Made a huge mistake on my US visa DS-160. Now I'm stuck in "Refused" 221g limbo. What can I do?

[B1B2VisaQuestion 0]

I am a German citizen who has not left the EU and Germany for more a decade. But I have an Iranian background. Due to this, I cannot travel to the US via a waiver program. So I recently applied for a B1/B2 Visa. Except having an Iranian background, all is normal with me. But to convince the interview officer I brought my bank slip showing a huge amount of cash, hundreds of times above the travel cost to the US, my rental contract, salary slips, resume,... everything you can imagine to the interview which happened in Frankfurt, Germany.

Note that I told you I have an Iranian background. It means before being German, I was born in Iran and was raised there and only as an adult could I leave Iran. With these facts comes the next question: an Iranian male can never leave Iran (they never allow him) until he does his compulsory national service.

So I was forced like anyone else to do my national service in the Iranian army (Artesh) before being allowed to leave Iran.

But now the US doesn't care that I am a normal citizen of Germany. Instead it purely sees me as trouble for being an Iranian male.

When I was in the Iranian army (Artesh) I was the worst soldier you can imagine. I genuinely am not a type of man who can use something called a gun. I cannot genuinely kill a bird. I have zero talent in it. In the army I was super afraid of the noise of gunshots and they merely asked me to hold a gun as I was miserable at doing it. I never touched a gun as such except for 2 or 3 days of compulsory shooting. They were not marked so they wouldn't care if you hit the target or not. Basically you had to show you can withstand the loud noise and empty like 10 bullets into the air and then it was the next one's turn. Again, every Iranian male has to do this and most do it much better but I was very horrible at it. But yes, I was still a normal draftee at most. I say this because on the DS-160 form there is a question: "did you have advanced training such as firearms and like that?" I asked Gemini what to answer to this question and it said due to your limited training as a draftee in the Iranian army by touching a gun, you have to answer YES to this. So to your surprise, I ended up claiming on the form I have advanced firearm training by ticking the option. I argued with Gemini for half an hour that this would be wrong but it STRONGLY rejected my argument and decisively asked me to just tick the option YES and it KNOWS it and it is correct as such.

So I ticked this option yes even though I clarified that "it was just part of my military training and was nothing else". But as I said, I checked this option and answered yes but later I learned checking this option causes a lot of trouble down the road.

On the interview day, the officer had no issue with my massive amount of money and ties to Germany. He was nice but we didn't speak much as he had to refuse my application based on 221g. He didn't call it a refusal though and said they need to process my case further and he asked me to send him the copy of my military service completion card and its translation plus the form DS-5535. Once they have these and processing is done, and my visa is ready "which can take weeks", they will inform me to send my passport so I get the visa.

Now it has been 3 weeks and I still have not heard back anything. On the CEAC website it simply says "refused".

I asked the same Gemini again which now says I made a mistake to answer yes to the advanced firearm question!!! and now my case will take a long time to process (stupid AIs, but yes, they can change their own recommendations!) Now all AIs I ask say I made a MISTAKE by answering yes! Long story short, the AIs now estimate it will take up to 6 months until I hear back from them and do not rule out not hearing until 12 months or even not hearing back at all!

What should I do in this case?

Edited 4 hours ago by B1B2VisaQuestion

[TBoneTX 49,055]

Welcome to the forum!

 

Never EVER rely solely on AI for immigration questions.  AI pulls from many sources, often incorrect ones.

 

All that you can do is wait.  Give it, say, 3 more weeks, then politely e-mail the consulate to inquire about an update, with your identifying information in the Subject line.  That's it.  Keep us apprised.

[appleblossom 5,731]

Just being from Iran is likely enough to trigger lengthy AP. Remember that most Iranians can’t get any visa because of Trumps visa ban - you’re lucky with dual nationality but it shows the restrictions that are being put on Iran.

 

If it’s AP for background checks then there’s nothing you can do but wait it out, yes it can take months or even years.
 

FWIW, I think you answered the question correctly. It doesn’t say advanced training. But it does ask about training ‘such as firearms’ and you told the truth and said yes. Answering no would have been a lie.