Dear all,
I have been corresponding with a lady in Moscow for the past month and a half. She is a professional who works for a Multi-national Corporation in the pharmaceutical industry. She signified her intentions to visit me in the U.S.
Although she has been travelling in business to a lot of West European Countries (France, Italy, Monaco, Spain, etc.), she is still afraid that the U.S. embassy would reject her application for a tourist visa. She said because of the following reason:
1) She is a single (divorced), without a child, young (29) Russian lady therefore more likely to be denied by the embassy;
2) The reason that she will give to the consultate to visit the U.S. was because she wanted to see "me"--a person she met over the Internet. She thinks the consul ppl will see this as strange relationship and would deny her the visa since we have not even met physically yet.
3) Lastly, she said that even if she tries to apply, once the Embassy issued a "denial" of a tourist visa, this will affect her getting another one in the future not only for the U.S. but also affect indirectly her future tourist/business visa applications to other countries (say France, England, etc.)
I countered the following:
I told her that she can prove her willingness to "coming back to Russia" with the following reasons:
1) She works for an MNC with a respectable position and higher than average salary in Russia for almost 4 years;
2) She has been in and out of Russia and visited lots of "first-world" countries, returned without overstaying or anything whatsover;
3) She is visiting me--a non-US citizen on a working visa--so no way will she stay here.
Her advisers--Travel agents--said that it would be difficult for her even the above positive qualities and told her to buy "tour packages" to assure her that she can get the visa. Of course, I told her that these agents would want to sell her tour packages just to gain her business.
So that is the case, for now, I asked her to try but she is afraid that once the U.S. Embassy denied her the tourist visa, she will be having a hard time getting another one in the future (not only for U.S. but for other countries as well).
I hope you can give us some good advice on this. What do you think is her chances of getting an approved visa? Will getting a denial/refusal be a hindrance for her to get another business/tourist visa to another country?
Any comments, thoughts, advice will be greatly appreciated.
thanks,
Bruce Jet
