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|  Review on December 7, 2008: |
Chamy and Gatita
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
US Consulate, Guayaquil. Arrival 8:00, Appointment: 8:30, October 2008.
Outside: A guard asks to see (only to see) the DS-157, receipt from Banco de Guayaquil, the envelope from the Doctor. He asks who I am, looks at my fiance’s passport, and uses a security wand to clear us.
The guard escorts us to a locked door, and another guard opens it and takes our things. We empty our pockets and he tells us to leave our phones in boxes (similar to a wall of mailboxes) beside him. We pass through a metal detector and retrieve our documents from him. All the guards were very nice. The second one even smiled and answered our questions about where to go.
Inside the consulate is a waiting room on the left and windows and clerks on the right. This area is for tourist visas. A hallway going back leads to stairs, past that is another waiting room and more windows and clerks. This waiting area is for K and immigrant visas. Upstairs is another waiting room and bathrooms, and one more window for US Citizen services. They tell us we can wait anywhere for my fiance’s name to be called but we keep moving around due to boredom and restlessness, not being sure we could hear his name be called. They use a loudspeaker but there seemed to be more than one loudspeaker system, and one was hard to hear.
Upstairs has better chairs, more space, hardly any people, and bathrooms, but you can’t hear as well. Also upstairs is real TV, while downstairs are TVs with loops of Americans waving and saying welcome to America!
Around 10:30 my fiancé is called to a security window built into a door. We both approach. In Spanish, the man asks for all the forms, the doctor’s envelope, and Banco de Guayaquil receipt,. He is hard to understand because of the bullet-proof glass. We pass the forms under the glass in a metal tray, and then bend down to listen to what the man asked for next. Nothing is clear- what they want, what to expect, when or where. We stand there while the man undoes our original application and hands parts back to us, and integrates the new forms in. After this clerk ransacks our papers and enters a lot of information on his computer, he asks us for proof. One by one, we pass it through the window tray. We had arranged letters of support, records of trips (receipts, plane tickets), records of communications, and photos into report files with plastic sleeves. They have the kind of tabs you can feed three hole punched paper or sleeves into and close with your fingers. Anything like a 3-ring binder would not fit through the window tray. The clerk says, if you have more evidence, you can present it at your interview, but I think you have enough. Good sign! Finally he tells us to sit down again.
We stay in that room, the one to the rear on the first floor, for another hour. Another man calls us at 11:30. To the left of the first man, there are booths with curtains, and more clerks behind more bullet-proof glass. Adding to the bizarre atmosphere, looks like we are going to see the Wizard of Oz. The man behind the curtain is middle-aged, with salt and pepper hair and a goatee. His name badge is on a lanyard that sits too low to read. He speaks in English and Spanish, and this time there is a microphone to help us converse. He says to me in English, well, why are you moving so fast? You met only a little while ago. (10 months, actually.) He asks my fiancé about his occupation, and then notes that mine is very different. What is the relationship between the two [professions]? What do you have in common with [my fiance’s profession]? Do you have the same interests? Do you like kayaking? (We both kayak.) Again, to me, you like rivers? I immediately show him photos of me kayaking. Mostly he speaks to me in English. When were your trips here? When did you decide to get married? “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” he says in Spanish to my fiancé. Have you traveled to the US before, he asks twice, in different ways.
He often returns to the papers, entering things on his computer and then asks another question. “Well do you want to hear the good news or the bad news?” We look at each other, I am excited, “The good news!” He says, “well, I’ll give you the bad news first. We won’t issue this visa today. You have to go to DHL to arrange for it to be delivered.” We say thanks! And he explains, take this purple slip over there to DHL, 5-10 days for delivery, etc., etc. I ask if we could come back to the consulate and pick it up, because we have plane tickets? No, we don’t do that. We receive his visa in a few days.
Overall, the whole experience was pretty annoying, like a trip to the DMV. If I didn’t know about VisaJourney, we would not have passed this interview, because there was no way of knowing that my presence was key to passing. I am the type of person who would have wanted to be at the interview anyways, but they were explicit when I made the appointment that I would not be allowed at the interview. Obviously this is a huge pitfall, as many other couples have been denied at their first interview because the American was told not to show up, but the interviewer dismissed the Ecuadorian partner for not having the American there. Something has gone wrong at this consulate, and hopefully due to the efforts of couples who went before us, it will be cleared up soon. Take heed, be well prepared, and talk to others who went here for a K or CR visa. (Your friends who attempted to get other visas here or in Quito won’t be able to give you useful information, and may inadvertently steer you wrong, beware!) Good luck!
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #3690