hi there succesful angloamerican unions

utopiacowboy says on Aug 25, 2004, 21:44:

This is my experience - back on March 30, 2004 when they still had open appointments for K visas and they gave you the visa the next day. This has since changed.

The embassy is a walled compound and you gain admittance through the gate using the open appointment letter that is sent with the packet. After you go through security screening, you enter an area outside the embassy that is like a large sunroom with a lot of chairs where everyone is wiaiting on the patio. There are some young women who can help direct you because at first it is kind of overwhelming and you don't know where to go or what to do. These young women also take a look at your forms to make sure they are properly completed. In our case, Gina had left some questions blank - she needed
to have N/A in the space.

Your name is also added to the list of waiting applicants - most of whom are immigrant applicants with maybe only a couple of K1 and K3 people.After a long wait, you are called to one of the windows where you speak through a telephone and hand the woman all of the documents. She goes through them putting them in a folder for each applicant (in our case 4 folders) and returning the documents which are not needed (the DS-230, the I-134s I had prepared for each child, my
baptismal certificate) and hands the folders back to the applicant.

After another wait, they call everyone to line up and we hand in our
folders. Now begins the really long wait for the "interview". Based on our experience with the "interview", I have to think that someone is examining the folders in the meantime. At various intervals people are called to the windows for their interviews. The entire process for us lasted from 7 am until 1 pm.

When Gina was called to the window, the woman did not even look at the documents in the folders. She asked Gina three questions. Had she ever been in the United States? Had she ever been in trouble with the law? What were the ages of the children? Of course the answers to these questions were all contained in the forms so
it made me wonder whether this was just a formality in our case and if it had not already been decided to grant the visas. After this, the woman said that they needed to do one last security check and she gave Gina a pink slip so she could return to the embassy at 3 pm the next day for the visas.

The next day we returned for the visas. This involved another 1 1/2 hour wait until Gina was called to the window and given the passports stapled to the brown envelopes. So that was it.

While we were waiting for the interview the day before an American man of about 60 spoke to me in English and asked me how many times I had been here. I replied in Spanish 5 times - I though he meant Colombia. He then said, no to the embassy since he had been there 3 times previously with his very young finance - she was about 24. Each time no visa had been granted but nothing said about whether they had been denied or not, just that they needed to return. This time they were successful but it made me wonder. They did not sit together or talk and when they left, they left separately. The next day we saw her alone at the time to get the actual visa. I kind of resented the man's inference that our situations were similar when he was talking to me and I spoke Spanish to him the entire time. At one point he asked me why I wasn't speaking English and I told him "No quiero". I feel a little guilty about it now.

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.

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emilyh says on Aug 26, 2004, 05:08:

visa experiences Is that all it takes to get a visa for your fiance/wife to go to the US?

If so, then Australia really needs to learn from them! My Boyfriend studied here for about 2 years, and decided to apply for permanent residency and in the meantime return to Bogota because his work prospects were better there than here at that time. Since that moment we have had his payment deducted twice ($000's) which we had to fix, they lost papers regarding his degree, and his Aussie and Colombian poilce checks which we then had to chase up again and eventually was rejected!!

I went over and spent 6 months in Cali with him and we thought we would be returning together to Australia, (oh yeah, it was all supposed to be done in 12 months and took about 18) I ended up returning in March to finish uni and am know waiting till January when I am finished and will go back!!

We've decided who needs Australia anyway! Our futbol league here is crap anyway!! :)

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argtat says on Aug 26, 2004, 09:26:

thanks well that sounds just like the day i got my own visa with my parents it seems things havent changed much. yes i was born in colombia and like they say there is nothing like the women from your homeland :)
any insight as to when and why they changed the process from next day to 7 to 10 days?
again thanks for the info and congrats on your success and your good taste in women lol
ps do you recall how lenghty is the process of gathering the documents she needed, was there any that took excesively long to be issued, ie police record birth certificates etc?

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utopiacowboy says on Aug 26, 2004, 11:59:

I guess they changed it because it was easier for them - the old way was much more convenient for the applicants. Since my wife lives in Medellin, collecting the documents was fast and easy. I have heard of people living in rural areas who had a much harder time getting them.

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.

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