can also listen to our podcast every week and send us
questions where we'll address your questions live on our bi-weekly podcast Behind the Visa Window.
And we look forward to helping you whatever your visa issues are. Thank you so much!