Rejected for US B1/B2 visa today in Singapore — trying to understand what may have gone wrong
(24M) Indian citizen currently working in Singapore. Moved here in Jan 2026 through an internal transfer with the same company. Been with the firm for almost 2 years overall.
Applied for a US B1/B2 visa in Singapore for a short tourism trip (~10 days in July). Planned to take 1 week leave and combine it with weekends. Tentative itinerary was New York + Miami (though I didn’t get a chance to mention this during the interview). In my DS160, I had also mentioned one of my cousins who works in Seattle.
Interview was extremely fast paced (so I got very little opportunity to elaborate on some answers), probably under 2 minutes.
Q. have you been mistreated ever in Singapore or India
Ans: no
Q. how long have you been in Singapore
Ans: 5 months, I moved here in January
Q. were you working with the same company
Ans: yes, it was an internal transfer from India to Singapore
Q. how long have you been with this firm
Ans: completing 2 years next month
Q. why do you want to go to the US
Ans: have a short vacation of about 10 days. I’ll take 1 week leave from job and combine it with 2 weekends
Q. do you have family in US
Ans: no immediate relatives, but one of my cousins works at Amazon in Seattle. I might not even visit him given the huge distances
Q. are you afraid to move back to India at any point
Ans: no
Result: immediate refusal, and I was handed a generic document to go through.
A few additional points:
- Prior travel history includes Schengen visa (Denmark exchange program), UAE, Sri Lanka and Malaysia
- I was not asked for any documents
- Officer did not ask about finances, salary, hotel bookings, etc.
Trying to understand what may have gone wrong here. Do you think the main issue was:
- only being in Singapore for ~5 months,
- not looking “settled” enough yet,
- or something in my answers/interview style?
Also:
- does a B1/B2 refusal like this hurt chances of future F1/student visa or L1 visa applications?
- when would you recommend reapplying?
- and would it be better to reapply from Singapore or India?