success story: Valeria
By Keith on Jun 14, 2018
Valeria came to the United States with a tourist visa to improve her English and see the United States. After her arrival, she decided to stay and enroll in English school with the hope of going to graduate school. She contacted Keith Southam at Southam Law to help with a change to student status.
Keith advised her that she would have to send two applications: one to extend tourist status and another to change to student status. This was necessary because immigration officials would take several months to approve the change of status. Valeria’s tourist status had to be valid during this time. The extension request was approved without problems. But initially, immigration officials did not want to approve the application to change status. They wanted proof that Valeria would return to her home country and that her family had enough money to pay for school.
Keith helped Valeria and her family collect and translate invoices and recent documents from her country of origin, as well as bank statements from the US. The strategy was successful. Valeria is now in student status and can focus on her studies.
(Names changed for privacy purposes.)