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| Costa Rica |  Review on August 16, 2016: |
Pennycat
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
Writing this late but better late than never!
We had an easy time for my husband's fiance visa interview. I flew to San Jose for a long weekend, and attended the interview. They let me in no questions, no problems. We were first interviewed by a younger and friendly woman, who looked through most of the paperwork, ordered it the way she needed, and interviews us in a very relaxed manner, it seemed like chit chat with some direct questions mixed in (the "chit chat" is part of the interview, and she was good at getting information without sounding formal or like she was grilling us).
We always confuse bilingual people when we talk because we both understand English/Spanish perfectly (or close to perfectly) but only speak at a high intermediate (him) to low intermediate (me) level. We tend to speak Spanglish together, or sometimes each just speak our own mother tongue at each other--one conversation, two different languages. Bilingual folks can keep up, they just get thrown off, or don't know what language to speak! We tried to stick with Spanish, but because I'm the weak link there, we mostly conducted in English. I was spoken to and was allowed to speak a lot more than I thought I would, but it was still clearly focused on him.
She was happy with everything she saw (for what it's worth: no translation and no apostilles needed) and had us sit back down to talk to a man I think she referred to as her boss or supervisor. I asked if that means we were approved and she smiled and said "that's not my call but.... you guys are good". So we sat around a lot more waiting for the next guy. We was a lot more serious and to-the-point but totally professional and fair. His questions were a lot more rapid fire, almost entirely directed at my husband, and instead of finding the communication thing funny/charming, he point blank asked how we communicate and we both explained ourselves in our second languages (actually third for both of us but whatever), which satisfied him.
He said, pretty bored "your visa is approved" and next steps etc but we didn't hear much after that. We were so excited! He stressed that he cannot work until we get EAD, which we said we knew. I asked as a "by the way" about him doing volunteer work to keep busy, and he said that's fine as long as it's a non-profit and it's not with the promise of future employment and then suggested a place that he himself had volunteered at while living in DC.
We accidentally left our NOA2 in our pile of papers which you need for AOS. We were freaked out and I wound up getting in touch with someone at State who said that they'd send it back with the passport and visa. Somehow in that mess, they changed it from shipping the passport to him picking UP the passport, which was a big mess up on all our parts (he lived in San Isidro del General-- not exactly a quick trip), but I suppose it was best to make sure we got the NOA2 back!
All in all, a very long day (we were there 4 hours-- 12:30 to 4:30 and we hadn't eaten breakfast for all the nerves). Saw/ overheard some folks with some pretty serious problems with missing paperwork and legal issues involving custody and such. Glad we were simple and straightforward and prepared.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #20205