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| Guayaquil, Ecuador |  Review on August 19, 2016: |
jcra615
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
I have extremely mixed reviews about our interaction with the consulate in Guayaquil overall- some very positive experiences but also some very negative ones, which makes this review difficult. Overall, to all that will be working with this embassy in the future I will say this: be prepared for the possibility that they will make mistakes that will make your life much more difficult, and make any decisions with this possibility in mind.
We arrived for our interview 7.40 appointment time only about 10 minutes early thanks to traffic and a cab driver whose shortcut ended up taking more time overall, but this was perfectly fine- they line people up for residency visa interview appointments by appointment time and then let them in in that order, so there is really no reason to be arriving an hour, an hour and a half early. Just arrive about 20 minutes before the appointment and you should be fine. Because I am citizen I was able to guard the backpack that we brought to hold the documents and our passports in a cubby at the entrance, but for non-citizens they don't guard any objects at the entrance...so just bring the documents you need and money for transport to and from the embassy, plus extra in case they find anything wrong with one of your documents, photos, etc.
Once we got inside within about 20-30 minutes we were called up to a window and asked to present some initial paperwork, the following:
-the DS-160 confirmation page
-my fiance's birth certificate (the original, which they later gave back to us, AND A COPY, which they held on to)
-two passport-sized photos
-medical exam results
-Antecedentes Penales aka the police clearance form (my fiance is originally from Cuba so we had to submit his form from Cuba and from Ecuador. They wanted the copy and the original from Cuba, and later gave the original back to us, and just the original from Ecuador)
-Form I-134 (since I live in Ecuador with my fiance and make a wage that corresponds with the cost of living here, I had to have my father co-sponsor my fiance, so WE BOTH HAD TO FILL OUT SEPARATE I-134 FORMS. They requested both
-My father's most recent tax form (as I mentioned, this is because he is my fiance's co-sponsor. I didn't have taxes from the past year because I didn't make enough, but if I had had them they would have asked for them.)
He also briefly looked through the material we submitted and noticed that we both have the same address- we live together in Ecuador- and asked us if we live together. Beyond this question and asking if I had my own tax return from last year he didn't really ask us any other questions.
Overall the person we dealt with at this window was extremely kind, not harsh at all with anything, etc. He was really great. After we gave the man at the window these forms, we sat back down and waited for about an hour, and then were called up to another window. At this window we were informed that we would be doing the interview. There is an interview room in the embassy and you can see the entrance to it from the waiting room, and I saw some people were being called into this room, for which visa specifically I'm not sure, but others like us were being called up to two different windows to do their interviews.
The woman doing our interview was incredibly sweet to us and the interview was really easy. She first asked us to both raise our right hand to swear that everything we said was the truth, etc, and my fiance didn't understand what she said at first because she had a strong "gringa" accent so he raised both hands at first - we all laughed, including the interviewer, and I think that put my fiance and I at ease. She then asked us the following questions:
-If my fiance had ever been to the United States before (he answered no, but then she said "are you sure, it says here you have been." He responded again that he had never been, and then she moved on without asking about it further....This really perplexed me because we haven't submitted any form or document saying he'd been in the States at any time, because he hasn't been. I think this was either some error that occurred when the man at the first interview was looking over our papers, OR it was something to make us nervous / catch us in a lie. She didn't keep insisting about it or anything, which makes me think it was the latter....so strange. Watch out for this and keep calm).
-My fiance's nationality (he is from Cuba but has been living in Ecuador for a few years).
-How long my fiance has been in Ecuador
-Why he came to Ecuador
-What type of visas both of us had to be in Ecuador
-If I earn money here in Ecuador
-What are my future plans (this was to check to make sure I have plans to leave Ecuador with my fiance, she explained that after I responded)
-How we met
-If both my parents are self-employed (this relates to the fact that my father is the co-sponsor for my fiance and doesn't have a W-2 because he is self-employed)
She then handed us a blue slip of paper and said that the visa had been approved! Yay! The interview was so simple, I was extremely excited about it because I thought it was going to be much more difficult. Granted, our case could be considered "easier" because I have been living in Ecuador all this time, and my fiance and I met here, and also are currently living together, which makes it a lot easier to show that our relationship is real, and ongoing. But of course, I was still nervous...we both were, because you never know!
It definitely helped that I was there with my fiance...even though they only asked a few questions directly to me instead of to him, my presence there I think set all the people we spoke with at ease about our relationship being real, etc. It also made my fiance feel a lot more comfortable there as well, and less nervous then I'm sure he would have been if I wasn't there. If its possible for the US citizen fiance to be there I would definitely recommend it, one hundred times over.
Once she said the visa was approved, we told her that we didn't want it to be sent via DHL, since we already have plane tickets purchased and didn't want to run into problems with the visa not coming in time. We had planned to visit my fiance's uncle who lived about 3.5 hours away on the coast, so returning to Guayaquil to pick up the visa wouldn't be a hassle. She told us it should be done in one week exactly, and gave us a yellow slip that she told us to present to security when we returned in one week.
The next morning we left Guayaquil and headed to my fiance's uncle's house in Machala. Here's where all the problems began. We received a call a few hours after arriving in Machala that there was an error doing his fingerprints (they took them via a digital scanner at both windows) and that we would have to come back on Monday to redo them. What a pain. On Monday we had to leave Machala at 5am to arrive in time. We gave the fingerprints, then while at the window I asked if there was any way that we could pick up the visa later that day so we wouldn't have to return to Guayaquil again. We were told we couldn't, because they have to be processed through a database in Washington and that takes 24-48 hours. We were told to contact the embassy the next day to see if it was ready and if we could still pick up the visa on Wednesday, as we were originally informed. We then returned another 3.5 hours to Machala empty-handed.
The next day, Tuesday, my fiance received another call, that there had been ANOTHER ERROR, this time with the system that processed the DS-160 form, and that we would have to re-submit the form and bring a copy of the new confirmation to the embassy the following morning at 8am. We had to frantically pack and redo the form (if you have your original confirmation page you can just type in the confirmation number and then selected "retrieve application" so you don't have to put in all the info from scratch) and head to Guayaquil that night.
On Wednesday morning when we arrived at the embassy they told us that they only wanted my fiance to come in, that they had instructions to only let him inside. I put up a stink because I was afraid that they were going to try to intimidate him or treat him like poorly knowing he wouldn't complain about how much they had put us through, whereas I know my rights and was planning on talking to a supervisor about the multiple errors we had experienced up until this point in their handling of the processing of the visa. I told the people outside that I have the right as the US Petitioner of the visa to enter and know the status of the visa I am applying for...they didn't fight that and they ended up letting me in with him. KNOW YOUR RIGHTS, PEOPLE. Don't let your fiance be intimidated or treated poorly if you can help it.
Once we got inside we had to wait a long time, probably an hour or more until we were called up to the window. Because it was taking so long, when my fiance saw that there was an open window with the first man we spoke to on the day of our interview, he went up and asked if we just had to submit the DS-160 confirmation they asked us to bring, or if there was more. The man took the confirmation, went to check with some other people, and said we would be attended soon. When we were eventually called up, the man we saw was the man who took my fiance's fingerprints again on Monday. He apologized for all the inconveniences we'd experienced, which my fiance and I really appreciated. He then typed away on his computer for like five minutes, then called over a co-worker and seemed to show a co-worker how to process the new DS-160 form. He then said again that he was sorry for the conveniences and that he was going to expedite the new fingerprints he took (he took them AGAIN at that moment) and check everything out personally so we wouldn't have to leave the embassy again with the possibility there was another error. He told us to wait one hour while that was happening, then we would at least know there were no more errors and wouldn't have to be called back to the embassy an additional time. We both seriously appreciated this because we knew he was now going out of his way to rectify the situation and help us out, and that he recognized that we were being severely inconvenienced.
One hour later he called us up to the window again and presented us with my fiance's passport with the visa in it, along with the envelope to present to the immigration officers upon entering the US. YAY! He apologized again for the inconveniences and then let us know everything was in order and that we were free to go.
Overall, my opinion of our interactions with the embassy is extremely mixed....we had some great, easy experiences (the interview itself) and some horrible, horrific ones (having to return twice, almost having to return a third time, and taking a bus 3.5 hours each way to do so). Thank God at least we were only 3.5 hours away, because we live in Quito, which is a 9 hour bus ride from Guayaquil, and would have had to make that journey multiple times (or paid to stay in Guayaquil while they fixed the situation) just because of the errors of the embassy employees, which had nothing to do with us. Overall everyone at the embassy was always kind, and even went out of their way to help us while we were there. However, they clearly have some issues processing the visas afterward.
My advice is this: if you are not from Guayaquil, or near Guayaquil, stay in Guayaquil for 36-48 hours after the visa is approved to make sure there are no errors like the ones we experienced. I can't imagine having to return from Quito to fix these errors, or from some place further away within Ecuador. You may have no problems, and that's great, but if you do have an error and have to return, it would be much easier if you are still in Guayaquil rather than potentially crossing the country again.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #20234