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| Juarez, Mexico |  Review on December 16, 2018: |
ErikMexico
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
My fiancé had his appointment December 7 in Ciudad Juárez and was approved!
For those wondering, we received notification from the consulate on October the 3rd and were able to schedule our interview for December 7th. There may have been a cancellation because it was the only appointment available for all of December.
He had his medical and biometrics appointments in Mexico City, since he is a respondent there. Both of the appointments are in offices on Hamburgo, which is convenient to the city center.
For the appointment in Juarez, we flew from CDMX on Thursday (we flew viva aerobus, and don’t recommend them). We stayed at the Microtel and were very happy with the suite. The location is great since it’s on the same side of the street as the consulate.
There is a mall across the street with a Cinépolis, so we went there Thursday night to help keep our mind off the interview.
On Friday morning he had his interview scheduled for 9:15 but he walked straight to the front (it looks like there is a line but it’s only people waiting for family members) and was let in at 8:45.
(This part of the review was written by my fiancé)
At the entrance of the consulate, you are asked to show your DS-160 completion confirmation. Once that's checked and marked, you're allowed into the first room/are that has an airport-TSA seeming security gate, where they will check that you do not have any electronics or dangerous objects with you.
Once you're cleared from this section you will be asked for your DS-160 confirmation paper again to check what type of visa you are applying for. They will staple two pieces of paper on your DS-160 confirmation document with the same Turn/ID Number. In the case of the K visa, it is an Immigrant Visa, so they ask you exit that room and follow the blue arrows that will lead you to the waiting area for this kind of visa.
The waiting room is right at the end of the building. You have to walk through a garden that connects all the areas.
The waiting area is a warehouse-seeming room with many chairs and equipped with AC/Heating to cope with the different weathers across the year.
Once you get there, you will be asked to take a seat next to the last person that arrived before you. And here, you will wait for a person that is coming every 15min or so to take a group of 2 rows of chairs at a time to bring them to the next room.
The next room is where you will spend the most time of your wait. It is a closed area with different sections that has a very office-y feeling. Lots of windows everywhere.
Once you enter this room, you will be shown where to take a seat in the first section and you will be instructed to prepare your current passport, photos, birth certificate (original and a copy), police records (originals only) and tax return documents from your fiancé (originals only). They explain that these are the documents that you will turn in to the first agent once you get a window assigned.
They will also explain the next step, which is waiting in the second seat section of this room which is divided in two: Green chairs and Black chairs. The color will be assigned by the first agent you will meet.
The wait in this first section is of about 15min as well. It moves pretty quickly since it's a simple step.
As soon as you get a window assigned, you wait for less than 5 minutes and you will meet with your first agent who most likely will be Mexican. They will take the aforementioned documents and take one of the pieces of paper with your Turn/ID Number. They will instruct you to go to the next section and will tell you what color of chairs you need to go to—based on my observation and assumptions, I think the black chairs are for more complex or difficult cases. Since they have less black chair rows and they seemed to move a lot slower—. I got green chairs assigned.
This section is where your wait will be the longest. I waited for over 2 hours there. The green chairs have a lot of rows. Probably over 10 rows, so they move slower.
They take a row every 15~20min. Sometimes they will take two rows at a time. But it varies a lot, depending on how long the interviews for the previous row are taking.
Once you finally get your row called for the interviews section, you will be taken to an area that has two rows of windows on the sides and two lines of people in the center waiting to be interviewed.
This section was probably the most nerve-racking and overwhelming one of them all for me, since you can listen to all the interviews going on around you and you get to listen to the people getting the visa denied. But it also gives you an idea of what other people's cases are like and how complex they can be.
After probably 15min of wait, you get called from the next window that is free and you will be meeting with your second Agent. This time, they will most likely be American. So it's your call to hold the interview in Spanish or English.
I chose to do my interview in English, since I figured it would be the language we both would feel most confortable with.
I had a TN-2 visa denied over a year ago and my fiancé and I were concerned about this being an issue.
My interview started and the Agent brought up our case file with all the documentation we had submitted in our original application. He asked if I had a previous visa with me. I said yes and turned in my tourist visa (B1/B2).
He started checking through our paperwork.
His first question was about the TN visa (he didn't know what it was).
He then reviewed my travel history to the US and asked how long was my longest stay (to double check that I hadn't overstayed when I was there).
Then he asked about my job and what it entails.
He asked how much I make a year.
He checked more of the paperwork.
Then he asked how I met my fiancé. What does he do for a living. How much he makes a year.
He checked more of the paperwork again.
Then he finally asked if I had any tattoos and what each one meant.
He went through the paperwork one last time. He gave me my original birth certificate and congratulated me. My visa was approved.
They give you a little green paper with instructions on how to track your visa from that point on and how to pick it up from your selected shipping destination.
From this point I went back to the exit of the room, walked back through the garden to the main entrance and left the building with a great, great smile.
(That’s the end of my fiance’s writing)
I was waiting outside of the consulate and at 12:15 (so 3.5 hours later) he came outside and told me he was approved! We celebrated by having lunch at the mall, then we video chatted with both of our families to tell them the good news.
Overall, it was a positive experience at the consulate, and we recommend the Microtel hotel. Additionally, the people in Juarez are very friendly and customer service is very good at restaurants, the hotel, etc.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #25220