US Immigration from India

I am a USC and filed I130 for both my parents who live in India.

My parents have a tourist visa that expires next year (2021) and have had it and traveled on it for 10 years now for 2 to 3 month durations every other year. No violations.

My father's I130 is approved and my mother's is pending. We do not want to move to the next step of NVC processing yet due to multiple reasons

1. We'd like both my parents to go through this step together so that they can both get the GC at around the same time.

2. For the interview, they would both need to travel to another city, which in the middle of a pandemic is a bad idea.

3. There is no rush for them to move the US at this time.

4. There aren't any immigration visas for families being processed at this time anyway.

The question at hand is, can we file for visitor visa renewal for them both given that their visas are about to expire and one has a pending I140 and the other has an approved one?

Hello All,

I printed a bunch of evidences in Color and wondering if Color is fine or B/w is required ?

Thanks,

DV

Hello,

Hope you all are safe.

I am in very tensed situation as my father passed away last month. Whats going to be next process for my mother?

my parents visa interview was on March23th at Mumbai consulate. Visa Interview was canceled due to Covid Lockdown in Mumbai and I received below email,

Hello all,

I am going to create this thread to document my entire journey from getting started to eventually getting PR for US.

Here is the plan right for now

• Apply for O1 Visa in next 6 months (Before April 2021 or so)
• Also apply for EB5 within 2021
• Extend O1 couple of times and hopefully get PR under EB5 by then

Here are some key points about my profile

• 32 year old male from India, married with a 6 year old kid
• Have B1/B2 visa for last 14 years and have been traveling regularly (couple of times a year)
• Have at least 12 years of running businesses and would be very comfortable investing $900,000 in a business that's run by employees/friends and i just oversee the operations

O1 Visa

I definitely think i have extra ordinary abilities in the field of business but i never bothered to document these and that's why i am going to take next 3-6 months to build a case and eventually apply for O1 Visa. Currently i have a company in US that was started last year and is very profitable business and the criteria i will try to hit for O1 are follow:

• Press articles in major media publications - i have cold email/call many journalists to write about my start up and my story and couple of them have already agreed, i think i should have first article in a NICHE publication by end of next week. The goal is to have at least 20 or so articles in the publications before applying for O1 Visa
• Judge an event or be on Panel - I have spent a lot of time in my industry and consider myself very knowledgeable in my field. I have a PR firm that is emailing/contacting events world wide in my industry to see if they will invite me to be a judge or on panel of such event.
• Membership in prestigious organizations - I have couple of VC firms that are already interested in investing the company but i hate to give up equity just for visa purposes. I do not need investment, i am happy to pour in my own money and just take the risk but i might have to do VC just for sake of Visa. I am also trying to contact other organizations for such memberships and should be able to get them, just not sure which ones are considered prestigious by Visa officers.

I do not know how i am going to handle the issue of having board of directors, since this is 100% owned by me at the moment. We will talk about it when we get there i guess. I am thinking if i do have board of directors, i might also be able to add the salary criteria making it 4 instead of 3 out of 8.

P.S. I am working with a very experienced O1 attorney that has a money back guarantee if the visa is not approved. Money back guarantee is not important but the fact that some of my friends worked with this attorney and got approval is good confidence booster.

EB5 visa

I have the money ready in my Bank accounts in India and i am trying to get some answers before i invest, here is my general take of EB5

• I do not want to go through a regional center, because of following reasons
  • They do not provide any return on investment. At this stage in my life i can not afford to put away a million dollars for 5 years without it making me anything.
  • I can do better with a Direct investment in all senses. Not only will i be able to generate profits, build brand and all, i might also be able to sell the business for worth alot more if i do not wish to run in after EB5 PR
  • The money is at Risk with EB5, you can lose it all and not get PR in some cases, chance of that happening are very low with direct investment, at least for me.
• Thoughts on direct investment businesses.
  • Gas station in State of Ohio - I know many owners who operates gas stations (between 1 to 25) and most of these owners are associates because of my other businesses and will be happy to help. But lately i have been learning its hard to build a gas station from scratch specially with approvals from the city/county.
  • Car wash in LA area - This is a fun one. One of my long term business associate is interested in running this project. So we are looking at building this from scratch and running it, plus this can easily hire 10 full time employees.
  • Bakery business - I was discussing EB5 with some one last night and they suggested i meet this bakery owner in central california who is running a very sucessful business for few years now with 50 or so employees. It will look something like this, i set up a company that buys the store, invest to get the business going and he runs the business. we will agree on fixed payout to me and everything else is his profit, i am guesstimating 10-20k a month
  • Franchise restaurant in ohio or california - This could be an easy option because it employs a lot of people and usually not that complicated to start. Blaze pizza comes to mind.
    
• Questions for EB5 - These are things i need to discuss with an attorney but if you guys have any answers, please suggest
  • Loan for EB5 - I Understand the money can be borrowed but does that mean i can bring lets say 500k from India and take 400k loan from US bank and it will be considered 900k at risk
  • Co signer - Since i do not have status in US, most of the banks won't be willing to lend anything to a C corporation i will be setting up but what happens if i get a co signer? Is that loan ok or are they now considered business owners and that not good for EB5.
  • Hard money - is that ok without co signer?
  • Jobs bank - If we build a business from scratch, lets say a car wash - How long does the construction jobs needs to be there to be considered as qualified 10 jobs for EB5?

I will continue to update this thread if and when i get updates.

Thank you

Hey everybody,

My wife got the dreaded call from the medical exam center (one of the ones in North India) 3 weeks after her Sputum exam submissions to come back to their office for consultation after a sputum test came back with results. Of course, the only results that can come within 3 weeks are a positive one. Opening this thread to share experience since all the TB content on this site so heavily leans toward the Philippines, where a large amount of people getting these tests done are positive to start.

We didn't expect TB but my wife has had various medical issues over the past year (coughing, back pain) which we've tried diligently to resolve but were never once suggested to take a test for TB. We were able to get wife's conditions to a manageable place with medicines and physical therapy and planned to get to USA to visit a doctor and knock these out for good. But the medical center found out for us, and we visited to discuss with the doctor. I have to add, the doctors and nurses were very nice and spent a lot of time answering our questions. And they made it clear to us... we just need to finish the treatment and go enjoy our new life after.

The treatment process is brutal - 6 months of daily medicines taken in front of doctor. Because the TB cases in India are less common, there aren't alternative locations other than the medical exam centers to complete the treatment. The embassy and CDC seem somewhat actively involved in these treatments from what I understand the doctor did mention asking permission from the embassy about one of the questions we had. I felt much more like my wife was being treated by Americans than the lousy medical experiences we've had in the past.

We start the medicines soon, along with all the other testing and consultations that come along with it.

If anybody *in india* has experience about TB treatment in Indian panel physician offices, please share your experience! I think from what the doctor told us, the medical centers catch about 2 cases a month.

*People in the Philippines, please don't use this tread as there are dozens if not hundreds of Philippines posts about sputum testing and TB treatment*

Wish us luck!