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| Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |  Review on July 28, 2009: |
adlitem
Rating:  | Review Topic: IR-1/CR-1 Visa
I DCF'd at the consulate in Sao Paulo on 04/30. Initially the consulate in Rio told me to contact the consulate in SP or the NVC because they had no records of my petition. It took a phone call to the consulate in SP to confirm that my petition had actually made it to Rio on 05/21.
I began to follow up with the consulate in Rio about the status of the petition the last week of May. They told me that it could take up to 30 days for the petition to be approved. After about a week, I followed up again and they said they had no records of my process and told me to follow up with the NVC. I didn't understand because I knew my petition was with them. Up to this point, all of the communication had been in English. On 06/12 I sent an inquiry in Portuguese and on the following business day, 06/15, I got an email stating the petition was approved. I immediately solicited the case number so that we could send in our DS2001 form (other docs) to schedule an interview. They replied the same day with the number. We overnighted the packet and it arrived on 06/18. On 06/26 I followed up to know if they had given us an interview date yet. They responded the same day and told me that the interview was scheduled for 07/24.
We show up at the consulate in Rio at 7:30. There were about 12 people in line in front of us. The girl confirmed my wife's name on the list and gave us a ticket number. When we get up to the second floor, she gives us a contact information sheet to fill out and a list and order of the required documents (This order is different than was was on the website). She then calls up everyone to do an initial confirmation of the documents. After about an hour we are called in to one of the little rooms for the second document confirmation. After that we had the interview with the Consul.
The questions he asked my wife:
-How did we meet?
-How many times had I been to Brazil?
-When did I ask her to marry me?
-When did we get married?
Then he asked me:
-What was my profession in the US?
-Why I didn't have any income in 2008?
He then told us the visa was approved.
The interview was short and simple. We were done by 11:00. I think once you get the interview scheduled and have all of the documents in hand, there shouldn't be any problems. The courier service (TNT) told us it usually takes 2 days for them to release the visa and then another 3 days for it to arrive (Sao Paulo). We asked about the express service and it was going to cost about R$250 so we paid the R$30 for the normal service. The visa arrived on 07/28. From petition submission at the consulate in SP to visa in hand took less than 3 months.
Any written communication with the consulate in Rio should be done in PORTUGUESE. We probably lost 3 weeks trying to follow up with them in English and they weren't understanding at all. Send it in Portuguese to prevent any miscommunications and misunderstandings.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #4785