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My situation:

I'm a British citizen, living and working in England. I run my own small limited company which I'm very much committed to keeping. My boyfriend is American and has moved back to live in California. I want to apply for a 6 month tourism visa so I can visit him and stay with him for a while.

I genuinely plan to return to the UK once my 6month period is up.

I have a visa application meeting in London in a couple of weeks and I don't want to be rejected.

My questions:

  • What sort of questions will they be asking me?
  • Should I tell them that I want to stay with my boyfriend for a while or will this be deemed as suspicious?
  • Has anyone else had a similar experience?
  • What else will I need to prove to them?
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  • Do you have enough ties back home ? How do you prove that ? What is your annual income ? Who is going to be sponsoring the trip ?
    – happybuddha
    Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 16:09

2 Answers 2

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Generally people at the consulate are interested in one thing and one thing only:

  • Is this immigration or tourism or in other words: WILL YOU LEAVE?

So here are the points of concern as was put to me previously by an immigration lawyer.

  • A Single Woman going to visit a single man is a point of concern.
  • If you're running a business you intend on keeping why are you leaving it for 6 months?

Now to answer your last question: You will generally need to prove to them that you have more to come back to then to leave behind.

So the questions are generally asked to that effect.

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  • OK - I'll start thinking about my answers now. Do you think they'll have an issue with me saying that I'll be doing some remote (online) work for my UK business while I travel?
    – Tracey
    Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 19:11
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    @Tracey You should consider that this may not fit under the tourist visa.
    – Karlson
    Commented Jul 9, 2013 at 2:07
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    You'll probably have to address the question of what work you're going to do regardless. They'll probably ask how the business will survive while you're in the US. At that point you better have a good answer. So you should look into exactly what (if any) work you can do for your business while on US tourist visa.
    – Joel
    Commented Apr 27, 2016 at 19:47
  • For what it's worth - when my Dutch wife came to visit me on a visa waiver, she never had any trouble getting in telling the border agent "coming to visit my husband". So the bar to visit a boyfriend probably isn't so high, though the visa is different.
    – Joel
    Commented Apr 27, 2016 at 19:50
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They will ask you:

  • why do you want to visit the US?
  • do you own property in your home country?
  • do you have a job and family in your home country?
  • how will you pay for your visit? (will you take your own funds to the U.S.)

These questions are designed to ascertain how much incentive you have to return to your home country versus how much incentive you may have to overstay your visa. The fact that you have a boyfriend in the U.S. would be a slight red flag, but would be negligible if you demonstrate to them that you have your own business in the U.K. to which you are obligated to return.

As long as you make it clear you will not be doing business in the U.S. (i.e. earning US dollars working for an employer there), then it doesn't matter that you work remotely on your UK business.

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