The Interview



On the day of our interview, we arrived at the consulate about 15 minutes early. We were told that we should show up at EXACTLY 8:30, and that they’d come get us from outside. My husband wasn’t allowed to come inside the building with me, but there were several other people in the same 8:30 group as me. Here’s how it went once we were inside:


- We did “security” in the tiniest little area. We weren’t allowed phones (which I knew, they told us beforehand), so people who had phones had to give them to the security people till after the interview.


- We went upstairs to a large waiting room, where there were about 40 people already waiting (I guess the consulate opens at 7:30am).


- I waited for about 2 hours before I was called to a window (think the ticket booth at a ball game) to hand over my original documents. I had to give her my passport, birth certificate, marriage certificate, police check. She also asked for my medical exam results, which I did not have because the turnaround had been so tight, and with the holidays, everything was closed. She noted that I was missing it, and told me to sit back down and wait to be called again for my interview.


- Another hour and a half or so, and I was called up for my interview at a different window. She asked me a few questions, like “How did you and your husband meet?”, “How often do you get to see each other?”, “What does he do for a living?”, “What kind of company does he work for?” And then talked to me about my medical packet. Because I didn’t have it, but my case was otherwise ready to be approved, she had to officially refuse my visa application, and gave me a sheet outlining what I had to do to fix it.


-At this point, I asked if they would still hang onto my passport, and she said they could, but that she didn’t recommend it for a couple reasons: First, it didn’t make sense to separate my medical results and my passport from the get-go. It seemed like it might get lost more easily. Second, she said they could have it for months, and maybe I had travel plans. This didn’t make a ton of sense to me, since I obviously was just going to mail it the second I got home and had my medical results, but I didn’t think it would make sense to argue with a consular officer. I was sort of alarmed, though, as they say it usually gets back to you within 2 to 3 weeks. But because my visa application was refused, it could be months? This didn’t really make sense, but what could I change in that moment?





- Normally, if your visa is approved on the spot, they’ll hold onto your passport so that they can process it and put the visa in the back and mail it to you.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Wait

Before I left the interview, I asked the consular officer what kind of information I could have on getting my visa approved and what would happen when it was. She gave me a sheet of paper outlining the steps for mailing my packet and also a sheet that they normally give people whose visas are approved on the spot. It included a link for where to go to check on the status of my application. I logged in to see what it looked like, and it said “Administrative Processing, updated January 6”. It stayed this way until January 29, when it updated to “Administrative Processing, updated January 29”. It was updated again a few days later, and then in late February, it changed to “Issued”. A few days later, I received an email that said my passport had been shipped, and that I should use the Canada Post tracking info from then on. When I got notified that it was at the post office, I headed down right away and picked it up. I had to show ID (just my driver’s, because obviously I didn’t...
Read more

Advice for Immigrants!

A few pieces of advice that I’ve gained from this experience: If your case is pretty simple (first marriage for both of you, no children, no crimes, etc.), you probably don’t need to pay for a lawyer. There are other, considerably less expensive services that help you through some of the issues you might have (the biggest challenge is the submitting of the initial form to USCIS--we were thankful we had Boundless to help us with that one). After that, the instructions are pretty clear from the US government itself. Every piece of paper, every test, every form, everything has a price tag. We were constantly coughing up $150, $250, $700, $1200 for every step of the way. Be prepared that it is a PRICEY endeavour to immigrate, and if you’re cross-border dating, I recommend starting a separate savings account for immigration costs. Not to mention the travel you will have to do unless you’re lucky enough to live in Montreal. Move heaven and earth to get your medical results to your int...
Read more

Form I-190

This form is used to establish that a relationship between a US citizen or permanent resident and an “alien” (non-American) exists. We had to submit a lot of “proof” of our relationship, including photos (Instagram screenshots are great because they’re already dated!), notarized letters from friends, travel itineraries with both your names on them (just one person’s plane ticket to the other one’s city is not sufficient, apparently), and other documents. For example, my husband and I made each other the beneficiaries on our life insurance policies. Something to note: when I uploaded a copy of my birth certificate to Boundless (as proof of my Canadian citizenship), they told me I needed the “long form” copy of it, with both my parents’ names on it. I have never had this document, so I had to pay the province of Ontario to find it in their archives and issue it to me. Boundless helped us submit this by sending the entire document to us (including the proof we’d uploaded). Their ...
Read more