Hello,
I am citizen of India working in Singapore for the last 3 years.
I got two separate offers from USA & Netherlands. However, my H1 petition was selected in the lottery and is yet to be approved. My work permit has been approved for Netherlands(yet to go for visa interview).
To be safer side, I emailed USA consulate of Netherlands to check if they will accept H1B visa applications from third country nationals. The response from them was shocking. They said “they will accept, however, there may be an issue related to temporary employment in both Netherlands & USA”. When asked again, they said “there might be issues regarding very temporary employment in Netherlands, to then go onto the USA”
I don’t understand whether short stay in the current country of residence an issue or short duration with the current employment an issue?
Has any of you encountered this problem?
Is XYZ country one of those countries which is “red flagged” like Iraq, Syria?
No it’s not. It is a decent European country.
I don’t know why they said so in the email. Appearing for H-1 visa stamping in Netherlands shouldn’t impact your employment in Netherlands.
They told H1-visa stamping will have impact because of very short stay in Netherlands. I don’t know if I have to interpret that as they will deny to process the stamping in Netherlands or deny forever.
I also see their website that says
“Often it is a question of time, and the best way to qualify for a visa is to reside in the Netherlands for a longer period of time and to build further social and economic ties here.”
http://amsterdam.usconsulate.gov/niv_refusals.html
That is a general guideline for any TCNs. Unless you are a resident of that 3rd country, it is best to return to home country for visa stamping.
So even if they accept your visa interview request, they may ask you to go back to home country for visa stamping.
Thank you Saurabh for the response.
After looking at the response from consulate, I am more worried to move to another country. Don’t know why they check for strong ties in the country of application, instead they should check if the applicant has strong ties in their home country (of course third country can’t evaluate that). So it is better to go to home country for stamping instead of having a mark in the system that H1 visa was rejected(which has to be specified while applying for another consulate -
).
While filing the petition, attorney has chosen Singapore as consulate to be notified. I don’t know if an amendment is needed to change that to home country, India. please advice.
I am actually worried that the rejection rate is high in India.
They usually train consulate officers according to the country they are servicing. So an officer in India would know about the major schools, degrees and other nuances of Indian colleges and companies.
For this reason they encourage folks to apply in their home countries. The exception is when the person is located in a third country on a long term visa. In such an example, they would consider person to be a resident of that third country and would entertain the interview. Still they hold the option to ask the person to reappear in home country if the case becomes too much complicated for their knowledge.
Even though Singapore consulate was mentioned in the H-1 application, you can appear at a different consulate. Because of PIMS, all consulates have same access to your approved petition and I-129 submitted to USCIS.