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| Cambodia |  Review on December 20, 2013: |
okcchris
Rating:  | Review Topic: General Review
December 19, 2013
We arrived at the Embassy at 6:15 am and were number fourteen and fifteen in line. The guards started letting everyone in at about 7:10. The US citizen is allowed to be at the interview. You are allowed to bring a cell phone with you, however it will be held at the guards station until after your interview. The guards will also take your ID card and hold it until you are finished.
At 7:30 an announcement was made to line up at window number 1 to receive your queue number. There was no order to the line, just a mad rush to get to the front of the line. Within five minutes they started calling numbers to go to the appropriate window.
The first window we went to took in all the documents that we had brought. In the appointment letter that you will receive is a list of the documents to bring and what order to have them in. As long as you have all the documents this process takes about five minutes. I had two issues: one, my I-134 from my co-sponsor was a copy (not an original), was told I would have to have the original mailed from the US, two, my fiancé’s police certificate listed me as her spouse, I was told I would need to get it corrected. Even with these two mistakes I was told that she could continue with her interview.
Approximately twenty minutes later we were called to the next window for fingerprinting. One minute and it was complete. Then moved to the next window to pay the $240 fee.
After about an hour wait we were called to window ten. This is the only window that is located in another room and shielded from the other people waiting. The interview began. He first asked me about where I lived in the US, how long had I been in Cambodia (I have been here nine months and actually filed my petition from here), what I did for a living in the US, and if I voted in the last presidential election. He then said that he would ask my fiancé some questions in Khmer. He asked her how we met, how long she had known me and was she ready to move to the US. He then turned to his computer and started typing. A couple of minutes later he turned back to face us and said that he saw no problems at all with approving the visa, however we needed to have her police certificate redone and bring it back to the embassy. If we could do this by Tuesday of next week her visa would be ready on Friday. I asked him about the I-134 that the first lady did not like. He said that he saw no problem with it and that he was the one that made the final decision so just get the police certificate fixed and we would be on our way. The gentleman doing the interview was an older American that spoke very good Khmer (according to my fiance), he was very nice and very professional.
One thing I would like to add is that in our proof of relationship, of the eight pictures I included, two were pictures of our ‘engagement ceremony’ with my fiancé wearing a traditional wedding dress and me wearing traditional wedding clothes. To quote some here on VJ, ‘it looked like a duck and sounded like a duck’ but in this case it wasn't a duck, it was just the way things are done in this country.
We walked out the door at 10 am.
209 days from filing the initial petition (17 pages total), no RFE’s, and an easy successful interview. I’m 51 by the way, my fiancé is 29.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #13503