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| Bangladesh |  Review on June 22, 2009: |
HSB
Rating:  | Review Topic: IR-1/CR-1 Visa
Interview time was at 8 am at US Embassy Dhaka, we arrived at 7 am, and there were about 60 people ahead of us. My friend drove us and offered to stay with his car so my wife can sit until they start letting people in. But the security was very tight and he could not park his car anywhere near the building. Unless you are on the line to get in, you can't even stand across the street from the building. The guards actually use megaphones to at yell at any loiterers. This was really retarded as many had family waiting for them, but they had to be 2 blocks away at least. Anyway, I told my friend he should just leave and my wife and I took our place in line. I was somewhat concerned regarding my wife's health. She had jaundice for 5 days, and her eyes were a little yellowish. Although she passed her medical back in April, I was very afraid that the CO may suspect Hep B and ask her to retake the medical if she sees my wife's yellowness. Another 1-2 months delay was the last thing we needed. I was also stressed from the fact my doctor brother-in-law believed my wife had one of the Hep viruses. He said it was probably the A or E, the lesser viruses that are not banned by the US and are common in Bangladesh. Although a very small chance of this, I was dwelling on the fact that my wife received a shot during the medical and if the staff there somehow infected her with the dreaded B virus with the needle. It is Bangladesh after all and anything can happen. My brother-in-law also felt a very small chance of this, but submitted her blood to test all 3 viruses. We would get the results later that night after the interview, setting up more drama.
Anyway, all the bad thinking did not help the wait in line. I was also the only douchebag in line with a suit on a 90 degrees morning. We bought about 600 pictures and copies of everything we ever submitted in 2 heavy bags that we had to carry around. Thankfully through this all, my wife seemed to be in good spirits and her health seemed to be holding up. Around 8 am, they finally started letting people in. The sky also became dark and rain would have been disastrous. We had no umbrella, and more importantly than us getting wet, our giant sealed medical envelope was exposed. We got to the front of the line around 9am. The security was expectedly tight. The guards at the gate took our medical envelope and opened it. Then they hand searched us and searched our bags. You’re not allowed any electronic items or sharp-like objects. Some people did not bring their cells, but forgot that the sim card was in their wallet and were told to drop the sims. After the gate, we were allowed into the front parking lot and walked to the building entrance. We had to take to the entrance using the sidewalk of the parking lot, we were forbidden to take any steps on the parking lot itself, sigh! After we went through the entrance, we faced a 2nd round of security with metal detectors and more hand searching. Finally, we went into the next room, the first air conditioned room to our relief, and faced a 3rd round of security with x-ray machines. The girl at the x-ray was pretty rude pointing at my wife with an attitude to drop her bag and keep walking. My wife would have dropped her if we were anywhere else, but you gotta pick your fight. After this last security check, we walked up to a booth in the same room where a lady asked us if our interview was today. We said yes, and she collected our interview letter and medical. She then asked us to go through the back door through a long hallway to the waiting room.
When we got to the waiting room, it was about 9:30 am and it started pouring outside. We knew many were still waiting outside, so we were fortunate to be inside before the rain came. The waiting room was filled with all the people that were in front of us. The security lady in the room said we had to find a place to sit or go outside and sit on the benches in the hallway. The hallway had no AC, so we squeezed on to one of the benches in the room. My wife finally could sit and rest in AC after standing for about 1 and half hours and seemed to be in good spirits, so I became a little relaxed. The room had 12 doors to the side with numbers on them, and within each doors was a window. The speakerphone started calling people to the door numbers. I was hoping we would get an early call due to my wife’s health. I knew from other’s experience that they would call us twice, first for fingerprinting and then for the actual interview. One girl got her 1st call at 9:45 am, and the 2nd at 10:15 am, and was walking out with tears of joy and a passport token at 10:30 am. I wished that could have been us. But we had no such luck, basically had to sit there anxiously more than 2 hours watching a dreadful instructional video of a man fingerprinting a woman repeating itself. If they were not allowed to have anything entertaining, they could have at least put on another instructional video just for the change. We got the point of how fingerprinting worked after the first 50 times!!!
Finally, at 11:40am, they called us to room 3. The room was nothing like I imagined. I thought we would be sitting in front of a window, but there was standing room only. Our side of the room was kind of dark, while the other side was well lit. A Bangladeshi lady was sitting in the room. She seem to have all the documents that we ever submitted for immigration, beginning with the I-130. She asked for the passport and 2 passport sized pictures, then she returned the original birth certificate to us. She asked if we brought copies of the police certificates so that she can return the original of that. I told her we did bring copies, but we also submitted copies with the originals. She checked and saw the copies were there, so she returned the original PC’s. She then asked that if we applied for the K3 I told her we did file the petition but never submitted the final application in favor of the CR1. She then took my wife’s fingerprints. After that, she told me I missed a question on the I-130 about when and how I came to the US. I couldn’t believe I missed anything as I checked that document over and over, even after sending it in. I really wasn’t sure how I came to the US as I was very young then, just remember it was around 1987, knew I should have asked my parents before the interview. I told her in 1987 with immigrant visa. She nodded and wrote it somewhere. Later I discovered it was actually 1988 and we came via tourist visas and were approved for asylum. But it did not come back to hurt us, and I discovered later that the lady made a mistake as well. The question was meant for permanent residents, not USC, so I di not miss anything on the I-130 after all. Lastly, she asked if we had the Additional Processing Questionnaire form, and if not, we had to go back to the waiting room and fill it out. I had 2 copies ready, so I told her we did have it and submitted a copy. She was a little surprised we had this filled out already. I guess many forgets to fill this out as it is not mentioned anywhere by the DOS, only the Dhaka embassy websites mentions it. She then told us to go to the waiting room and wait for the next call. Did not ask for any financial docs or anything else as they already had those docs from NVC.
As we sat back down in the waiting room around noon, I became very nervous that they asked for the AP questionnaire from us. Previous successful applicants on VJ from Dhaka mentioned that they did not collect this, so I began to worry that they collected it from us because they were going to put my wife on AP. The thought of this made me sick to my stomach, I only came for 2 weeks and really did not want to leave Bangladesh again without her. But then my wife told me her friend who went through the interview in the previous week also had to submit the AP form. Her friend actually did not know to bring in the AP form to the interview and had to fill it out in the waiting room at the embassy. But her friend was not put on AP and received the visa the next day. Hearing this made me a little relived and relaxed. It was a little past noon and I was hoping we would get the 2nd interview soon. I had told my wife that there were 3 interviews overall and the last one was the most important. I did this so show would not be so nervous during the actual final interview which we were waiting for. But she later confessed she suspected there would be only 2 interviews by watching others at the embassy and from her friends. As the clock hit 12:15, the speakerphone announced that interviews will re-start at 2 pm after lunch. This got me a little annoyed, they needed almost 2 hours for lunch??? People were allowed to go outside to get food, there was no longer a line, just have to go through security again when coming back in. We saw no real food source within the embassy, a security guard told us a small caterer would come soon to sell tea and ice cream. As it was still raining outside and we had heavy bags and knew of no restaurants that waere close enough, we decided to stay in the AC’ed waiting room watching that dreadful instructional video still repeating. We had brought some oranges with us and ate those while we waited. It was a good thing we stayed nearby, because at 1:30 pm, half hour before they were supposed to start, they called my wife’s name to room 8, the first name called after lunch.
We grabbed our things and ran to the door. The room was similar to the previous room 3, only it was even darker on our side. There was a Caucasian woman CO with her hair sticking up and all over the place sitting on the other side of the window. My wife went in the room first and the lady said hello to her. When I walked in, she immediately asked me who I was. I answered “The husband and petitioner”. She said ok and turned her attention to the papers on her desk. Then she started typing in her computer and did not stop until the interview was over. She never asked my wife if she preferred Bengali or English, just assumed Bengali, which was accurate, and told my wife in Bengali that she would ask her some questions. She also never made my wife take an oath to tell the truth, which I thought was standard. She asked: 1) How did you meet your husband? Was it love or arranged? Where did the marriage take place? What does your husband do for a living? (my wife answered finance, but she pronounced it differently, the CO asked twice before she understood). Then the CO asked my wife no more questions and turned to me and asked me to describe my role at work. I responded in English about my finance job and we had a nice short conversation about the state of the economy. She then asked to see some pictures. Out of the 600 pics we brought in 10 albums, she quickly scanned through 6-7 pictures in 2 albums, one for our marriage and one for our dates. She then filled out a passport token and gave it to us, saying to come back tomorrow and we can pick up the passport with visa if the computers were working. At this point, my wife and I looked at each other with big smiles and knew we had done it. We both thanked her simultaneously. I was very happy for a second, but then my cautious side kicked in again and I asked the CO if we can get out original marriage certificate back. She said we will get it back tomorrow with passport. Now here is the funny part- I suddenly remembered my wife did not sign anything and asked the CO if my wife needed to sign the second part of the DS-230. The CO started saying she already did, then caught herself as she looked at the form. Then she said, “sorry, thanks for reminding me”, and asked my wife to sign. I started laughing inside, I couldn’t believe she forgot and I had to remind her. I wonder what kind of mess we would have been in if I didn’t catch it. The immigration officer at POE would have just probably made my wife sign it at the POE. Anyway, after my wife signed, we thanked the CO one more time, grabbed all our stuff, with me dropping a few albums in my joy and having to pick them up, and walked out straight through the waiting room and to the hall way the happiest couple on the planet. Everyone in the waiting room knew we had the visa the way we were skipping out. We organized all our stuff in the hallway and I confessed to my wife that there was no 3rd interview, she said she knew, and we hugged. It was 1:45 pm, interview took about 15 minutes, not too bad. I was a little surprised about how disorganized the CO was, seemed like she was very busy to spend much time interrogating, and wanted to move on to the next case so she can go home. But I guess that is better than a CO who asks too many questions, I heard the CO in the next room 7 was kind of tough. The CO never asked anything on the AP questionnaire, did not ask anything about how I immigrated to the US, nothing about my wife’s jaundice as the CO could hardly see her clearly in the dark room, nothing about my financials other than what I do at work. We had all Skype, Yahoo, email records, and these were never used. Our wedding was a special case where only 7 people were present in the original ceremony since my wife’s family did not agree initially, then had 3 big parties with 600-700 people after her family agreed. We had the whole story ready, but the CO did not even ask how many people at wedding, how and when the wedding happened, only asked where. Overall very few questions and got the result we wanted, only the wait and that terrible instructional video was painful. We found out later that night my wife had the Hep A, so not so serious and overall a perfect day!
We arrived next day at 2 pm, no lines, just the security checks. We and 3 other applicants were called to room 1 at the same time at 2:30. There was a Bangladeshi lady behind the window who told us to huddle around and listen to the instructions. She explained how the visa and the sealed envelope with coversheet worked, then she handed each applicants their passport, sealed envelope with coversheet , and any other original documents that they had. For us, we received our marriage certificate, and all financial documents included in the Affidavit of Support application, including the tax returns. We collected our docs, made sure everything on the visa and the sealed envelope coversheet looked accurate 3-4 times, then we walked out of the embassy hand in hand. Although hard to imagine due to the security, I heard there were sometimes mugging around the embassy targeting passports, visas, and US dollars. So I had my friend wait 2 blocks away in a car, and we met up with him and drove away on a beautiful sunny day, finally with a visa that took us 5 years of long-distance relationship, including 14 months of long-distance marriage, to get.
As you can all tell, I made this review very descriptive to answer any questions about interview at Dhaka Embassy. Please feel free to ask me questions if I missed something. Thank you all again and good luck to all who are still waiting for their moment.
- HSB
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #4623