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| Nigeria |  Review on August 2, 2019: |
chichi2
Rating:  | Review Topic: General Review
Hi everyone! This is gonna be a long one...
So it’s basically me and my family who were applying for immigrant visa. For some background, the whole family has been living in the US for the past 5 years under non immigrant visa but applied for immigrant visa. So we have an ample amount of experience with the embassy and interviews and have gotten all visas approved at this point. The interview date was set for July 23rd. We got there around 5:20 and there was a good amount of people but we were still able to comfortably squeeze ourself to the front so we were one of the first people in the queue. They didn’t open the gate for security checks until about 6:20. We went through all the checks and all of that and got to the building where interview was taking place. They called us up 3 times. First time a blackguy I presume was African collected all of our documents and discussed them briefly then we sat back down. Second time was our fingerprints then we sat back down. Third time was the actual interview. And it was this pretty African-American lady who had those water bottles with time and how much water she should have drank by the respective time so she’s able to space out drinking a gallon of water a day. So we’re one of the first people to be interviewed so we don’t really know who is the better interviewer. But she’s the one we got. For the interview, she called us up and at the beginning, she’s not especially nice but she’s cool. She asks questions such as: “What job do you plan on having?†“Why does America benefit from you being there?†And just traditional questions. But with the questions she asks, she’s becoming increasingly hostile. I presume this is just part of her job and continue with the interview. It seems as though she has a negative perception of the family. With all the questions, answers are giving to her questions and some questions no answer was given such as “Do you have any specific people which you are setting up business†to which the answer is no but that was it. The problem arises when she asks of proof of relationship to the kids. This wasn’t a thing anticipated because we had birth certificates that were approved but she wanted more. She beloved that the birth certificates could have been forged and wanted a photo of the family from a while ago. We didn’t come prepared with many photos but the wife who came with several backup docs (HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!!) just happened to have a family pic from about 5 years ago. After giving this to the CO, she determined the pic was useless to her and one of the children was wearing sunglasses. But sadly this was the only pic we had. To prove a relation, the father tells the CO about stocks bought when one child was very little and immunization records but the CO didn’t take any of it because the parents names weren’t on the docs (important for family based immigrant visa interviews!!!!). At this point, she is not really polite at all but we remain as respectful as possible. We had booked a flight for August 2nd because this was supposed to be a vacation for the kids because they’ve been living in America for so long. At the end of the interview, however, she hands us our passport and tells us to provide time lapse photos (photos of family from when they were little to current day). She tells us she may not get back to our case for serveral weeks because she has many cases to deal with and she bids us farewell with a letter requesting more docs and our passports. Same day, time lapse photos are provided at DHL and baptism certificates and school registration information are emailed the following day. Right now actually, the flight we were supposed to be on is leaving and we are on administrative processing. Case status shows it was last updated 26th July which is when the email was received by the Lagos IV team. First child has college August 18th and a mandatory orientation the 20th to 21st which if she misses, her scholarship money is gone and so is her admission to the college so basically all of her senior year would have gone to nothing. Other siblings are supposed
To start school August 14th and so the whole family is very nervous and stressed. But we are praying that since all they required was some photos and kids have previously been granted nonimmigrant dependent visas that everything resolved soon enough.
Moral of the story: Come very prepared. And when you think you’re prepared, come extra extra prepared. And after that bring anything that could remotely help you and prove things so that you make your experience as smooth as possible.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #26810