Montreal December 2011 Interviews

[nickoxxy 2]

My medical is this Monday, Dec 5th (Toronto), and my K1 interview is the following Monday at 8am. Nervous, excited and anxious all at the same time.

Wish me luck, and good luck to all of you as well.

Well, good luck at medical (it was piece of cake for my wife in Toronto as well) and wish you to hear these words at interview: "Welcome to the USA!

[reymets10 5]

This will be kind of long since a lot of stuff happened. It will be a mixed post of the interview review and just some other things that happened to us while in Montreal.

Our case is slightly different than most on the Canadian forum. I am the petitioner but my fiancee is a filipino that has been working in Canada for over 3 years. Due to this I believe our interviewer was a little more skeptical of us than what he would have been toward a Canadian citizen. More on this later...

Our initial interview date was November 28th. They put us in some sort of review and cancelled our initial appointment after I had already bought airline tickets/hotel stay. I emailed them to find out why and never did get anything besides which seemed like a canned response. Either way, our review was over a day later and I was able to book a Dec 1st appointment which allowed me to keep my travel plans. I live in California and flew to Michigan to spend Thanksgiving with my family before leaving on Saturday to spend time with my fiancee. She lives in Ottawa and we drove to Montreal on Tuesday to pick up her medical results and look around the city. My flight was for Dec 2nd at 6am out of Detroit. So having the appointment Dec 1st I knew I would be tight on time to drop her back off in Ottawa, drive to Mid Michigan (around the Flint area) to drop the car off and be taken to the airport (75 minutes away) in time to make my flight.

Due to the time restraints I wanted to make sure we were the first in line to be the first interviewed so I could get on the road. We stayed at the L'apartmente Hotel and it was right across the street from the Medisys and only a 15 minute walk from the consulant. We left the hotel the morning of the interview and got to the consulant by 6:35am. It was a cold morning and the wind was blowing pretty hard down the street. We were the first in line and no one else showed up until 7:15am. At 7:30am the guard opened the door and let us in first. There was a lady off to the left that checked Dodelyn's appointment letter and compared it to her list. We were not on her list. She stepped out a moment and came back and said she cannot let us in until she checks with "somebody upstairs" to verify we were suppose to be there and she cannot do that until 8am. Lots of other people are now coming in the door and being let up the stairs and we had no idea how many were K-filers so we didn't know how many spots we lost initially. About 40 minutes later there were about 6 people standing with us and after talking to all of them we were all K-1 filers that had rescheduled our appointment. After talking to the women by the door she let us know that they print out the lists weeks in advance because "they were not suppose to change". So if you rescheduled your appointment you might have this problem of not being on the list.

Around 8am we asked the lady again if she checked with someone upstairs yet. She let us know "the systems were down" and there is no way for them to verify that we should be there since we were not on that list. It wasn't until about 9:45am that they finally let us in the building. After going through security, which has been accurately described as being like in an airport, but not needing to take off shoes, we were able to go into a side door. As a side note, don't bring anything bigger than something to carry your documents in. The guard was turning everyone away that had any sort of bag that was larger than a small purse. Clear bags that held paperwork were being let in. I watched the guard turn people away for 2+ hours, it is NOT a good idea to bring any sort of bag if it can be avoided.

After the screening process we went through a door on the left side of the screening machine. You have to push the door and then pull to get it to open (there is a note on it telling you this). You walk down some stairs and come to a room with an elevator. This is where you can get Passport photo's taken for $10 if you need to. Get in the elevator and go to floor 23. You exit out of the back of the elevator when you get there so stand to the back left. When you come out of the elevator you can look at the ground and see arrows. This will lead you to window 14B where you pick up your number after presenting your appointment letter.

We were called almost immediately even though we were C10. We went back together to talk to the first person and he informed us that the computer systems were still down and he wasn't sure if we would get an interview that day. He took our paperwork and told us to sit back down in the waiting area. At this time it was around 10:30am. Around 10:45am numbers were being called out of sequence and we were getting frustrated as some of the numbers called were for people that came in after us. After talking with some people there it turns out they were trying to convince all interviewees who lived in Montreal to reschedule as they still had to ETA on when the systems would be up.

Around 12:30pm the systems came back up and Dodelyn was called to get her fingerprints done and to give them addiitonal paperwork (police clearances mainly and letter of intent). We were told to sit back down but we were now happy since the computer systems were back up and running. Around 1:30pm we got called for our interview window 17 (I think). We were interviewed by a man wearing a sweater vest with a full goatee and he was getting grey hair. He was very nice and made conversation at the beginning to try to make us comfortable.

He asked us to wait a minute while he went through all the paperwork. he said everything looks great (made me feel good since I did it all) and then asked these questions...

1. Tell me about your relationship. He wanted to know how we met.

2. How does a relationship stay strong over such a long distance?

3. He then specifically asked me where I work and what I do for a living.

4. How long have you been dating?

5. Have our families met?

6. What do our families think of our relationship?

7. What are our wedding plans?

It seems as if I might be missing a question or two. I also thought that they only wanted to hear the beneficiary answer questions. I actually answered the majority of them. He seemed to look at me while asking the questions so I assumed he was directing them to me so I answered. My fiancee probably answered two questions only. He then pulled out the Welcome to USA letter and told us we were approved! I believe he was very skeptical of us at first but I believe there were two key questions we answered that won his opinion. When he asked how long we have been dating we both replied, almost in unison, "almost 3 years". He was noticeably shocked by our answer and even said "Really? Three years?". When he asked about our wedding plans I told him that we were intially planning a March wedding but decided to move it to January because we had family flying in from out of state for Christmas. If they flew in for Christmas they would most likely not be able to fly in for the wedding. Since we wanted everyone to attend we moved it up for them. So I think the length of relationship and family involvement in the wedding went a long way to our approval.

We were out of there around 2:00pm. Things didn't go as smoothly as we wanted but the important thing is we got our approval! There is no way I could have done this without this website so Thank You to everyone that responded to my questions, Thank You to everyone that posted their experiences (good and bad) that helped us, and Thank You to everyone that asked questions that I haven't even thought about! Thank you so much!

[pocheros 101]

Congrats!!! I have a question though... You said floor 23, but I thought there was only one button that went to floor 19?

[reymets10 5]

Congrats!!! I have a question though... You said floor 23, but I thought there was only one button that went to floor 19?

Youre right. I put the wrong floor and I cannot edit my post to make it correct.

[thursdayschild 0]

Well, as we speak I'm sitting in a hotel room in Montreal waiting anxiously for tomorrow! I'm nervous and it's been a rough couple days, but wish me luck! Anyone else got an appointment Dec 8th?

[Bryan+Christine 1]

MY Appointment is on Monday Dec 12th, 8am. Taking the greyhound Sunday morning, booked a room at Holiday Inn select about a block from the consulate.

Nervous, anxious and excited all in 1.

I wish you luck!

[Bryan+Christine 1]

Hello all,

I had my interview today, in Montreal, and I was APPROOVEDD!!!

Thank you all for your help. I greatly appreciate it!

Weeeeeee!!!

[ralyse 31]

Hello all,

I had my interview today, in Montreal, and I was APPROOVEDD!!!

Thank you all for your help. I greatly appreciate it!

Weeeeeee!!!

Congratulations!!

[Holly&Frank 0]

Hi there,

I have my interview on Friday, 16 Dec, 8am.

Is there anyone else here that has had a Dec interview that has arrived much earlier than their scheduled interview and had them not take people first come, first served? I have been reading every post about all the November interviews and it seemed that people were arriving any time after 6:30 am for 8 am interviews, and that they were taking people in the order they arrived.

After reading all of that, I was planning on arriving at 6:45 to wait till 7:30 when they open the doors. Am I being crazy?

[pocheros 101]

Hi there,

I have my interview on Friday, 16 Dec, 8am.

Is there anyone else here that has had a Dec interview that has arrived much earlier than their scheduled interview and had them not take people first come, first served? I have been reading every post about all the November interviews and it seemed that people were arriving any time after 6:30 am for 8 am interviews, and that they were taking people in the order they arrived.

After reading all of that, I was planning on arriving at 6:45 to wait till 7:30 when they open the doors. Am I being crazy?

You won't get turned away for an 8am interview. 6:45 am sounds like the perfect time to show up. I showed up around 6:10am for an 8:30am interview and no one else showed up till around 6:45am.

Edited December 15, 2011 by pocheros