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| Sweden |  Review on March 20, 2014: |
GK&OW
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
Coming from Denmark, I had to go to Stockholm for my embassy, and that meant I had to first take the train to Copenhagen, where I would then take a flight (about 1 hour duration) to Stockholm - I flew with Norwegian for about 300 DKK(pretty cheap if you ask me), and took the Stockholm-Arlanda Express from the airport to the central station (about 20 minutes), from there, Bus 69 (outside of Central station) goes directly to the Embassies (Stop called: Ambassaderne), which also took about 20 minutes. But because the appointment was at 8:30 am in the morning, I decided to arrive the day before, and stay at a hotel overnight - which I will recommend to anyone not living in Stockholm.
When I first arrived at the embassy, at 8:15 am (15 minutes before appointment), I stood in the Immigrant-Visa line (as directed by the Checklist email sent by the Embassy), the security guards told me that K1s are supposed to go in the Non-Immigrant line nonetheless, despite what the email told me (which I found very annoying, and even asking inside they told me the same thing the checklist did <.<). I waited for about 30 minutes, watching security take one person at a time to get checked, until it was my turn. They asked me to take off my jacket outside the security-booth, and to show the bottom of my shoes, once inside they scanned what I had brought with me, and allowed me to go inside.
Inside the embassy I was guided to window G (which handle immigrant visas), where I was in line for a while until they wrapped up the people in front of me - the woman asked for my passport, and told me to sit down - about an hour later she called me back up, and I handed her all the items from the checklist, including my cosponsor documents - AND THIS IS IMPORTANT: If you have a cosponsor, GET THEM TO MAKE A COPY OF THEIR PASSPORT/CERTIFICATE OF CITIZENSHIP to prove that they are a US citizen! This was not mentioned anywhere in the checklist or here on visajourney, and it caused a couple days delay (explained later). After handing her all the information she handed me a giant letter, on which I had to place 52(FIFTY-TWO!) stamps that I had bought at the central station, it took a bit of effort, and once I had done that, I handed it back and she asked me to sit down again. (Quick note: For proof of relationship I handed her; same photos that we sent with I-129F, travel tickets we had together and a newly dated letter of intent from my fiancée). The woman who was in charge of preparing and gathering all these documents was very helpful and pleasant to speak with.
After an hour of waiting again, I was called up to the interview at window F (the one next to G at any rate) - she asked me some quick standard questions;
How did we meet and where?
Who proposed and how?
Will you be having a ceremony?
and the questions went on in that regard, basically just asking how we plan on going through it all. She was overall very nice about it, and was understanding of everything I said.
She then asked me about my cosponsor, as mentioned previously, and told me that I needed proof of her citizenship in the form of a passport or a certificate of citizenship/naturalization/etc - which she said could be sent via email. She said once she received that email, the visa would be issued and received about 2 weeks after issuance.
After that, I was told that everything else looked great and that it I was done at the Embassy - so I left. A day or two later we sent the email with the scanned proof from our cosponsor, and approximately 2 days later the visa was officially issued on https://ceac.state.gov. Now to wait 2 weeks and get ready to marry my fiancée!
So to clarify my rating of the embassy, I gave it a 4 because everything went by relatively smoothly - I gave it a 4/5 simply due to the issues with security and which line to stand in, and because of the fact that they didn't state to bring proof of our cosponsor's citizenship.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #14159