5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Trust Online Forums for Visa Advice
There are a lot of online forums and social media groups that center around immigration and visa issues. I’ve spent a fair amount of time lurking and posting in these groups over the years and while they can be a good place for people to commiserate, and as a former Visa Officer I’d like to offer five observations about the downsides of these groups that I think people looking for advice should be aware of.
Self Reporting Is Unreliable
Information on forums and groups is information that people choose to share. We can’t verify it since agencies don’t share individual applicant data. There is no way to know if someone sharing their story is telling the truth. Even if we assume people are being honest, we are relying on their interpretation / recitation of facts and events. This can be clouded by their own biases or desire to construct a particular narrative. This leaves us with a picture that is messy or incomplete at best, and fabricated at worst.
Rumors Abound
Government agencies rarely check on forums. This is mostly because they lack the resources to do so and because they are constrained in what they can say. The result is that rumors that emerge can persist and be treated as facts. I saw this all the time when I was a visa officer. People often came in for their interviews clearly relying on rumor and information they found online about what made a successful interview. Most of the time they were wrong. Depending on the rumor, this can annoy an interviewing officer and at worst can increase someone’s chance of being denied a visa. Unless someone posting on a forum has experience working for the State Department or USCIS or is an immigration attorney they most likely don’t know what they’re talking about.
Missing the Beach for the Sand
Many, though certainly not all, people who post on forums or online communities are there to share their stories with other people going through process. This can be well intentioned, but it causes a certain myopia in how advice or perspective is given. Just because you’ve been through the system once with your circumstances doesn’t mean you know how the system performs in all cases. I like to compare it to a beach. True, the beach is made of grains of sand and you may be able to describe a single grain very well. However, if you don’t know how to look at the grains of sand together or understand how they all fit together with the wind and the ocean, you’re not going to be able to identify the beach.
Not Everything Is Written Down
An attorney friend of mine shared an enlightening observation about the practice of law when people operate outside their established practice area. She told me, “You can read all the laws and study all the cases, but if you don’t know the culture of the Court, you won’t be effective.” This is profoundly true and applies to visas as well. Agencies all have their own cultures and unwritten rules. Unless you have spent time in that environment and understand how it affects decision making, you can’t provide a reliable perspective on how visas get approved.
Why Is It Free?
If somebody has something of value, they don’t give it away for free. Plumbers don’t show up at your house and volunteer to fix your sink. Designers don’t show up at your office and volunteer to update your company’s website. And while attorneys are obligated to do a certain amount of pro bono work as part of their bar membership, that work is reserved for those most in need. They don’t come to forums to give their expertise away. I know that a lot of people on forums want to be helpful, but they also know that what they have is not of sufficient value that they could put a price on it and offer it as a service. The old adage is true: you get what you pay for.
At the end of the day only you can make a decision about what is best for your case. Are you okay with free but unreliable advice? Should you get an expert opinion to put your mind at ease? Or should you invest in full representation? Each option has advantages and drawbacks and if you understand these clearly you’ll be equipped to make the best decision possible.