US Tourist Visa (B1/B2) Interview Questions — and How to Answer Them
What the officer is actually deciding
A B1/B2 tourist visa interview lasts two to five minutes. In that window a US consular officer is not grading your English or your paperwork — they are making one judgement, required of them by law: are you likely to return home when your trip ends?
Under Section 214(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, every applicant is presumed to be an intending immigrant until they show otherwise. You do not have to prove anything beyond reasonable doubt. You have to give the officer enough — about your trip, your money, and your reasons to come home — that the presumption no longer holds. Every question below is a different angle on that single decision.
What gets asked — and what each one tests
The mistake that sinks strong applicants
The fix is not memorising a script — rehearsed answers sound rehearsed, and officers discount them. The fix is knowing your own facts cold so that every answer, asked in any order, points to the same true picture of your life.
Weak answer vs strong answer
Strong answers are short, specific, and true. They name a number, a date, a place, a person. They never over-explain — a long answer to a short question signals anxiety, and anxiety invites follow-ups.
Practise it before it counts
Reading the questions is not the same as answering them out loud, under time, while a stranger watches. Opaige runs a full mock B1/B2 interview with an AI consular officer — voice or video — then scores where your answers were strong, where you hesitated, and where your story stopped agreeing with itself. Run it until the answers are steady.