|
|
| Skopje, Macedonia |  Review on July 21, 2013: |
Lex Specialis
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
You line up outside the consular entrance of the embassy and wait for your name to be called. We had an 8am interview and we were there 15 min early. They started calling people inside at 8:10 a.m. The staff is Macedonian. They are generally smug and unpleasant, but not any more than most people in the Balkans who have not mastered the art of working with customers and not being jerks. If you are from the region, it will come as no surprise to you. Although the embassy's web site says that the petitioner is not required but may attend the interview, this is not the case. They will not let you in under any circumstances. You have the choice of doing the interview in Macedonian, Albanian or English. There is no reason so far as we could see to select English if you are less comfortable. Absolutely no advantage.
My fiancee's interview was handled by a Macedonian speaking employee of the embassy. Obviously it is not a private area as the other reviews suggest. You have to answer questions about your personal life to strangers in front of more strangers.
I generally believe in being overprepared when it comes to paperwork, so all our documentation was neatly tabbed and easily accessible, despite the fact that they didn't look at 90% of it. I strongly believe that having a lot of papers which are organized by itself makes an impression.
The questions you should know the answers to right away are how you two met and under what circumstances. If the US petitioner came to visit, or if you went to the US, or if you spent a vacation together, be sure to know the dates when such trips began and ended because they will ask. The date and the circumstance of your proposal is also a big deal. They also asked her about my job, where in the States I live. Names and info about your future in-laws are also a good tip. We had copies of airline tickets. We also had joint finance documents, like a credit card that my fiancee is authorized to use. We made copies of both out cards showing a common account, as well as Western Union slips evidencing transfer of money from me in the US to her during the last few months after she had quit her job. My fiancee told me they were less impressed by that than I thought they would be, since when doing your green card interview in the US, joint finances do add a lot to your case's value.
Our photographs were organized by time periods. I printed 9 to a page. The size is perfectly functional so long as you have a color printer. Putting 9 on a page and sizing them down saves you money in cartridge ink. We had copies of airline tickets when I had visited her, copies of our first trip, our summer vacation, our new years and Christmas vacation, etc.
What did make an impression were copies of the call logs since the start of our relationship, which went back 16 months. I have T-Mobile and they have a $10 / month flat fee plan for unlimited calls to many countries, but only to land lines. So we had a LOT of calls. If we had to do the interview again, and if you have fewer that 3-4 calls per day for a year, I would have preferred to include our Facebook messages or Skype IMs. We chose not to do it because some of them are way too private but on second thought we could have taken out the more private ones. I am glad we didn't come to regret that.
All in all the questions that were asked pertained to dates of time in our relationship, critical dates about having met and when and where was the proposal, nothing that was too unpredictable. The Macedonian employee with the interview and even told my fiancee that she was approved (as in gave her the time when she should come to pick up the passport) but he then told her the American consular officer had some follow ups.
This was the less pleasant part of the interview. He had one issue, namely the idea that my fiancee and I started talking to each other before my divorce to my ex was finalized. In reality, my first marriage had been over for over a year prior to us having started talking to each other, but the actual filing and finalization of the divorce happened after we started talking but before we began to date. All in all, my fiancee believes he only looked at the final date of the divorce and didn't get that there is a whole period prior to that time when my marriage was de facto over (the consular officer was young and kind of an unattractive nerdy type, so probably not too much experience with marriage or women) but he made some judgmental implications that perhaps my fiancee had been the reason for my divorce. Overall, except for the fact that this was unpleasant, it did not affect the overall outcome and she was issued a visa.
We were given a date SIX days later to come pick up her stamped passport, so if you will purchase a ticket in advance, leave yourself at least 8 days to leave for the US. I hope this was helpful.
| |
|
Consulate / USCIS Member Review #12378