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| Manila, Philippines |  Review on January 9, 2008: |
Mike & Beth
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
Embassy Interview Experience
US Embassy Manila:
6:00am we lined up at the embassy entrance and fell into the line for K1, K3 and other immigrant visas. We had about 50 people in front of us. After the guard checked our appointment letter and my passport we moved to a seating area just outside the embassy. 10 to 15 minutes later we were finally past the metal detector and pat-down search and in the embassy. We followed the blue arrows to the immigrant visa area where we were seated on the far side of the room since we were 7:30am appointment. The near side was filled with 6:30am appointments already seated. 7:16am we received our ticket number 7046. We went back to our seat, waited a while until her name was called for finger scanning. Back to our seat to wait some more until our number flashed for pre-screening.
Pre-Screening:
Nice Filipina pre-screener. We greeted her with good morning and happy New Year and she was smiling… Asked for one copy each of NBI, Cenomar, NSO Birth certificate, original I-134 affidavit of support (this was already submitted with our application, she soon realized that), employment verification letter, 1040’s, and proof of relationship (pictures together, emails, phone bills, remittance stubs) She didn’t ask for: my work pay stubs, W2, travel itineraries from previous trips to PI, my passport pages with stamps, plane tickets or any other of the large amount of stuff we brought with us. She asked a few questions… Are you Mr. ______ and are you Ms. _______ of course we answered yes. She asked how we met (we were introduced by a friend). When were we introduced? When did we first meet in person? How many times I have visited PI? What date did I enter PI for my current visit. She asked both of us if we had ever been married before, if any children (no to all questions). She then asked me “so she is 12 years younger than you?” of course I said yes (duh!). She then said that was all she needed and said we could have a seat until our number is called for interview.
Interview:
After a 2 hour wait our number was flashed for interview, at window 31. We were seated just outside the cubicle to wait for the current applicant to finish. When she exited we went inside. The consul greeted us, told us to have a seat, how are you doing all while smiling….. He then looked at our application and said “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you are Mr. _______?” That’s me I said, “Good, because this would be much more difficult if you weren’t” hahahaha more smiles (I feel more relaxed about this now). He made us raise our right hands and state that the information given in this interview and the documents in front of him are all true. Then he asked Beth a total of 4 questions and the last question was for both of us….
1. How did the two of you meet? (introduced by a friend)
2. How does your friend know him? (her fiancé is best friends with him)
3. When were you two introduced? (June 2006)
4. After you were introduced, tell me what happened? (we emailed, called, sent txt messages, and chatted on the internet)
5. After a long pause while he flipped through all the paper work and made some notes on some pages he asked us, “Ok, do either of you know of any reason why I should not approve this visa?” We both said no and with a smile he said “Congratulations you are approved.”
He returned our pictures and proof of relationship evidence and asked if we had any more questions at which time I asked for visa pickup. I said we already have plane tickets for Jan 11th (8 days from interview) and if possible we would like to pickup the visa since we will be staying right across the street. He immediately said sure and took our phone number down on a slip of paper. He said he could not guarantee we would get it right away, on rare occasions things can get held up, but there should be no problems and we should make our flight. He said he only had one person before who was delayed because of some computer problems and that person had to wait for 2 weeks. We thanked him and went back to our seats for releasing. A few minutes later we were called to window 37 for releasing. They gave us the pink slip for visa pick-up. We skipped the Delbros window.
At 12:00pm we exited the embassy.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #2328