From consulate to POA

[Firstenburg 0]

My wife's interview was the 13th, and her visa was cleared. I went down to Rio last week to surprise her, a week earlier than she was expecting. We spent 2 days there and came home. It's worthwhile to tell you what happened with the consulate, and at the POE (port of entry) in Atlanta, because for us, everything we thought would be easy was hard, and what we thought would be hard was easy.

First, receiving our visa from the consulate was delayed. My wife's interview was on the 13th so we planned to travel a whole week afterward, since we had been told by the consulate to give them 5 days to print and deliver the passport/visa. We bought tickets to leave on Friday the 20th. If you read my other post about surprising my wife, you know that I paid extra to bump our date up a week after the consulate changed our interview date underneath us from the 20th to the 13th.

So I expected that getting our visa would be no problem. However on the morning we were supposed to leave, we had still not received our visa. We went to the consulate and were treated very rudely! We were told it was our own fault for buying tickets before we had the visa in hand. We were also told that the cause of the delay was a printer malfunction at the consulate. We began to fret! But we got the visa about 10 or so hours before our departure. All of our friends who have gone through this only waited 2-3 days to receive the visa.

Then we came to the US via Atlanta. Immigration and customs was a sinch! We spent no more than 15 minutes waiting in customs, to be cleared. I heard that process was longer, and they interview your immigrant spouse in a separate room for hours. That was not the case. I have heard that LA, Dallas, and Miami are bad. Atlanta was easy!

Anyhoo we're home now and life has begun!!! We are so happy!!

[Thai family 0]

There's no place like home. Enjoy!

[000 0]

Glad to hear it !!!!!!!!!! I wonder which POE we will use, I dont really want to go to Miami after what happened to me last week. They asked me questions for about 30 minutes, where I lived, where I lived before that, before that , etc etc. This was the first time that I have had any problems with Miami customs but still makes me nervous because if customs delays you for 1-24 hours and you miss your flight that is not the airports problem so you will end up buying new tickets. I am a born and raised American citizen from a family of born and raised Americans since the country started and they gave me problems so I can only imagine what they do to people that are not American. I think Ill try to go to Atlanta or DC.

[Precious 2]

Congratulations! It is soooo goood to be with the one we love isn't it? I've just arrived from Rio too, and finally I`m home with my guy.

God bless you!