My son got his I20 from UIUC and got his F1 visa for 5 years in June. Now he has received his admit from HKUST. He wants to opt for HKUST. I have been advised by his education counsellor to just inform the university and the university shall inform the U.S. Consulate. Can someone confirm this.
Also, I hope this does not impact his chances of getting the F1 visa when he applies for his MS after 4 years as that is his current plan.
Also, can he apply for a tourist visa in December as we are planning a holiday?
My B-I-L lost his visa after marrying my sister (a US Citizen) while he was still outside the US.
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This is not surprising at all. US has some very strange green-card rules (situation regarding non-citizen spouse is even more convoluted). I have a colleague who married a non-citizen wife - she could not get a visa to US for years while she was applying for green-card through him.
Many years ago, my roommate was applying for green-card via work. During this process, he could not leave the country for years because there was a chance that the visa back to US may not be forth coming once he left the US soil. However, he finally got a new US visa via Mexico. Apparently, his existing legal status was good enough for coming through Mexico (in the event that his new visa was denied). This was incredibly weird. Even the US consul general in that particular Mexican city did not know about this rule. He came out and chatted with my roommate (the consul general was curious because he did notice a spike of visa applications at his consulate from people already living legally in US). He was bemused by all this and told my roommate to send people his way because he would make sure that his staff would process these application quickly.
I believe a student visa is very different. When I was an international student, I routinely had my old (still valid) US visa cancelled in order to get a new (longer) one. The US consulate would stamp some big letters on my old visa like: “cancelled without prejudice”. Just talk to the US consulate - I am pretty sure they will say the same thing.
Is HKUST a non-U.S. school? If so, then you will need to contact UCIC’s international student office to tell them he will not attend any U.S. school … will cancel his SEVIS record (if he was attending another U.S. school, they would transfer his record instead of canceling it). I couldn’t find contact information on UCIC’s site, but I imagine your son has some contact information for someone in UCIC’s international student office. He should also inform the UCIC admissions office that he will not attend.
I am PDSO for my school. I have never heard that choosing not to attend school in the U.S. after getting a visa will negatively impact chances for a visa later on. I can’t promise that, but I doubt it does.