Our friends in Mexico wrote us a detailed letter this morning about their experience at the U.S. Embassy, what they took with them for supporting documentation to prove they were going to return to Mexico.
They took:
- the last three checking account statements
- a summary of the family business
- the paid electric and telephone bills for their home and business
- documents from the municipal village president outlining the head-of-household commitment to community service for the next two years.
Here is what they spent:
- $540 USD ($140 per family member) for the visa application
- 3,400 pesos for Mexican passports for four family members
- 3,600 pesos for bus tickets for four family members
- A total of 14,000 pesos (about $1,100 USD)
Our friends say that maybe the consular officer thought they looked like Latinos who wanted to go to the U.S. and not return to Mexico. Our friends showed our letters of recommendation first, but the consular officer didn’t read the letters, gave the “denied” decision immediately and there was no time to show the rest of the papers. Our friends feel their treatment was unjust. We agree and are ashamed of how our immigration policy hurts people emotionally and financially. They don’t want to go through this again, risking another chunk of money only to be denied.
Update: Visa Applicants Must Prove Intent to Return to Home Country
We pursued conversations with Congressman Becerra’s Los Angeles office and were very satisfied with their response. At least we better understood that there is little that can be done after the embassy makes a decision to deny a visitor visa. The congressman’s office has no jurisdiction and cannot influence a decision and even a call from a congressman won’t change a decision. In all fairness, we don’t know exactly what documents our friends brought with them to prove their intentions to return to Mexico. We know they did try to show the supporting letters from us. We don’t know if they had a complete package of information to provide the evidence that the family has strong ties to Mexico and were not intending to stay in the U.S. as undocumented immigrants.
Here are my recommendations for proving “strong and binding ties to their country of origin” –
Here are my recommendations for strengthening the visa application:
In the process of hearing that our friends were denied a visitor’s visa and learning more about why from Congressman Becerra’s office, I know that there is still a lot of subjective decision making that goes into the “yes” or “no” by the consul. The official statement is “There are many other factors that are taken into consideration when a person is applying for a visitor visa, such as, their age, how many family members are applying for a visa, their purpose for traveling, if they have other family in the country they are traveling to, if they have ever applied for a visa before, etc.”
Perhaps our friends were denied because the entire family — husband, wife and two children — wanted to attend the wife’s brother’s wedding and the consul considered this to be too risky. Who knows? I feel so bad that I wasn’t able to help, and I guess that’s the bottom line.
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Posted in Cultural Commentary, Mexican Immigration
Tagged Documents needed for U.S. visitor visas, Mexican Immigration to US, visitor visas for Mexicans