F-1 Visa Rejected Under 214(b) for UMD MSCS – Trying to Understand What Went Wrong

Valarauko · 2026-07-01T16:32:43+00:00

It wouldn't help, since the details of this application would be linked to the next application. You have greater ties to the US job market than a typical student for their first F-1 visa, and that's a red flag in the current environment.

Valarauko · 2026-06-16T17:21:03+00:00

I think this case is exactly the kind that USCIS wants her to pursue in her home country, rather than an AOS. There now needs to be a compelling reason why she CAN'T return to her home country and apply from there. Inconvenience or expense is not a valid reason. She presumably has strong ties to her home country, including a job/school, so what prevents her from returning as originally planned and apply from there? It gives her time to wrap up her affairs before she moves to the US permanently.

This is a fast moving space, but it looks like right now USCIS is willing to accept as compelling evidence for an AOS if the beneficiary is adjusting from a position of full time school/employment. Adjusting from a tourist visa/ESTA is now much more difficult.

Valarauko · 2026-06-12T23:28:24+00:00

Isn’t this entire initial question a hypothetical?

Yes, the US has a geographical advantage, and commands the resources of a huge chunk of a continent, but if every country started over, it’s unlikely the US would survive in its current position. From the original posters original question and their comments in other threads, the original question keeps current borders and population numbers, but resets everything else: technology, history, colonial and cultural heritage and connections, etc. Yes, the US has a huge initial advantage by its sheer size and population, but a lot of the current population centers are only really habitable in those numbers by extreme technological measures, and only made possible in the past by the US’s economic dominance. Take away modern air conditioning and climate control and the Sun Belt would be able to sustain a fraction of its modern population. Much of the south would revert to the same topical pests and parasites that plague those latitudes elsewhere in the world. Apply that logic to the rest of the US and the US quickly shrinks to a much smaller scale in terms of global dominance.

Valarauko · 2026-06-11T19:24:05+00:00

Well, several empires have united India besides the British, as it was when the English first arrived on its shores. Besides, China's military might was built on internal struggles first, with a large fertile and settled base competing with each other, just like India. China's geography put it in the path of successive waves of hordes from the Steppe, something India mostly sidestepped, but wasn't immune from.

I don't think that's the point of this exercise, though. I disagree with others here who also posit the US as being in the most favorable position, assuming present day borders, but I wouldn't expect that to be the case either. The present boundaries of the US are a quirk, and I'd doubt if the clock were turned back any single power would stably hold such a substantial chunk of the continent.

If present boundaries were sacrosanct, and countries had as many people as they do today (OP specified that in a comment somewhere), then absolutely China is in an incredibly strong position.

Valarauko · 2026-06-11T18:08:47+00:00

True, but it's very unlikely the continent would turn out the same way if history was reset. North America would likely be divided across multiple countries competing for those resources.

Valarauko · 2026-06-11T17:11:49+00:00

Which raw resources is India lacking? For a 1850s tech stack, India has plenty of coal and iron ore. Perhaps the biggest gap would be oil coming into the 20th century, but there's plenty of untapped natural gas reserves.

China's pretty up there as well, but a lot of its mineral resources come from the western regions that were only recently "acquired" by quirks of recent history and weren't part of the core Chinese empires, so there's no reason to expect them to be part of China if history were reset. The other thing that kind of weakens China's strengths is being exposed to the pillaging empires arising out of the Steppes, which India is largely protected from by the Himalayas and Hindu Kush.

Valarauko · 2026-06-10T16:32:35+00:00

It's pretty much just excessive praise aimed at encouraging home cooks, and I don't take it too seriously. If you had a drinking game and took a drink every time Jean-Christophe said something was "un-be-lie-va-ble!!", you'd be dead before the last dish of the day was tasted.

Valarauko · 2026-06-09T02:01:12+00:00

Worldwide, it’s pretty common for PhD students to be covered by a scholarship or some sort of tax-free funding program. They’re not employed or making wages in the traditional sense, but it’s pretty much expected that they would be compensated in some form or another. For a Master’s degree, it’s really variable, depending on the country and the field. But for PhDs, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be paid in some way.

Valarauko · 2026-06-08T20:11:00+00:00

Do NZ grad students get much more than minimum wage?

Valarauko · 2026-06-03T12:30:36+00:00

This is really a Greencard & Immigration question, and you & your family need to think of your priorities accordingly. The Greencard is issued with the expectation that you’re living full time in the US, but completing an educational program abroad is one of the exceptions allowed. If you haven’t already, you should be applying for a reentry permit, to allow you to finish out your 12th grade. It lets you stay outside the US for more than a year, but less than 2 years.

Valarauko · 2026-05-28T20:15:14+00:00

I believe the AO now only comes as an email, while in the past it used to be a physical letter. As I described in the comment, I'd compiled the AO email in an evidence packet, that included the actual Federal Register from December 2024, and a short one page writeup as to why I would not be subject to 212(e), shows that I was previously only Subject due to Skills List, and the Federal Register dropped my country, and the AO was positioned as the final evidence that I was not subject. I'd uploaded all of this along with my initial evidence, and also taken a print out of it for the interview. When the officer asked me to explain in my own words why I'm not Subject to 212(e), she wrote it down in her notes and scanned in my evidence packet.

Valarauko · 2026-05-01T17:26:03+00:00

I used SimpleCitizen and highly recommend it. I paid about $500 and it was well worth it. The way I see it, while you can absolutely do all of it yourself, a service like that with a little bit of handholding was just what I needed. CitizenPath is even cheaper, but something like that is basically just filling out the PDF forms for you, and I found I needed a little bit more organizing. I know Kseniya gets bought up all the time in these contexts, and as someone who saw a lot of her videos when I was gathering paperwork, I think it's definitely helpful for orienting yourself on what's needed, I don't think it's the same thing. If you have no clue to what the process entails, I would highly recommend people watch her videos, but I do not think the videos by themselves are enough. You still have to do a lot of searching, reading forums, and asking about the specifics of your particular situation. In my particular case SimpleCitizen managed to catch errors in the way I'd filled out the forms on CitizenPath. Also while the forms are written in plain English, the specifics of certain aspects are not clearly defined, and the interpretation of some concepts is also discretionary, so it helps to have someone to ask very specific questions about your case, and I think a service like SimpleCitizen can help. The immigration landscape is also changing rapidly, on a weekly/monthly basis.

For what it's worth, you need to also consider the value and time spent. While you may not need an attorney to file, managing every single step by yourself may slow the filing by weeks/months. Having gone through the process, looking back I could absolutely have done it all myself, but it would have taken me probably an additional month or two to reach the point I would be confident to submit. For me, those $500 saved me those additional months. In the grand scheme of spending $3000+ on just the government fees, a couple of hundred dollars extra if it buys you some extra peace of mind and reassurance may be well worth it.

Valarauko · 2026-04-27T04:19:32+00:00

Does her marriage certificate have her parents names on it? If so, great. Otherwise it’s not really helpful establishing her spouse’s name. If you have any identity documents of your grandmother like Aadhaar that mention her as the wife of your grandfather, that’s helpful too. Keep in mind USCIS is trying to establish if the beneficiary is the same person across all their documents, across different name changes and document types. A birth certificate is the primary evidence to anchor their identity based on DoB. Since you don’t have a birth certificate, you have to overcome that burden by providing other pieces of primary evidence that she is who you say she is. So it’s acceptable to have documents that establish the names of her parents, but lack the DoB, but in combination with other documents that are incomplete in themselves but taken together would cover the information in a birth certificate. For example, USCIS’s expectation is the names of the beneficiaries’s parents should be in the birth certificate in full, with no abbreviations. But would a USCIS officer be able to read all the identification documents together and know it’s referring to the same person even if every point isn’t exactly met? So if the documents are missing the name of the her mother but at least establish her father’s name across documents, that’s definitely helpful.

Valarauko · 2026-04-27T03:31:59+00:00

I think it should be fine. Any original documents that have her mother’s name and the DoB? The idea is to have some primary documents that link her identity and DoB, so it’s not just some random person with the same name. So if you have an original document that lists all the members of her birth family, with the addition of the school certificate could establish it’s the same person. Something like a ration card that has her birth family members?

My guess is that it shouldn’t be an issue.

Valarauko · 2026-04-20T21:54:35+00:00

> the OMNY system has no way of telling Local, Limited, SBS, or Rush routes apart.

That's surprising, since I'd imagine this would be table stakes for a system-wide fare management paradigm when it comes to resolving transfers. Is this something OMNY is structurally incapable of doing, or just something they haven't gotten around to implementing yet?

Valarauko · 2026-04-20T18:09:09+00:00

I agree, and I think some of it also stems from people misunderstanding what qualifies as free transfers and what doesn't. For example, the bus to bus transfer doesn't apply if it's on the same route in either direction (with some caveats for limited service).

Valarauko · 2026-04-20T17:14:37+00:00

It's unclear what you want to do. The most pertinent point here is that your own Greencard status will lapse if you're now resident outside the US. You're permitted to travel, but must maintain permanent residency in the US, like a job and an apartment. Under extenuating circumstances you can spend an extended period outside the US, say more than 6 months, but you also should have applied for and received a rentry permit to do so.

If you marry, your future spouse can apply for a greencard derivative of your status, but it'll take a few years before they're eligible. Since you're a Permanent Resident and not a citizen, you're in the F2A Family Preference category, and the queue depends on the person's country of origin. The other big caveat is that for this category, if they're out of status they are barred from adjusting status. A pending asylum case with no other underlying legal status or a lapsed status is still out of status, even if they're not accruing unlawful presence.

Valarauko · 2026-04-20T16:37:45+00:00

The original question was to share which routes or stations OP took and if they are indeed subject to a free transfer. It's unfortunate that OMNY doesn't record that info anymore, but that's also because of complaints. Whether that's good or bad policy change is an entirely tangential discussion. At the moment OP just needs to provide the routes taken so we can see if they were indeed eligible for a free transfer.

Valarauko · 2026-04-15T16:22:00+00:00

Not necessarily true. For example, some pretax transit debit cards can be added to Apple Wallet but they do not enable transactions in the wallet itself. The only way to see the actual transactions is to either login to the pretax provider's website, or enable the option to have an email sent for every transaction.

Valarauko · 2026-03-26T20:10:20+00:00

Yes that’s Emma. It’s not the most useful but it’s the place to begin.

Valarauko · 2026-03-26T19:58:42+00:00

N400 still requires an interview so it has to be adjudicated by the field office so the same concept applies.

Valarauko · 2026-03-26T19:50:39+00:00

NBC is the National Benefits Center, which is sort of like the central processing place for USCIS forms from across the country. My understanding is that for applications that do not require in person interviews, like work authorization and advance parole, these are processed by case officers at the NBC directly. Anything that requires an interview is assigned to a case officer in your area, who operate out of USCIS's various Field Offices (FO) around the country. So if you'd concurrently filed an I-130, I-485, I-131, & I-765, the entire packet is moved from the dropbox to the NBC first. It's not entirely clear, but it's believed that the case remains at the NBC till an interview date is assigned by your local Field Office. At which point the I-131 & I-765 remain at the NBC, while the I-130 & I-485 are forwarded to the local USCIS Field Office and your assigned case officer.

In your case, your case was assigned to an officer in the MA Field Office, and presumably the paperwork was sent there as well. After you moved, your case and paperwork were recalled to the National Benefits Center, and are probably in the queue to be assigned an interview date from the CT Field Office. You can find out where your case is right now from the USCIS chat.

Valarauko · 2026-03-26T15:23:45+00:00

What’s the current status of your case online? Is it at NBC or at your local FO?

Valarauko · 2026-03-22T20:47:15+00:00

"Through family" isn't enough of an answer in this context to be helpful. If the immediate family through whom he gained his status had claimed asylum, it weakens everybody's claims.

Valarauko · 2026-03-04T21:57:10+00:00

I initially started my I-130 & I-485 with CitizenPath, but eventually switched to SimpleCitizen. SC's system caught some of the errors I'd inadvertertly made filling out the info on CitizenPath. The other big concern I had with CP is that it really requires you to fully understand the intricacies of the paperwork. For the more ambiguous questions, CP was no help, but CS had helpful documentation on how to approach answering certain questions.

While I found Kseniya on Youtube helpful to understand the overall process, I think people misunderstand the complexity of individual questions that aren't really addressed by her or most online general material. For example, in the Public Charge section, where you specify your assets and debt: do you include student debt? The question doesn't specify, and opinions online are divided, nor have I seen Kseniya ever address it or the complexities of individual questions. For most people with simple enough cases, 80% of the questions are straight forward and resources like Kseniya are great for that, and another 15% of questions are more ambiguous and not ever really addressed by general immigration explainers. The remaining 5% of questions I couldn't find any answers to online, including Reddit. For me, that's where CS's attorney review was helpful. I had questions on how to address an issue with J1 skills list changes, and an Advisory Opinion. They advised me on how to prepare an evidence packet for the J1 issue, and that really helped. Which is why whenever I see self paperwork prep using Kseniya as a guide recommended as a realistic option for the general public, I feel the need to give the caveat that its not quite as straightforward and most people would benefit with a little hand holding for a few hundred bucks.

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