5 - How to Get a Visa for the United States

This is the fifth installment of Heartland Immigration's 101 page e-book, How to Get a Visa for the United States.

How to Apply for Your Visa

By this point you know (i) whether you need a visa at all (which is determined by whether you're a passport holder of a visa-waiver country and what your purpose of travel is) and (ii) what kind of visa you need. The next step is actually applying for your visa. To do this, you've first got to know where to apply.

Where to Apply for Your Visa

It's critical that you apply for a visa to the right embassy or consulate. Messing up in this regard, and trying to get a visa from the incorrect embassy or consulate, will set you up for failure. While the various visa applications are all the same, and you can (and indeed must) fill out the main form (the one for short-term tourism or business visits, the DS-160) online, these applications get routed to a particular embassy or consulate. As is explained in more detail below, where you seek your visa can also greatly affect your chances for success.

But how do you know where to apply? As a general rule, you should apply to the embassy or consulate closest to where you live, within your country. It's important to note that you should apply in your own country, even if you actually live closer to a consulate or embassy in another country. As a consular officer who has denied people at interviews based almost entirely on the fact that they live in another country, I can tell you with confidence that this is a mistake you don't want to make. Note that I said the "apply to the embassy or consulate nearest to you in your country" is a general rule – you really don't need to know the details regarding the exceptions. If one applies to the closest embassy/consulate nearest them in their own country and one of the exceptions indeed does apply, the embassy or consulate will let you know and will route your application to the correct embassy/consulate, at no detriment to you (meaning, they won't deny you or anything bad like that based on this).

Where are these embassies and consulates? Check out the list below, courtesy of the U.S. Department of State (which runs these embassies and consulates), and can be found at www.usembassy.gov. It's arranged by region - Africa, The Americas, East Asia & Pacific, Europe and Eurasia, Middle East & North Africa, Central & South Asia - and then by country, and finally, where there's more than one mission in that country, by city.

The great thing about the webpage from which this list was drawn, www.usembassy.gov, is that on that page these listings are all links to the actual embassy or consulate website. One thing that's especially convenient for many people is the offering of some of these web-pages (or at least parts of them) in the local language. You'll see next to some of the city names a separate link in the (or in some cases, one of several) languages spoken in that country – you can click on that link to see the page in that language.

If you're still not sure to which embassy or consulate you should apply after having a look at the chart below, you can contact a few that you think might be correct to ask. Just tell them where you live and what your purpose of travel is, and they'll tell you where to apply. To do this, click on the link on the website that says "Visas," and you should be able to find an e-mail address and phone number for the consular section, which is the office with which you need to speak to inquire about visa-related matters.

What's in a Name? The Difference Between an Embassy and a Consulate

You've by now seen many times reference to an "embassy or consulate," denoting that they're two different things. So what's the difference? Both are diplomatic missions that represent their country before the country in which they're located, but an embassy is the primary provider of this function. An embassy is located in a country's capital city (some exceptions apply), and is where the U.S. ambassador works. The ambassador is the President's personal representative to the country in which he works, and is the head of the embassy. There's only one embassy in each country. The U.S. has embassies in just about every country. Consulates, on the other hand, are kind of like satellites for the embassy; representation in other important cities in a given country. They perform fewer diplomatic services normally than embassies, with more of a focus on consular affairs, meaning visa work and helping U.S. citizens. The U.S. has zero consulates in some countries and multiple consulates in others (where multiple consulates are present, the main one is called a Consulate General). The greatest number of consulates is to be found in Mexico: the U.S. has an embassy in Mexico City and then ten consulates throughout the rest of the country. Almost all embassies and consulates provide visa services, meaning the distinction between the two really doesn't matter in terms of where visa-seekers should apply – you should apply to whichever is closer to you, as long as it's in your country. Note that you may hear people refer to a consulate within an embassy. They're actually referring to the consular section within an embassy.

About the Author

By Brad Menzer - Brad blogs regularly for Heartland Immigration. You can contact him at: info@heartlandimmigration.com