Talking tough against fraudulent methods to obtain an American visa, the U.S. Consulate General here said it would not tolerate such practices and also warned genuine visa seekers from falling prey to touts.
“The proportion of false applicants (to genuine ones) is high. We have no tolerance for fraud documents and other fraudulent means to obtain a U.S. visa and we are highly successful in detecting them,” U.S. Consul General Andrew T. Simkin said.
Addressing a press conference here on the new online visa application procedure for a non-immigrant visa, “DS-160”, he said consular officers were “highly successful in detecting fraudulent documents and applicants with false stories.”
Simkin said 80 per cent of the applicants received visas while the rejections included both failure in meeting stipulated requirements as well as fraudulent methods to obtain the travel document.
Declining to quantify the number of fraudulent visa cases, he said some “honest” applicants fall prey to “visa-fixers”, who managed to trick gullible applicants by misleading them with wrong facts regarding documents and the interview.
“Be honest and meet all requirements,” chief of the Consular section, Bryan Dalton, said adding that the Consulate was working with the Tamil Nadu Government officials against visa fraud.
On the salient features of applying for a visa through the form DS-160, he said it was a “more streamlined, efficient and smart process which required less paperwork as against the previous procedures.”
