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| Manila, Philippines |  Review on December 4, 2006: |
DaveHorton
Rating:  | Review Topic: IR-1/CR-1 Visa
Interactions with the interviewers were professional, thorough, and relatively painless. In the process of petitioning, and waiting, the Embassy was less than perfect in maintenance of the documentation and in communicating. Detail follows, overall I'd say a 4 out of 5, but I'm in a good mood right now 'cos we just got approved.
During the I130 petition process, the embassy lost our annullment originals plus other important docs in an LBC delivery that was signed-for by their mail room clerk. Main cost was time as we all were sitting waiting, they for our papers, and us for their response.
Then the "packet 3" as it used to be called was "lost in the mail", another loss of time for us.
Our congresswoman's staff requested an early interview for us, and the embassy granted 2 weeks advance. But when we got there today (at 6:20am) we were not on the list. We persuaded the guards to let us in. Called to Window X (not a good thing), we were informed that our medical was missing and we needed to provide a DS230I application to proceed. Well of course we had done the medical at St Lukes, and of course we had previously filled in the DS230I because without it we would not be attending the damn interview. The attendant seemed to accept that St Lukes information must be around somewhere, and he accepted the copy of our original app that I was lucky to be carrying with me.
Did the finger scanning thing, waited a while and were called to the pre-interview. The Filipina middle-aged woman was rather stern, not very welcoming, and asked questions in a rather intimidating way. Seemed surprised that my wife had not changed her last name to mine, but accepted that it is not required that she do so. Again requested the missing medical info from us, but this time the info turned up after she asked a minion to go find it within the office somewhere. Questions asked: where did we meet, when, where do I live, where will we live in future, how long do we intend to stay in the states, how long was my wife away from the Philippines. She seemed disatisfied with our photos as I had simply printed a load of digital photos onto several sheets of bond paper, sized about 2x3 inch, but I told her all our photos were digital and we did not keep them on the wall. She told us to return to our seats and wait.
The real interviewer was a 30-ish american male. He was professional but friendly. After swearing us both in, he addressed many questions to me directly, and did not mind when I answered some questions directed at my wife, though I did get his permission to do so. He focussed mainly upon the previous marriage issues, mine and and hers. He scared me a lot by saying that he wanted to see an NSO certificate showing the nullity. We provided just the original documents from the court, the ones that would be needed by the NSO, and hence BETTER than an NSO certificate. After some discussion he went away to check on that, presumably with someone who knew about Philippine legal stuff, and when he came back he made no further comment, just gave us back our original docs, stapled a green APPROVED card to the packet and said go wait some more.
We were called again to a different window, the clerk there simply gave us the Delbros claim thing, and said we could not pick up the passport ourselves.
Finally, paid Delbros, and were out by noon.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #1073