Canada Visa Purpose for H1B Stamping at US Consulate

[pratikrgandhi22]

Hi,

I need to travel outside of US for my H1-B stamping - this will be the first time I'm getting it stamped. My manager is asking me to get it done from Canada. I am right now in the process of applying for Canadian visa and was wondering what should the purpose of travel be - Tourism, Business or Other?

Another issue is that although I'm currently working on my STEM OPT (valid until October), my student F-1 visa has expired on June 24, 2019. From what I know, I won't be allowed to re-enter into US with this expired visa, would this be an issue in obtaining Canada Visa? If my H1 visa does get stamped then I definitely will have a valid active visa for re-entry.


Regards,
Pratik

 

[lampbreaker]

Hi,

I need to travel outside of US for my H1-B stamping - this will be the first time I'm getting it stamped. My manager is asking me to get it done from Canada. I am right now in the process of applying for Canadian visa and was wondering what should the purpose of travel be - Tourism, Business or Other?

Another issue is that although I'm currently working on my STEM OPT (valid until October), my student F-1 visa has expired on June 24, 2019. From what I know, I won't be allowed to re-enter into US with this expired visa, would this be an issue in obtaining Canada Visa? If my H1 visa does get stamped then I definitely will have a valid active visa for re-entry.


Regards,
Pratik

If you enter other, you will have to provide interview appointment details. Interview appointments are not very easily available for third country nationals (non Canadians/non Canadian PRs), there will be a wait time for at least few months. Moreover, you can get stuck in Canada if it goes into administrative processing or something. So be prepared to spend at least about a week and potentially more in Canada. If you want you can make a tourism trip out of it and do some sightseeing while you are there. Since, you have a valid H1B petition, attach that to your Canada Visa application and most likely Canada will not have any issues with that.

In general, you don't need a valid US Visa in order to return from Canada from a trip shorter than 30 days. However, if you apply for a US Visa while in Canada (which you will), you cannot avail of this automatic Visa revalidation facility. So essentially, you will not be able to return to US unless you have the valid Visa in your passport.