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| Montreal, Canada |  Review on March 1, 2008: |
happilycontent
Rating:  | Review Topic: IR-1/CR-1 Visa
:thumbs: I'm extremely happy to announce that I was approved, :dance:YAY !
So this is how it all went down..
Our flight arrived in Montreal from Vancouver at 4:30pm. We rented a car from Thrifty a little yaris nothing special since we were only planning to stay for 2 days. My husband is so cute, us Canadians KNOW that everything in Quebec is going to be in French, but he seemed so overwhelmed that nothing was in English.. He had a lot of fun trying to pronounce the words, but everything ended up having a Spanish accent. I swear he kept saying Je m'appelle over and over again, and Sortie, the entire plane ride since it's posted in the plane at all the exits (guess that's what started the whole thing :lol: ).
Anyhow, so we checked into our hotel (La tour centre ville), which was perfect because we weren't picky, and it was very conveniently located directly across the street from the US Embassy. Oh, and there's no parking on the street, so we had to pay the $16 for the underground hotel parking, that was probably the only thing I didn't like about the hotel, but no big deal..
We spent the rest of the day shopping, and eating, and driving around the city to see what else the biggest city in Canada had to offer.. OMG, Vancouver does NOT get as cold as it was in MTL. As I recall we couldn't really stand outside for more than 2 minutes without getting frost bite I kid you not and that's with a big winter jacket on. My advice is to bring gloves/ear muffs/toques/scarves!!
Any who so we double checked all of our stuff to make sure we had everything in order, and went to sleep at midnight.
I was too excited/nervous so I woke up every 2 hours. I had 2 alarms set for 5:30am.. :lol: (I was paranoid that the hotel alarm might not work properly)
So.. the day of the interview.. We lined up at 7am.. There was nobody in sight, it really wasn't what I expected. The sign on the door stated doors open at 8:30am, but I read somewhere on here 7:30am, so we thought better safe than sorry, because I didn't want to wait in a huge lineup.
so 7:30am rolls around and there's 2 other couples standing behind my husband and I. This guy comes and opens the door, and says "are you the first person in line?" (Our line was more like a circle B) ) I said yes and he asked to see my appointment letter then pointed me up the stairs.. There we had to remove everything out of our pockets, and place jackets and belts into the tray just like at the airport, and walk through the metal detector. Then he handed me the letter A with #9 on it, said go through that door, and go downstairs and wait in the waiting room. Something neat is that they had a little photo booth down there I guess that was for people who might have forgot to bring passport photos with them.
After 10 minutes an officer came down and took us up in the elevator, and I proceeded to window #9. I handed in my appointment letter, passport, expresspost envelope, 2 passport photos and medical results. They didn't need the xray. Then we were told to go back to the waiting room. Everything went by really quickly, I thought we'd be waiting there for hours..
10 minutes later a lot more people were coming into the waiting room from downstairs they all looked so lost and confused. I was called back for fingerprints, and sent back to the waiting room. and waited for another 5 minutes, THEN I was called into an interview room. We were greeted by this man from behind a glass, kinda like the ones where you buy your ticket from at the movie theater. He looked so happy as did we, we were sworn in, he handed back my original documents, he asked me 3 questions, and told me I was approved, and would get my visa in 5 days. The interview lasted about 40 seconds, I'm not kidding. I was so happy that I cried, we thanked him and went on our way hand in hand, smiles and all. I waved goodbye to the nice lady I met in the waiting room.. and we left. The End. :D In total we were there for one hour.
But I will add as we were leaving the building after I'd been approved, the line up was all the way out the door and it was about 8:45am. Go early people, it's worth it, oh! and there's a cafe you can wait in, in the same building but it's on the front side of the building facing boulevard rene-levesque.
I'd give the whole thing 5/5, it went very smoothly.  
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #2539