Business Visa - B1

Hi Folks,

Immihelp has helped me immesely in preparing for my B1 visa interview. However, what i noticed is that my B1 was approved in less than 30 seconds which leads me to think that before you even attend your interview, your fate is determined. By this i mean that your applications are screened well before your interview and based on that the consulate determines wether you need to be granted a visa or not. I had many negatives (single,no prior travel experience, less than 2 months in my present org) against me. I was asked the same set of questions as you would find in this forum. Not even a single document for verification was asked for me. What I feel is that the company for which you work for holds a lot of weightage. I work for a Prod Dev company in Blore and guess this was on my favour.

I saw a visa rejection for the person just in front of me in the queue. The mistake he did was to show how critical he was for his client which indirectly gives a hint that he could pursue a H1/L1 once he goes to the US. He started answering all his questions from a technical perspective and the VO was so sceptical that the VO asked for a techincal panel to come over to the counter. This was something new to me, I never knew US consulates have technical panels. The technical panel asked that guy technical questions which he answered promptly. He was reiterating the fact that he was extermely critical for his company/client. His visa interview lasted for almost 15 mins which was kind of shocking for me cause usually B1 interviews dont last for over 2-3 minutes. Finally he was rejected and given the blue slip which signifies that he would not be able to attend a visa interview from that consulate anymore. I wanted to help that guy and give him some tips but he was screwing up bigtime and things were too late. Hope he gets his visa successfully in the next attempt.

Regards
SJ