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| Amsterdam, Netherlands |  Review on July 13, 2021: |
CalamityJayne
Rating:  | Review Topic: IR-1/CR-1 Visa
My appointment was at 8:30, but I arrived at 8:10. I was allowed to immediately go inside.
People at the security were real friendly. Had to put my stuff in a little bin which went through a security scan, and I had to walk through a metal detector. No issues here, you are allowed to take your phone inside, you just need to turn the Bluetooth off. Security was real patient explaining I had to actually go to my main settings on an Apple iPhone or Bluetooth wouldn't truly be off.
Then I had to wait for a bit, at 8:25 I got called up to the first window.
They scanned my passport, took my fingerprints and gathered documents like birth certificate, marriage certificate and police certificate. Strange thing here was that the state.gov website states you need to bring your original, a photocopy of the original and a translated version of your birth certificate and marriage certificate, however they only wanted my translated versions. I had originally uploaded the Dutch marriage certificate to the NVC, so they scanned in the translation and added it to my file. One thing I had missed in my preparation for the interview and that was the confirmation of the registration for the courier service, which has the address the passport gets send to. It wasn't a problem however, they looked it up in the computer and printed it out on the spot.
After that I had to sit for a few minutes again, and then I got called back up to window 1 for the financial documentation.
Handed over tax forms, affidavit of support, some proof of domicile and a copy of my wife's passport. Then I wanted to give them a letter from my employer as proof that my own income continues from the same source and is thus countable, but they initially said: "We don't take that, if your wife has no income, do you have a second sponsor?" I pressed a bit and said they do need it, as it proves my wife doesn't need an income. They then took it in as well and told me to wait until someone would call me to the next window.
After 10 or so minutes I got called up to window 3 where I had the actual interview with a very nice consular officer. I had to swear an oath to tell the truth to the best of my knowledge, confirmed with a finger print scan. And then they asked how I had met my wife, how long we chatted online before we met each other, and where I would be living in the US. It was a nice informal conversation which was very natural and not forced. I certainly didn't feel like I was being interrogated. They confirmed what I had told the person at window 1, that with the letter from my employer the financials were more than good. They asked if I had lived anywhere else for more than a year, to double check if the police certificate from The Netherlands was the only one I needed. Then confirmed that the medical results were in, which surprised them a bit, as they stated that it currently seems to be a bit of bottleneck for people.
Anyways, they approved my VISA on the spot, returned my documents and kept my passport. They said it can take up to 3 weeks for the passport to be returned to me via the courier service.
The interview took somewhere between 5-10 minutes and I was out of the consulate before 9 am. It was a good experience overall, and everyone was real friendly.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #29853