US Visa Applications Must Be Submitted from Country of Residence or Nationality | Hacker News Reader

US Visa Applications Must Be Submitted from Country of Residence or Nationality

travel.state.gov

115 pointscdipaolo134 comments

I was a US diplomat in India for 2 years and processed tens of thousands of visas. While this change will cause some inconvenience for, e.g., current H-1B visa holders from India who can no longer travel to Canada or Mexio to apply for new visas, in general it makes a lot of sense. I worked at the number one H-1B processing post worldwide. Our post had the expertise to quickly evaluate applications and approve the clearly legitimate ones while scrutinizing the potentially fraudulent ones. We tracked fraud patterns and kept tabs on known-bad petitioners. We could visit petitioner locations on the ground in India. This expertise doesn't exist in Canada or Mexico. Staff at those embassies and consulates would have to consult with us in India, or simply make uninformed decisions. Note also that bona fide residents of a country can still apply in their country of residence.

For a few weeks in India, we had a string of third-country nationals (I won't say which, but it's not hard to find) apply for foreign medical graduate visas. We weren't familiar with the context in country they were coming from. They seemed to be generally good quality applicants and many were approved. It turned out that there was a cheating scandal in that third country, an entire batch of test results had been invalidated, and the embassy located there was refusing their visas, so a few applied in India and were approved, then word got out and more came. We eventually wised up. However, there was really no good reason for these applicants to be travelling from their home country to India for a visa appointment even under normal circumstances (India isn't exactly known for having short visa wait times).

Thanks for sharing your experience. Good to get some real-world data in this thread as opposed to the emotional condemnations of this rule change.

People make two big assumptions about immigration in my experience

1) They think the system should be extremely simple 2) They assume everyone involved is being honest

When the reality is

1) Many people involved are lying to claim immigration benefits they have no right to 2) The system needs to have a level of complexity and difficulty to prevent these people from accessing these benefits

I don't doubt you Stevie, but I wonder if you could share any sources, proofs of data regarding your remark #1 about people lying.

I believe it is happens and I assume there might be a number of drivers for it, but I wonder how big of a problem is it in reality and how much has it been abused.

For example, friends told me the scheme in the UK might be too prone for fraud on the other hand most of the anti immigration topics do not seem to ask it to be fixed but rather stopped. What is your opinion on that? Do you think immigration is a big source of corruption problem? And how big is it relative to other problems?

My question comes from a point that I question if this is a populist/nationalist act to create a common enemy, literally the Enemy from 1984, rather than actually addressing the root cause of the problems. I am referring to the UK mostly because I have many friends living and working in the UK and some are British and some others are not.

And it seems weird to me that tackling such issues ( eg of the asylum seekers and the illegal immigration) as root causes of the current economic situation. Is it going after those folks really make a change on the prospects of the economy or is it addressing emotional needs to feel that someone is in control and that someone will take care of you because they fight the "enemy"?

For example, one of my British folks pointed out, and I did not validate myself, that the cost per asylum seeker is of £40 a week and there about 110.000 people in that situation which would make an expenditure of 4M per week or 200M per year. Which seems quite a large amount of money to deal with humanitarian assistance. And it would represent about 10% of the total expenditure. Another friend pointes out that UK collects £2.7B in taxes considering Health care, skilled and senior staff workers. The deficit in the public accountants are rather debatable so I do not have an opinion. What do you make from it?

It's well known that people often lie on visa applications and try to immigrate illegally. The US publishes a yearly review of overstayers broken down by country of origin. So you can see where the highest problem areas are. Sometimes this is masked because of way stricter visa issuance policies. So for example, you may not see a super high overstay percentage for India because many folks get rejected at the visa application stage. But still, this gives you a clearer picture of how rampant the lying is and the subsequent "disappearing" in the US.

https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-08/25_0826_cbp_...

I can't address your other concerns about economic impact etc. I'm not sure if there is a negative economic impact from this.

That is an interesting document. I did not know about it. I will say that the absolute numbers are higher than I expect, but the relative numbers are around the ballpark of 1%. And depending what is counted maybe ~2% which seems to me that the problem itself is not as big as it seems to me people are making it to appear. It does not seem to be foreigners are trying to overtake or abuse the country systematically as the it has been said by some. Is my reading of the situation same as yours?

So for Visa Waiver countries one of the requirements is to keep that number under 1% or so to stay in the visa waiver program. For visa required countries, if the visa vetting process wasn't so strict, probably the numbers would be a lot higher.

Why not disconnect the reviewer from the submission location then?

Because there is a statutory requirement that applicants who require an interview appear personally before a consular officer. So far, the State Department has interpreted this to mean "standing physically in front of".

Having done tens of thousands of visa interviews, I do think the requirement of a physical appearance before an officer is important. I could quickly review a person's travel history by looking through their passports, questioning them about prior trips. A person's travel patterns and visas to other countries can tell you a lot. I could quickly use a UV light or magnifier on educational documents to see if they were genuine. Several times, I overhead conversations from other applicants and officers that were relevant to my applicant (same employer/group) and I would consult with them. There are many other details you notice when doing this in person thousands of times.

There are also practical matters - if you're trying to do this via video link, how to you authenticate the person on the other end? At the consulate, we fingerprint them and compare them to previously collected biometrics. If you offload this authentication to a contractor site in the US, but I'm in India, is this site open in the middle of the night?

In cases where the applicant qualifies for a waiver of the interview, the State Department actually does (or at least did when I was there) have a substantial program whereby visa applications are largely processed remotely. An applicant would have no hint as to whether or not that happened, though.

Is there a statutory requirement that the consular officer that conducts the interview make a decision without input from other people?

Like it seems hilariously backwards in your example that the cheaters were able to make an end run around the system you praise, when it would be easy to have someone local taking a look at global applications. Or just applications that someone thought were odd.

99% or more of the visa applicants we interviewed in India were Indian. We interviewed them in India so that we had access to local staff who spoke all major Indian languages, a fraud unit well-versed in authenticating local documents, and connections to local authorities for more complex cases.

Nothing is "easy" when you have a line of hundreds of people who have been waiting months or over a year for their appointment and you have 120 seconds to deal with them in a fair and respectful way (which unfortunately does NOT always happen), while you also have personal job repercussions if you fail to properly vet their application and miss an important national security related detail.

As it turned out, we flagged enough of those cases as a patern for further review that did result in us consulting with our staff in the third country and discovering the issue. Also, visas that are issued can be revoked, or flagged for further scrutiny by CPB if necessary.

This was already the case for almost every other country. Most embassies required you to be resident or a national of the country you are applying in.

So oddly, the US was far more permissive than other locales in this one aspect. All this change does is bring it in line with security practices that other nations already had in place.

Honestly am quite surprised that the US didn’t already have this restriction considering overall it’s one of the toughest countries to get a visa for or even enter with a valid visa.

The US visa vetting procedure is known to be so strict even for tourists that many nations give visa free access to nationals who would otherwise require a visa - just because they hold a valid (or sometimes even expired!) US visa. It’s a highly regarded sticker if you can get one in your passport and seriously ups the power of your passport if it’s a weaker one to start with.

Many countries do things radically different than America does in terms of immigration, but it is quite clear over the past 20 years that one major political party in America favors more open immigration than the other. Where it seems most Americans prefer something right in the middle. Legal, but flexible.

Europes permissive immigration policies (basically anarchy from my perspective in the UK) are creating an entirely avoidable crisis. I expect a far more closed border policy in the future. International travel will become more complicated as western countries will increasingly try to control who is allowed in. Trumps administration is just 2 to 5 years ahead of everyone else.

> Europes permissive immigration policies (basically anarchy from my perspective in the UK) are creating an entirely avoidable crisis

The crisis was not created by the immigration policies, but by the wars waged by US and Europe. You see, when you bomb people, some will stay there to die and some will live. It is _that_ simple.

> This was already the case for almost every other country.

The US started of as a “zero to one” - a “sui-generis” state - unlike any other

Over time the people that gave in to the temptation to copy others, to be imperialistic, to be a colonizer, to be a slaver, to be expansionist all managed to damage the soul of the country- and still they keep trying

Why the insistence of being like almost every other country ?

> Most embassies required you to be resident or a national of the country you are applying in.

Were not like other countries

> So oddly, the US was far more permissive than other locales in this one aspect. All this change does is bring it in line with security practices that other nations already had in place.

We won two world wars and put a man on the moon - and you want to bring the US in line ?

The greatest experiment in state-building and you want to make it average?

China won the last one though. They aren’t number 1 for no reason .

> We won two world wars and put a man on the moon - and you want to bring the US in line ?

Citation needed /s

Really? Do you have any examples? I’ve had visas around the world (and encountered numerous weird requirements) but never have I been required to apply for a visa from my country of nationality. Even China, which is very restrictive, allows for non-national applications.

(And in fact, in my experience, it is getting easier with online applications becoming more common.)

It's common for countries to require you to apply from your country of nationality or residence, and to prove lawful residence if you're not a national of the country you're applying in. I'm in the middle of a French visa application for my daughter right now, and she must apply in the U.S. where she's a citizen.

I’m not an expert at this, but is it true that the US is very unique in requiring interviews for all tourist visas and for almost every visa?

I’m American and every visa I’ve had to apply for did not require my physical presence at the embassy and I used a third-party processing service to get everything done.

Therefore, while I would need to apply to these countries from their US embassy because my physical presence was not required, I would generally not need to return to the United States to obtain their visa?

And this aspect of a US visa does make it significantly harder even though the application policy is similar to other countries?

I'm not aware of any other country besides the US that has a blanket policy of requiring at least one interview in almost all cases.

That said, back in the 2000s I had to apply in person at the French embassy for a student visa, in in the 2010s I had to apply in person at a Chilean consulate for a special visa.

Many countries have outsourced the bulk of their processing to contractors like VFS or TLS these days. But also, our experience as Americans is not representative as we generally have fewer visas we need to bother obtaining, and face less scrutiny when doing so.

I'm not sure if the US interview requirement makes it "harder" to get a US visa - it may be that getting a US visa is just harder than getting another country's visa, which might still be true even if we didn't interview people. The big thing that makes getting non-immigrant visas to the US difficult for many people is that, unless shown otherwise, US immigration law assumes you are an immigrant.

I have several examples and lots of personal experience. I’ve been asked to go back from Mexico, Brazil, and Chile while traveling there and applying for a visa to Peru. Finally the Peruvian embassy in Chile gave me a visa to visit Peru because I accidentally bumped into the assistant consul.

https://bkpk.me/peru-visa-for-indians/

The San Francisco consulate of India refused to process my spouse’s Indian visa because she was not resident in the US.

https://bkpk.me/how-we-finally-got-zaras-visa-to-india/

Several more examples but in this day and age you can just ask chat gpt to summarize for you. But if you check visa application requirements for many embassies, they will often say: proof of residence if not a national of the country of application. So that’s the requirement often.

I will add though that I’ve always maintained that this is a soft policy and they will make exceptions in some cases. It is mostly consulates wanting to do as little work as humanly possible. So there can be ways to get around it if you can talk to someone in charge. But usually that’s very difficult with consulates.

I’m pretty sure though in the US’ case now it’s a hard no. So there will be no working around it.

Expanding on my previous comment with an example: I obtained a long term residency visa a few months ago. I was in the country at the time and didn’t want to fly 15 hours back to my home country, and the embassy in the neighbouring country only accepts applications from residents, so I flew to another nearby country which does accept non-residents. The country that I have a visa for doesn’t care where the visa is issued, it’s the individual embassies that set their own rules about who they will process applications for. You just have to look through each embassy to find one that accepts you (which will be documented on their website). Except now for the U.S. which is instituting this rule.

I think we are talking about different things. I’m talking about a country’s requirements whereas you’re talking about a specific embassy.

An embassy will often have its own requirements based on the locality, whereas the visa requirements are uniform.

The Indian embassy in San Francisco might refuse to process non-resident applications but that doesn’t mean you can only get an Indian visa by going to an embassy in your country of nationality.

Schengen works exactly like this. Also Japan I think.

I don’t know about Schengen but that’s not correct for Japan. You can get a visa to visit Japan from an embassy in a country you’re not a resident or national of, there’s no requirement for the visa to be issued in your country of nationality (although some embassies may choose not to accept applications from non-residents or non-nationals).

The Japanese embassy and consulates in the US only accept applications from residents of the US.

E.g. the NYC consulate: https://www.ny.us.emb-japan.go.jp/itpr_en/visa00.html

> You may apply for a visa at this Consulate if you are currently residing within the area covered by this Consulate.

Schengen does not work like that. While you are supposed to apply from the country you are a resident in, if you have valid reasons you can apply from any other country. This is also frequently necessary (eg: traveller without fixed residence).

Well, just happening to be in a different country is not a "valid reason". Maybe for someone from the West it would be accepted, but not for the rest of us.

Also, "a traveler without a fixed residence" can get a non-immigrant visa for Schengen? I'm sorry but this just is not true if you're not a Westerner.

> Also, "a traveler without a fixed residence" can get a non-immigrant visa for Schengen? I'm sorry but this just is not true if you're not a Westerner.

If there is no doubt that you will leave and you can sustain yourself: sure.

Being abroad is already a huge challenge to proving you're going to leave. You're showing you don't have much tethering you to your country of origin.

If the VISA issuing officer will actually verify anything, it’s a reasonable expectation (dare I say, obvious) that the applicant must be a resident of the country where the embassy is.

You can’t expect a person living in country X to validate the documents from Y country. It’s quite unreasonable to expect that they will even understand the language the document is in.

If the claim is the VISA issuing officer already doesn’t verify anything and therefore familiarity with the language and system of country Y isn’t necessary, that’s a different discussion.

The thing to fix here is requiring that someone already in US has to go to a consulate to renew/change their VISA. For someone who went to college in US for 4 years, and then did OPT for ~2 years, it’s meaningless for them to go to their home country to apply for an H1B, because all the documents they will bring will be from the US and the home country consulate personnel may not even be fit to check the validity of those documents.

Similar to Europe: for Schengen visas, you must apply to the consulate responsible for your country of legal residence.

https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen/visa-pol...

Thailand has similar restrictions for certain visas.

I believe your link says you must apply at the country you're visiting, or the country you're visiting first. And you must apply at the consulate for the country you are a resident of. So if I was applying to visit France, I could do so from the US embassy in France.

This seems to differ from the new US rule where you must also apply in the country you're a resident of.

Why would you apply at the US consulate for a visa to France? That makes no sense no matter how I try to interpret.

The way it works is, if you're applying for a French visa in Mongolia and you're not a Mongolian national, you need to provide your Mongolian residence permit or else your application will be refused outright.

you got that mixed up: you would apply at the french embassy in the US. and, that's the key point for schengen: you would not apply at the eg german embassy in the US, even though both would get you the same visa. the US embassy can't give you a schengen visa, and you could not even get to the one in france since you are not there yet. and if you visit multiple countries, it's either the one where you spend most of the time, or the one where you enter the schengen area (this may be different from the country you visit first because you could have a flight transfer inside schengen). at least as far as i know.

This is a significant problem for Chinese H1B holders, because the visa sticker for Chinese passport is only valid for one year. You can stay for longer, but cannot come back if you leave the U.S. Historically folks have been getting their visa renewed in Canada or Mexico, and this is already a huge annoyance - not only do you have to make a pointless trip, but also appointments in these countries are very hard to get as a Third Country National (TCN).

Sure, most other countries don't allow TCNs to apply for visa, but they also don't require their long term residents to leave the country to renew their visa.

So, the correct solution to this is Domestic Visa Renewal. A pilot program was run last year, but it was limited to Indian H1B holders. Without this program in place, disallowing TCNs is simply cruel.

not having Domestic Visa Renewal sounds like the most ridiculous oversight. i get making your first application from home, but renewal should always be in your target country. it's absurd to demand that people travel home once a year to renew their visa.

Visa stamp is not needed to stay in the US, it's only to cross the border into the US. Also, coincidentally, a visa stamp can only be issued by a consulate and I don't know of any country that has consulates on its own land.

a visa stamp can only be issued by a consulate

as i said, that's a weird US rule. i do not believe that there are many countries in the world that have such a rule. i have never encountered something like that on my travels.

I don't know of any country that has consulates on its own land

not relevant because most countries simply don't need a consulate to renew visas.

I imagine countries, that stamp visas in the port of arrival are such but since US requires extensive checks and interview of a visa applicant, like many other countries, there is just no possible need for that.

>not relevant because most countries simply don't need a consulate to renew visas.

It's pretty relevant since what other institution is equipped to vet foreigners for visa eligibility?

what other institution is equipped to vet foreigners for visa eligibility?

that would be the foreign ministry office in the country.

in china i have my visa renewed once in a small countryside town. they were big enough to have an office there. every town has one. in germany too. the local government office has a branch of the foreign ministry.

i have never had to leave a country to renew my visa. that's just insane. in fact that's even true for the US, at least for non-immigrant visa: https://www.usa.gov/extend-visa

what the US makes different is that it separates the work permit from the visa, and they get different validity times. and while having a valid work permit is enough to stay in the country, a new visa is required to reenter. which other country does that? everywhere else the visa itself is required to stay, a work permit is not enough, and consequently, you also get to renew that visa in the country.

I think the confusion here is over "visa" vs "status". The OP in this thread is talking about getting a new visa stamp (a card with a picture glued onto a passport page), the USDOS link you post talks about extending your status in the country (they use "visa" term because most people confuse the status and visa, but the form I-539 on that page is the EOS form and does not do anything to the visa). The latter is possible anywhere, the former is only in a consulate.

the former is only in a consulate

there is no confusion, my argument is that this is only true for the US. according to my experience no other country does it that way because in most countries, visa and status are one and the same thing. no visa, no status. or, if there is a difference, then extending your status also extends your visa, or vice versa. and you do it in the country. not outside.

i also reject the claim that there is no one inside any country that could verify the status of a foreigner, only consulates outside the country could do that. that is straight out nonsense.

How do you physically "extend" a visa? Do other countries have visas where you can print a new expiration date? You mentioned China, and I looked up images of a Chinese visa, there doesn't seem to be a place to put a new date, it has one field after 'Enter before', are you sure you got a new visa stamp with your extension of status?

i also reject the claim that there is no one inside any country that could verify the status of a foreigner

That's good since I haven't made such a claim!

you get a new sticker. in some countries you just get a stamp.

you made two claims:

a visa stamp can only be issued by a consulate

what other institution [besides a consulate] is equipped to vet foreigners for visa eligibility? (implying that there are none)

both of those are not true.

A US visa stamp is only issued in a consulate. It's true.

A question not being true is a novel concept to me. I was genuinely curious what country has an office equipped to interview and background check any foreigner in the world. But apparently it's not true, whatever that means.

i was referring to the implication that no such place exists

You also proclaimed that one can "renew" a US visa in the country. You seem to be reading something that is not written and knowing something that is not true. Good luck with that!

are you referring to this? https://www.usa.gov/extend-visa

sorry, renew and extend don't really mean anything different to me, because the end result is the same: you get to stay longer. i don't see why they should be different and why that should matter.

This is good. Canada consulate has been swamped with TCN visa appointments for a very long time. And this is the norm for many countries, including the EU.

Fun for people hailing from the countries where the US embassy is unable to issue visas for various interesting political reasons.

Why is this flagged?

TNs: https://ogletree.com/insights-resources/blog-posts/uscis-iss...

I think so but it doesn’t really matter. It’s far faster to apply at the border anyway.

This feel like bad for countries like India initially. But will help make better homegrown solutions. This is good for the world.

Anything to make it more difficult.

Also. "Effective immediately". Too bad for the tens of thousands of people who would be in legitimate process for a visa outside their country home country right now. This administrations arrogance and urgency is more important.

It explicitly doesn't affect people who already have appointments / who are in process. Read the link.

In practice, this is not what occurred. Many people had appointments canceled admist the confusion.

But then they wouldn't be able to bash Trump!!

The idea that someone from Haiti could get to Nassau for a visa interview is not serious.

There's no staff in Haiti to process visas at all, the embassy is on ordered depature. There are staff in Nassau, including people trained in Haitian Creole, and there are many Haitian applicants who apply for visas in Nassau. Where do you think the US should interview Haitian applicants? Also, if someone from Haiti has the resources to travel to the US, they have the resources to travel to Nassau for a visa interview.

The Darién Gap was believed to be impassable, now people cross it by the thousands just to get to the US. You're seriously underestimating how motivated and desperate some of these people are.

Can anyone explain a rational political motivation behind this? I realize "less immigrants" is the hand-wavy explanation, but how does this benefit those in charge?

> Can anyone explain a rational political motivation behind this? I realize "less immigrants" is the hand-wavy explanation, but how does this benefit those in charge?

I recommend you read the link, which in the first few words outlines “non-immigrants” and my summary.

> Adjudicating Nonimmigrant Visa Applicants in Their Country of Residence

Immigrants don’t apply for non immigrant visas

Not defending the US here, but are you saying that overstaying your visa does not exist?

Their point was that this change applies to non-immigrant visas (which in theory are only issued to people who do not intend to immigrate to the US), not immigrant visas.

While true, the State Department already made the same change to immigrant visas a few days ago: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/a...

This might also be tied to the incident with the South Korean nationals in Georgia.

(Note: Georgia as in Atlanta, not Tbilisi.)

It validates xenophobia. In a xenophobic population. This keeps them in charge. That is all. This administration is all about cutting off their nose to spite thir face.

It aligns with their effort to ruin the economic situation of American universities.

Yes, what America needs now is more students working in the grey economy after their student visa expires.

We either let them in and grow our economy or compete with them.

Right. It is also rather inconsistent to be the guy who says he is working on the trade imbalance, while simultaneously wrecking one of America's biggest export sectors: education, housing for education, and travel for education.

Please refer me to the part of the Constitution that enumerates the responsibility of the US government to preserve the business model of the modern university system?

Unless you are arguing that government actions should not be criticized unless they are in violation of the Constitution, your comment makes no sense in the context of any comment that is an ancestor of it in the comment tree.

Did you response to the wrong comment or get a little mixed up about the shape of the comments tree or what?

click on the “parent” link for my comment

Or to capitalism itself, for that matter! We could easily become a modern country if we just had the will.

The recourse to the constitution is silly. It has barely any relevance to the country we've become.

So a Canadian that wants to visit on a tourist visa has to apply at an embassy?????!!!! Instead of on the airplane right before landing?

Insane. This is going to destroy the tourism industry and collapse business travel.

Canadians don't need a visa to visit the United States for tourism or temporary business travel purposes.

Got it. Thanks for clarifying

Do Canadians need to get Visas to visit the US ?

Last time I went to Canada all I needed was a Passport. I do not even remember showing it to the Custom Official. I drove up said hi and they let me through.

As far as I know it was/is the same for Canadians visiting the US. Except the US border people tended to be d**ks, even to US Citizens.

Did that change?

Canadians do not need a visa to enter the US. And many countries are covered under the Visa Waiver Program, such as many European countries. So no, this does not affect Canadians.

Canadians don’t need a visa to visit the US, they are visa-exempt.

This doesn't affect nationals eligible for visa-on-arrival.

Got it. Thanks. That’s a lot better than first impression.

Canadians don't need tourist visas

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