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| Sweden |  Review on September 6, 2016: |
Scandi
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
Whatever you do, don't trust public transport. So unless you live close by or you're driving to the embassy for the interview I recommend you to go there the day before and stay at a hotel close by so you can just walk there in the morning. That way it doesn't matter if the trains or busses don't go on time.
I can also highly recommend STF Gärdet in case you want a hotel close by. I was very happy with my stay there and it's only a 15 minute walk across the field and you're at the embassy. It's also cheaper than many other places which might be a good thing to some (like me).
My appointment was on a Monday at 8:30 in the morning, I arrived at the embassy at about 7:40 and stood in the immigrant/US citizen line with only one other person. The non-immigrant line was very long already then, so you could really tell the difference between the two. I stood there for about 15 minutes and was then called up to the window of the security booth to show my passport, the souls of my shoes, my jacket and my folder where I kept all my papers and then he asked if I had a phone with me and if it was turned off. Before doing all this you weren't even allowed to get into the security booth, the guy talked to me through a little speaker in the wall. After all was checked I got in and had all my things scanned through the same kind of machine as they have on airports, I walked through a scanner myself and then had to stand behind a yellow line to wait for them to go through everything. He then took my phone and the extra battery I had for it and put them on a shelf and gave me a ticket with a number that I'd need to get the phone back on my way out.
I was told to follow the yellow line up to the next building, it's just a sidewalk really. The building was tiny with only a few windows for interviews, there was already lots of people in there waiting for their turn, and a guard to keep an eye on things (makes you feel kinda safe tbh). The guard already knew I was going for an immigrant visa (not sure how) and told me to walk up to window 7 when the other K-1 applicant was done there. The woman in window 7 was Swedish and spoke Swedish with me and the others, she was very friendly and collected all the documents needed. She asked for DS-160 confirmation page, passport, passport photos, my birth certificate, police certificate, my fiancé's divorce decree, form I-134, his tax return, and a bunch of proof of ongoing relationship (she took the skype- and facebook conversations I had printed, the ring receipt, an updated letter of intent from my fiancé and photos of us together and with his family). She looked through some of the pictures quickly and asked who was in the pictures (his parents and the dogs and such) and she also asked about our age difference (my fiancé is a bit older than me, enough to make her react apparently).
Then I had to sit down and wait again. I think I waited for about an hour before they called my name (the whoooole name, with middle names and all, haha) and told me what window to go to (window 4 in my case). There was a very friendly, younger man who was going to interview me. He first gave back all the proof of relationship (photos, chat logs, receipts) that I had given to the Swedish woman earlier and told me to raise my right hand and read the text on the window (he wanted it read in English, but there was a Swedish version too) about swearing to tell the truth and such. He then took my finger prints by me putting my fingers against the little machine right by the window (same as in the airports), after that he showed me a pamphlet and asked if I had seen it before. I said yes as I recognized it from the checklist the embassy had sent me earlier and so he asked if I had read it and if I needed a new one (it was the IMBRA pamphlet).
He then asked me how me and my fiancé first got in contact with each other, when we first met each other irl, other times that we met after that, when the last time we met was, if either one of us have any children (he had seen something in the pictures I provided that made him think at least one of us had children so I just explained the picture to him and that was it). He asked where my fiancé lives and what he does for a living, he also asked about our wedding plans and what I do for a living here in Sweden and if I had provided a certified copy of my fiancé's divorce decree. Right before he handed over the 221(g) paper he leaned over closer to the window and smiled and said "What about your fiancé do you like the best?" as if that was the most important question of the whole interview, it made me smile big and I told him exactly what the best thing about my fiancé is. He seemed happy with my reply as well. :D
He then gave me the 221(g) paper that said they can't issue the visa because of one missing page in my fiancé's tax return (it was like 50 pages all-in-all so we didn't notice one was missing) and also because they hadn't received my medical results yet (I only did the medical about two working days prior to the interview so that wasn't a surprise). He told me that all the info I needed was on that paper and that it was perfectly fine to just scan the missing tax return page and send it to them via email. That was it, the interview was over. Very fast and painless and all the people working there were very professional and friendly. I had a very good experience.
The missing tax return page was scanned and emailed to the embassy just a few hours later and the next day I got a reply from them saying they had added it to my folder and that all they needed now was the medical results.
The medical results reached the embassy exactly two weeks after I did the exam. That Thursday my case status was updated, the next day it shifted between Ready and AP, and on the Tuesday my case status said Issued.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #20329