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I know this guy....he is a good dude and has a high-finance job in Boston, makes a lot of cake; I saw him one night in Jacques with a very cute ladyboy from Thailand; he has had her here FIVE times and has always told me it was no problems doing it; here is his true story, which he mailed to me today and wrote for everyone here........
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I know that a lot of guys often ask about information on visas to bring their girlfriends to their home countries for a vacation. In this paper I will outline the experiences that my girlfriend, who is a ladyboy, and I have had in trying to get a visa to visit the United States. It may be useful for guys thinking of trying to get a visa for their girlfriends. As an American, I only deal with the US, and don€™t know if any of the information applies to other countries, although I think it is safe to assume that there are some parallels with Eurozone countries, Canada and Aus/NZ.
Important! €“ The information I provide here is in no way official and I cannot vouch for its accuracy. It is just my opinion, based on my experiences. I think that getting a visa entails equal parts preparation and luck.
Types of Visas
There are a number of types of visas in two categories for which a Thai national can apply to go to the US. The two types are immigrant and non-immigrant. The immigrant visas are for people looking to move to the US permanently. Immigrant visas are for Thais with immediate family in the US, for Thai workers hired by a US company in a position which can۪t be filled by a US citizen, or for fianc̩es of US citizens. None of these categories fit my girlfriend (and won۪t fit most all persons living in Thailand).
The non-immigrant visas deal with Thais coming to the US for business trips, tourism or study. The most common is the tourist visa (B1/B2), and that is the visa I have experience with. For detailed information all visas, you can go to the US embassy in Thailand website, www.usa.or.th.
Applying for the Tourist Visa
The application process is relatively simple but can take time. The Embassy suggests applying 6 weeks in advance of a trip, and almost all applicants now must have a face to face interview with embassy staff. The applicant must fill out the application (downloaded from embassy website) and provide significant amounts of documentation supporting the information on the application.
In addition to having a Thai passport, the most important information to include in the application is anything which proves you live in Thailand and have good reasons to return after the vacation to the US. The biggest worry the consular officers have is that a Thai national will visit the US and then not come home, becoming an illegal alien. This does happen, and in the post 9/11 environment consular officers have been much tougher on issuing visas to questionable cases.
To quote the embassy website: €œPlease note that consular officers adjudicate visas on the basis of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). This law states that "Whenever any person makes application for a visa...the burden of proof shall be upon such person to establish that he is eligible." U.S. immigration law requires consular officers to deny an applicant's application if he or she fails to present convincing evidence that he/she is not an intending immigrant.€
Who will be Immediately Rejected
It is important to understand that if your girlfriend gets rejected for a tourist visa, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to get a visa when applying a second time. The information must be radically different in the second application for a visa to be issued (i.e. new high level job with reputable company, or newly found immense wealth). Therefore when applying for a visa, make sure you feel there is a good chance of it getting issued, otherwise you may ruin the girl€™s chances of going to the US at any point in the future. Better to take time to prepare for the application process, even if it takes years.
I can guarantee that if the person you want to bring to the US comes from a poor family with no wealth of her own, no schooling, and has no job other than working in Nana Plaza or Patpong, the application will be rejected out of hand. There is also a specific question on the application asking if the applicant has ever been a prostitute. Regardless of the applicant€™s history, anyone answering yes to this question is automatically rejected (obviously). If the person doesn€™t state that she works in a bar, though she does, but doesn€™t provide any proof of a real job, or of how she is able to pay the bills, she will be immediately rejected.
The consular officers are very aware of guys meeting girls on their travels and wanting to bring them back to the US for a visit. If they feel that is the case, they will immediately reject. The officers don€™t look at each application to find reasons to accept it but to find any single reason to reject it. It is my opinion (and only my opinion) that you will not get a visa for the person you meet a couple of times at a bar on your yearly trip to Bangkok. I don€™t mean to be harsh, but to simply state what I see as reality. No education, no job (other than in a gogo bar), and no wealth will lead to automatic rejection.
So How Does Anyone get a Visa?
My reason for the automatic rejection above is that the person, in the eyes of the consular officer, will see no reason to return to Thailand. If she has no money and no real job, what is to stop a person from simply staying in the US. If the person wants to work in the gray economy, at the least she can get $250 for a screw session in the US instead of $25 in Bangkok, so why come back. If the €œboyfriend€ helps with the person€™s application what is to stop the person convincing the boyfriend that she should stay in the US with him because he loves him. This is the thinking of the consular officer. No matter what the reality for the visit to the US is, these scenarios are always the first that the embassy thinks of.
So, who gets a visa? I will give my opinions in two categories: the person applying by herself and the person applying with help from her boyfriend. The reasons for the two categories come down to money: can the person afford her own trip to the US, and therefore not need the financial support any boyfriend?
The best case profile for someone applying for a visa is as follows: The person has a good job with a known company and can prove it, comes from a wealthy family or has a lot of money of her own and can prove it, perhaps owns her own apartment or home and can prove it, has all her family in Thailand and can prove it, and speaks good English. In this case, the person will be able to conduct an interview by herself and prove that she can afford the trip to the US including all expenses and hotels, and will definitely return to Thailand because she has a good job and owns property. The person in this case will have a letter from her company stating the length of employment in good standing, will have references from all previous jobs, will have a diploma from her university, will have a most recent bank statement, the title deed to the property owned, and records of family in Thailand. In this €œperfect€ scenario the consular officer will see someone who they believe really is just a tourist. Proof of previous trips to other €œfirst-world€ countries will also help.
If your friend fits all these criteria, I don€™t think she will have too much of a problem getting a visa. In fact in the €œperfect€ scenario it is better for her to state that the trip she is taking is to visit friends or purely for tourism as part of a tour package, and not to visit a boyfriend. Again, the big worry that the embassy has is that the person will overstay a visa. Having a boyfriend in the US only raises this concern.
My Situation
So what about the 99% of us who may have girlfriends who don€™t fit the perfect profile? In most cases the biggest hurdle is money. Even if the person has a job or is a student at a known University (which can be almost as good as a job) often they won€™t have enough money in their bank account to show an ability to support a trip to the US. This is where the boyfriend comes in to help the application process. If the person is being sponsored on the trip to the US, the sponsor must show his own financial ability to pay for the trip. Due to reasons previously stated this places the application under €œboyfriend€ scrutiny.
My girlfriend€™s application a couple of years ago fell under this scenario. I will outline what we did to get a visa. Our situation was somewhat unique and I also think we got a bit lucky in our application.
Her profile: My girlfriend, we will call her Pet, was from a very poor family and had left school at 14 to work to support them. At the time of the application she had returned to school full time in Bangkok, and was not working. She had no financial assets to her name, and spoke poor English.
My profile: I lived in another Asian country at the time and was the director of a small business in Thailand. I traveled to Thailand twice a month for work. I was financially able to support the trip to the US we would be taking together; we would be staying at my family€™s home in the US.
I was advised by friends in a non-Thai embassy, not to help Pet apply for the visa. They felt that the boyfriend issue would lead to a rejection. Since Pet had no assets, no property and no job (although she was a full time student), we caught by a double edge sword. However, I decided to chance it because I had to prove that I would support the trip, and because of her poor English I felt I might need to help her with the interview at the embassy.
We took time to fill out the application in detail and gathered all of the documentation we would need. These included: a letter from Pet€™s school proving her attendance as a student in good standing; full records of her family in Thailand (birth certificates and proof of residency of immediate family); references from her three previous jobs prior to returning to school and her bank statements (even though they showed a relatively low balance). For my part I supplied: proof of my residency in another Asian country; proof of my status as a director of a Thai company; that Thai company€™s certificate of incorporation and corporate bank account statements; my own bank statements proving my ability to support our trip; and letters from me, my father (who we would stay with), and a brother, all stating our support for the trip including all financial support.
At the time of the application we waited for our interview. The consular officer was a young American woman who reviewed our application in a very serious manner. I was worried that she might disapprove of the application simply because Pet was a ladyboy and didn€™t speak very good English. Pet€™s passport and application state male, but she is totally passable. I think the fact that we were fairly close in age was helpful. I was in my late twenties and Pet was in her early/mid twenties. I do not want to be age discriminatory, but the fact is that consular officers question visas more readily when the man is much older than the girlfriend (ladyboy or not). This is especially the case with female consular officers.
The second thing that fell in our favor was that I was able to develop a rapport with the officer. Pet and I were all smiles, answered the questions she had honestly. I was even able to get in a bit of small talk about where she was from, how she liked Thailand, etc., etc. The officer told us to return that afternoon.
Upon returning she said she needed more information. More details of the company I was involved with in Thailand and proof of my father€™s financial standing, since we were staying with my parents in the US. She said that we weren€™t rejected but that she needed more information to make a decision.
We returned the next day with the proper info, including a copy of my father€™s W-2 tax form showing his income. This info put us over the top and the officer issued Pet€™s visa. The visa was for one visit only and Pet had to return to the embassy within 3 days of her scheduled return to prove to the embassy that she was back in the country.
The first application for a visa is VITAL. As stated earlier, if you are rejected on the first visa it is tough to get another. However, if you are successful getting the first it is easier to get the next. Imagine the young consular officer. The last thing a young career state department employee wants is some tourist, who they approved, to go illegal on them. Not good for career prospects. However if someone has traveled to the US before, they feel protected since someone approved the tourist before they have to.
After Pet€™s first trip to the US, she returned a second time for a trip with my family to the Caribbean. For the second application she received a multi entry visa (as many trips as she wanted) which expired in one year. After that year she applied for another trip and was given a multi year visa which doesn€™t expire for ten years. Basically, if your build up a history of visiting and returning, you build up goodwill with the embassy that you won€™t go illegal on them. This only emphasizes the fact that the first application is IMMENSELY important.
Why Were We Successful?
I think the main reason we were successful is that I lived in Asia and had business ties to Thailand. This gave reason for the consular officer to believe this was really just a visit to the US. Both Pet and I were taking the same flights to and from the US. Also, we provided a lot of detailed documentation to support our case, including the financial info from my father and the support letters from the US. I think we got lucky with the consular officer who handled our case; we were able to build a rapport with her. If we had a different officer, who frowned on ladyboys, or gays, or relationships between Thais and Americans, or simply got up on the wrong side of the bed with a huge hangover that morning, we would not have been so fortunate. Finally, we were applying for a visa in the Pre-9/11 world environment.
Our biggest problem was that Pet did not have the financial means to support a trip herself, and therefore needed my support. If you meet a person who can support a trip to the US, than she is ahead of the game in getting a visa. If not, then you have to carefully weigh the options as to whether or not it is worth it to apply for a visa. If I had not been a resident of Asia, with a connection to Thailand, it would have been more difficult for Pet to get a visa.
Conclusions
I guess that in conclusion I would say that if you have just met someone from King Castle III or Obsessions and want her to visit you in the US, your chances of getting visa are slim and not worth trying. However, if the person is able to show background in employment and school, you have a better chance.
To return to an earlier statement I made: €œBetter to take time to prepare for the application process, even if it takes years.€ If you really care about somebody you have met in the €œindustry€, it is far better to take a long term strategy: help them get into school or get a real job, and then after a year apply for a visa with good documentation to back you up. But even then it seems there are no guarantees.
In addition to good preparation, the keys to a visa are money and property, a history of employment and school, and all family in Thailand. Having as many of these elements as possible, will help the consular officer believe the Thai national will actually return to Thailand after the vacation is over.>>>>>
<<
I know that a lot of guys often ask about information on visas to bring their girlfriends to their home countries for a vacation. In this paper I will outline the experiences that my girlfriend, who is a ladyboy, and I have had in trying to get a visa to visit the United States. It may be useful for guys thinking of trying to get a visa for their girlfriends. As an American, I only deal with the US, and don€™t know if any of the information applies to other countries, although I think it is safe to assume that there are some parallels with Eurozone countries, Canada and Aus/NZ.
Important! €“ The information I provide here is in no way official and I cannot vouch for its accuracy. It is just my opinion, based on my experiences. I think that getting a visa entails equal parts preparation and luck.
Types of Visas
There are a number of types of visas in two categories for which a Thai national can apply to go to the US. The two types are immigrant and non-immigrant. The immigrant visas are for people looking to move to the US permanently. Immigrant visas are for Thais with immediate family in the US, for Thai workers hired by a US company in a position which can۪t be filled by a US citizen, or for fianc̩es of US citizens. None of these categories fit my girlfriend (and won۪t fit most all persons living in Thailand).
The non-immigrant visas deal with Thais coming to the US for business trips, tourism or study. The most common is the tourist visa (B1/B2), and that is the visa I have experience with. For detailed information all visas, you can go to the US embassy in Thailand website, www.usa.or.th.
Applying for the Tourist Visa
The application process is relatively simple but can take time. The Embassy suggests applying 6 weeks in advance of a trip, and almost all applicants now must have a face to face interview with embassy staff. The applicant must fill out the application (downloaded from embassy website) and provide significant amounts of documentation supporting the information on the application.
In addition to having a Thai passport, the most important information to include in the application is anything which proves you live in Thailand and have good reasons to return after the vacation to the US. The biggest worry the consular officers have is that a Thai national will visit the US and then not come home, becoming an illegal alien. This does happen, and in the post 9/11 environment consular officers have been much tougher on issuing visas to questionable cases.
To quote the embassy website: €œPlease note that consular officers adjudicate visas on the basis of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). This law states that "Whenever any person makes application for a visa...the burden of proof shall be upon such person to establish that he is eligible." U.S. immigration law requires consular officers to deny an applicant's application if he or she fails to present convincing evidence that he/she is not an intending immigrant.€
Who will be Immediately Rejected
It is important to understand that if your girlfriend gets rejected for a tourist visa, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to get a visa when applying a second time. The information must be radically different in the second application for a visa to be issued (i.e. new high level job with reputable company, or newly found immense wealth). Therefore when applying for a visa, make sure you feel there is a good chance of it getting issued, otherwise you may ruin the girl€™s chances of going to the US at any point in the future. Better to take time to prepare for the application process, even if it takes years.
I can guarantee that if the person you want to bring to the US comes from a poor family with no wealth of her own, no schooling, and has no job other than working in Nana Plaza or Patpong, the application will be rejected out of hand. There is also a specific question on the application asking if the applicant has ever been a prostitute. Regardless of the applicant€™s history, anyone answering yes to this question is automatically rejected (obviously). If the person doesn€™t state that she works in a bar, though she does, but doesn€™t provide any proof of a real job, or of how she is able to pay the bills, she will be immediately rejected.
The consular officers are very aware of guys meeting girls on their travels and wanting to bring them back to the US for a visit. If they feel that is the case, they will immediately reject. The officers don€™t look at each application to find reasons to accept it but to find any single reason to reject it. It is my opinion (and only my opinion) that you will not get a visa for the person you meet a couple of times at a bar on your yearly trip to Bangkok. I don€™t mean to be harsh, but to simply state what I see as reality. No education, no job (other than in a gogo bar), and no wealth will lead to automatic rejection.
So How Does Anyone get a Visa?
My reason for the automatic rejection above is that the person, in the eyes of the consular officer, will see no reason to return to Thailand. If she has no money and no real job, what is to stop a person from simply staying in the US. If the person wants to work in the gray economy, at the least she can get $250 for a screw session in the US instead of $25 in Bangkok, so why come back. If the €œboyfriend€ helps with the person€™s application what is to stop the person convincing the boyfriend that she should stay in the US with him because he loves him. This is the thinking of the consular officer. No matter what the reality for the visit to the US is, these scenarios are always the first that the embassy thinks of.
So, who gets a visa? I will give my opinions in two categories: the person applying by herself and the person applying with help from her boyfriend. The reasons for the two categories come down to money: can the person afford her own trip to the US, and therefore not need the financial support any boyfriend?
The best case profile for someone applying for a visa is as follows: The person has a good job with a known company and can prove it, comes from a wealthy family or has a lot of money of her own and can prove it, perhaps owns her own apartment or home and can prove it, has all her family in Thailand and can prove it, and speaks good English. In this case, the person will be able to conduct an interview by herself and prove that she can afford the trip to the US including all expenses and hotels, and will definitely return to Thailand because she has a good job and owns property. The person in this case will have a letter from her company stating the length of employment in good standing, will have references from all previous jobs, will have a diploma from her university, will have a most recent bank statement, the title deed to the property owned, and records of family in Thailand. In this €œperfect€ scenario the consular officer will see someone who they believe really is just a tourist. Proof of previous trips to other €œfirst-world€ countries will also help.
If your friend fits all these criteria, I don€™t think she will have too much of a problem getting a visa. In fact in the €œperfect€ scenario it is better for her to state that the trip she is taking is to visit friends or purely for tourism as part of a tour package, and not to visit a boyfriend. Again, the big worry that the embassy has is that the person will overstay a visa. Having a boyfriend in the US only raises this concern.
My Situation
So what about the 99% of us who may have girlfriends who don€™t fit the perfect profile? In most cases the biggest hurdle is money. Even if the person has a job or is a student at a known University (which can be almost as good as a job) often they won€™t have enough money in their bank account to show an ability to support a trip to the US. This is where the boyfriend comes in to help the application process. If the person is being sponsored on the trip to the US, the sponsor must show his own financial ability to pay for the trip. Due to reasons previously stated this places the application under €œboyfriend€ scrutiny.
My girlfriend€™s application a couple of years ago fell under this scenario. I will outline what we did to get a visa. Our situation was somewhat unique and I also think we got a bit lucky in our application.
Her profile: My girlfriend, we will call her Pet, was from a very poor family and had left school at 14 to work to support them. At the time of the application she had returned to school full time in Bangkok, and was not working. She had no financial assets to her name, and spoke poor English.
My profile: I lived in another Asian country at the time and was the director of a small business in Thailand. I traveled to Thailand twice a month for work. I was financially able to support the trip to the US we would be taking together; we would be staying at my family€™s home in the US.
I was advised by friends in a non-Thai embassy, not to help Pet apply for the visa. They felt that the boyfriend issue would lead to a rejection. Since Pet had no assets, no property and no job (although she was a full time student), we caught by a double edge sword. However, I decided to chance it because I had to prove that I would support the trip, and because of her poor English I felt I might need to help her with the interview at the embassy.
We took time to fill out the application in detail and gathered all of the documentation we would need. These included: a letter from Pet€™s school proving her attendance as a student in good standing; full records of her family in Thailand (birth certificates and proof of residency of immediate family); references from her three previous jobs prior to returning to school and her bank statements (even though they showed a relatively low balance). For my part I supplied: proof of my residency in another Asian country; proof of my status as a director of a Thai company; that Thai company€™s certificate of incorporation and corporate bank account statements; my own bank statements proving my ability to support our trip; and letters from me, my father (who we would stay with), and a brother, all stating our support for the trip including all financial support.
At the time of the application we waited for our interview. The consular officer was a young American woman who reviewed our application in a very serious manner. I was worried that she might disapprove of the application simply because Pet was a ladyboy and didn€™t speak very good English. Pet€™s passport and application state male, but she is totally passable. I think the fact that we were fairly close in age was helpful. I was in my late twenties and Pet was in her early/mid twenties. I do not want to be age discriminatory, but the fact is that consular officers question visas more readily when the man is much older than the girlfriend (ladyboy or not). This is especially the case with female consular officers.
The second thing that fell in our favor was that I was able to develop a rapport with the officer. Pet and I were all smiles, answered the questions she had honestly. I was even able to get in a bit of small talk about where she was from, how she liked Thailand, etc., etc. The officer told us to return that afternoon.
Upon returning she said she needed more information. More details of the company I was involved with in Thailand and proof of my father€™s financial standing, since we were staying with my parents in the US. She said that we weren€™t rejected but that she needed more information to make a decision.
We returned the next day with the proper info, including a copy of my father€™s W-2 tax form showing his income. This info put us over the top and the officer issued Pet€™s visa. The visa was for one visit only and Pet had to return to the embassy within 3 days of her scheduled return to prove to the embassy that she was back in the country.
The first application for a visa is VITAL. As stated earlier, if you are rejected on the first visa it is tough to get another. However, if you are successful getting the first it is easier to get the next. Imagine the young consular officer. The last thing a young career state department employee wants is some tourist, who they approved, to go illegal on them. Not good for career prospects. However if someone has traveled to the US before, they feel protected since someone approved the tourist before they have to.
After Pet€™s first trip to the US, she returned a second time for a trip with my family to the Caribbean. For the second application she received a multi entry visa (as many trips as she wanted) which expired in one year. After that year she applied for another trip and was given a multi year visa which doesn€™t expire for ten years. Basically, if your build up a history of visiting and returning, you build up goodwill with the embassy that you won€™t go illegal on them. This only emphasizes the fact that the first application is IMMENSELY important.
Why Were We Successful?
I think the main reason we were successful is that I lived in Asia and had business ties to Thailand. This gave reason for the consular officer to believe this was really just a visit to the US. Both Pet and I were taking the same flights to and from the US. Also, we provided a lot of detailed documentation to support our case, including the financial info from my father and the support letters from the US. I think we got lucky with the consular officer who handled our case; we were able to build a rapport with her. If we had a different officer, who frowned on ladyboys, or gays, or relationships between Thais and Americans, or simply got up on the wrong side of the bed with a huge hangover that morning, we would not have been so fortunate. Finally, we were applying for a visa in the Pre-9/11 world environment.
Our biggest problem was that Pet did not have the financial means to support a trip herself, and therefore needed my support. If you meet a person who can support a trip to the US, than she is ahead of the game in getting a visa. If not, then you have to carefully weigh the options as to whether or not it is worth it to apply for a visa. If I had not been a resident of Asia, with a connection to Thailand, it would have been more difficult for Pet to get a visa.
Conclusions
I guess that in conclusion I would say that if you have just met someone from King Castle III or Obsessions and want her to visit you in the US, your chances of getting visa are slim and not worth trying. However, if the person is able to show background in employment and school, you have a better chance.
To return to an earlier statement I made: €œBetter to take time to prepare for the application process, even if it takes years.€ If you really care about somebody you have met in the €œindustry€, it is far better to take a long term strategy: help them get into school or get a real job, and then after a year apply for a visa with good documentation to back you up. But even then it seems there are no guarantees.
In addition to good preparation, the keys to a visa are money and property, a history of employment and school, and all family in Thailand. Having as many of these elements as possible, will help the consular officer believe the Thai national will actually return to Thailand after the vacation is over.>>>>>
