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| London, United Kingdom |  Review on July 15, 2021: |
SB0402
Rating:  | Review Topic: IR-1/CR-1 Visa
🌟 My interview day summary: may be helpful especially if you have kids!
On Monday morning, I flew with my 10 month old daughter from Belfast to London Gatwick.
My interview date was the day after (13.07.21), we arrived at the Embassy at around 8:30, my interview wasn’t until 9. We walked around the building once to calm my nerves and then went to the “Visa Services†entrance to see if it was too early or not to enter. The lady was super helpful, asked for my passport and appointment letter, stamped my letter and told me to go to the front of the queue as I seemed to be the only other Immigrant Visa applicant amidst a lot of Non Immigrant applicants.
When I got in there, I was asked for my appointment letter again. I was also asked to open my phone and show the security guard that I had legitimate apps on there. He gave me the all clear and I went to the main security building. Again, the security staff were insanely helpful. They didn’t ask me to remove my little girl from our body carrier and instead just swabbed us to check. They even laughed with me when I opened my bag to a bunch of diapers and baby toys. The doors are super heavy at the entrance so they even opened them for me as they appreciated it would be more difficult for me with a baby.
I then entered the main embassy building. It was quite empty so I approached the front desk. I was given a ticket and asked to go up the elevator to the 1st floor. I sat in front of windows 20-24 (for Immigrant Visas).
We waited only 5 minutes to be called to the first window. A helpful man asked for my passport, birth certificate, marriage certificate, police certificate and 1 of my visa photographs. Then I scanned my fingerprints. He asked a few questions;
* “Is this your first marriage?â€
* “Is this your husbands daughter?†- to which I responded by asking if he wanted to see her birth certificate, he didn’t and said “no, don’t worryâ€
* “When do you want to travel?†- I explained that our daughter is 1 soon and hopefully before then. He encouragingly said, “Oh, you’ll definitely be able to make that work.†This calmed me as he kind of was confirming that there weren’t going to be any issues with my visa lol.
We sat down again, this time waiting for about 20 minutes. My daughter was hungry (I had to nurse her in the embassy and had no unpleasantness from anyone - thankfully.) She also decided that she was a little grumpy at this point because her morning nap matched up with my appointment time (Mom life lol). Of course, this is also the time that we were called for the second time so I was becoming anxious as I was dealing with a fussy baby and the stress of what was to come!
We went to a different window. Was asked to raise my right hand and take an oath, then scan my right hand fingerprints again. At this point, my daughter was tired and bored. The lady was SO lovely and said, “everything looks good here, I don’t want to make life anymore difficult for you.†She asked me 2 questions;
• “where did you meet your husband?â€
• “was there an issue with healthcare last year while you were pregnant or did you want to come back to the UK to have your baby?â€
She told me we needed to get her CRBA, I told her we already had and asked would she like to see it. She said no and told me that was great.
She gave me a form about domestic violence to read and crossed out points regarding marriage fraud on the back, telling me they didn’t apply to me. She used the words, “Ok well if you have a read of this (domestic violence form) and everything seems ok to you, you’re good to go. Keep an eye on your CEAC tracker for delivery updates.†She kept my passport and waved goodbye to my little girl, trying to keep her occupied lol.
I sat down, read it quickly and got up to leave. The security staff waved goodbye to my baby girl on the way out.
My interview was on Tuesday 13th July 2021 and my CEAC status has changed to “Issued†today, Thursday 15th July 2021.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #29867