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| Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |  Review on July 18, 2013: |
RachaelP
Rating:  | Review Topic: General Review
On June 11, 2013, my fiancé and I went to his interview at the US Embassy in Rio de Janeiro. We had prepared well, though a mistake in Dr. João Jorge Leite (São Paulo) resulted in our medical paperwork not being ready in time for the interview.
We arrived at the embassy around 6:30am, and stood in a small line with other k1 applicants. At 7:15, we were allowed in. The process was straight forward. We were called to a table in the back so a man could look through our documents, then we waited for about 30-40 minutes until it was our turn to go up to the window and officially submit our documents. We then went downstairs to pay the fee, and returned with our receipt. About 20 minutes later, we were called to be interviewed.
The lady who interviewed us was kind, and she asked just a few questions to both of us.
1. How did you two meet?
2. Where have you traveled together?
3. (To my fiancé) Have you met her children? What are their names and ages?
4. Do you have any wedding plans?
She conducted the interview in both Portuguese and English, and she was pleased that I could speak Portuguese in addition to my fiancé (an english teacher) speaking my language. She told us that we clearly had a legitimate relationship and we were approvable, pending submission of the medical exam.
So up to this point, the process was wonderful. Easy.
Then came the OTHER side of the coin. We received our medical exam two days after the interview, and we overnighted the documents with confirmed delivery on the 14th of June. It took 10 days for them to acknowledge receipt, and after that we were stuck in "processing" for 2 more weeks. I would email every day or every other day requesting an update. They would reply to each email, "Your documents have been received, please await our decision." After 3 weeks, other couples we had befriended the day of the interview (who happened to have gone to the same Doctor and also had missing medical exams) had already received their visas. Still we had nothing and were instructed to wait.
Finally I called my congresswoman, and her office assistant wrote the embassy. Two days later, she received a reply from the embassy that while the medical documents we sent had arrived, the Doctor had left our 2 documents from the exam. Why we had to have congressional intervention to discover paperwork was missing is beyond me! So, my fiancé went straight to the doctor's office to straighten things out.
(Side note: We learned here that the doctor's office had input my fiancé's phone # wrong, and didn't bother sending a letter to his address when they learned of their mistake. They also insisted on sending the documents themselves because the doctor had STILL not signed some things. They promised to overnight it via Sedex 10. When we requested the tracking number, we found out they did NOT.)
Eventually the paperwork arrived at the embassy, and 2.5 weeks later, my fiancé was approved and received his visa on July 18.
I came to the conclusion, regarding the embassy, that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. The person answering emails will give only minimal information, and it is often incorrect information. This likely would not have been apparent to me if we hadn't also dealt with a terribly incompetent physicians office. Laziness and inattention to detail of the physician's office blended with inefficient bureaucratic red-tape of the embassy was a nasty combination.
But we made it through, and my fiancé is currently flying to the US. He arrives in the morning!
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #12366