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| Guayaquil, Ecuador |  Review on December 3, 2009: |
MoonStar9913
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
Hello everyone, I have finally gotten around to posting my review of Guayaquil. We had an appointment scheduled on November 30th, 2009 at 8:30am. We arrived a little before 8am and outside the consulate there are three “entrance-gates” with non-immigrant visas, immigrant visas, and US citizen services written above. There were some people waiting there so I wasn’t sure what to do but we worked our way to the front and asked a man working for the consulate and he told us to go on through. After the preliminary security check, they let us on through and we entered the building but there was no electricity so we had to wait almost an hour until they fixed the generator because we hadn’t passed through the metal detector yet but we talked with the guard while we waited and though at first he seemed very serious, by the end he was cracking jokes.
After the electricity came back on they told us to go upstairs and take a seat. (We had turned nothing in at this point, the guy outside had asked for the beneficiary’s name and that was it…we were worried at first because another VJ couple was going through at the same time and was sent to another direction, to a window for “entrega de documentos” but they did not turn anything in either, we all ended up at the same place) After we had been waiting for maybe a half hour upstairs the man who had taken my fiancé’s name outside came up and filled everyone in on the basic process for the immigration visas. He told us that our names would be called and we would go up one of the curtained windows and turn in all of our documents, then we would go for the fingerprints, and finally we would meet with the consul for the interview. He said this generally takes anywhere from ½ hour to 4 hours. He was very pleasant and was willing to take anyone’s questions.
Then, we waited. And as has been previously stated, that upstairs room can definitely get chilly; I had a jacket and was almost wishing I had a pair of gloves…lol. Though many members have had very negative experiences in the past, overall we felt that Guayaquil’s atmosphere was positive. My fiancé had applied twice for tourist visas in Quito and he felt that the personnel and “air” at Guayaquil was much better. This does not mean that they were perfect, there were also workers there that I do not think that I would ever be friends with but they weren’t as horrible as we had imagined. For example, when names could not be easily heard over the loudspeakers the guards would come upstairs and repeat the name to make sure that the person heard.
At 11:15am we were called to a window and turned in our documents to a 30ish Ecuadorian woman who seemed to be very pleasant. They did the same kind of thing that USCIS does, they make their own folder, so don’t worry so much about what your documents are in. Just make sure that you know where they are and can remove them fairly easily. She took all of the Packet 4 documents (she did not ask for certified translations even though I had them) and then asked for evidence of a relationship, photos, etc. We had taken 14 letters attesting to the relationship (from my congressman, my family and friends, mutual friends, our landlords, and his family) along with my flight itineraries, travel insurance, etc as evidence of my trips, and text messages I had recorded, excerpts from a journal I had been keeping when we first met, our Facebook profile pages (haha), and examples of e-mails between us as well as examples of my e-mails with family and friends where we mentioned my fiancé. Instead of printing out a ton of e-mails I printed out the Inbox and Sent pages of both my e-mail and Juan’s to show all the dates of e-mails between us as well as a few examples from different points in the relationship. I also had about a hundred photos of us together that I put in one of the cheap plastic photo albums you can buy at almost any of the dollar stores here. This is the biggest thing that would hold pictures that would fit through the slot. Definitely do not use anything with a hard cover or it would never get through.
While we gave her all this information she transferred it to another folder and returned things she didn’t need (some items from the original application, my notarized intent to marry, filler papers like table of contents, the duplicate DS-156 form, etc). While she then entered information into the computer she asked us some questions. She asked why I was in Ecuador when we met, how we met and where, she asked all the dates of when I came to Ecuador and when I left (but she let me help my fiancé with these), she asked if I had a ring and I showed it to her, she asked what our plans are for a wedding, etc. She also asked my fiancé how old I am and he stumbled (because he was VERY nervous) and said that I am 25 but he corrected himself and said 24. And he did the same when she asked when we met, he started by saying June and then corrected himself and said January. So, we were not perfect in the interview, he was too nervous to be but she seemed to understand that. We spent about 15min with her and then she told us to go get his fingerprints done and wait until we were called in front of the consul.
After getting his fingerprints done we sat back down but this time downstairs where we could occasionally hear the other interviews. We tried to see behind the curtains to see who the consuls are but we were not quite successful, we think that there is an older man as well as a younger one but we never saw them and couldn’t hear them very well. After waiting another ½ hour to an hour we were called up to the consul’s window. Our consul was a late 30s-40s American woman who does not speak very good Spanish. I had heard her interviewing before hand and her Spanish had a horrendous accent and she did not seem pleasant. I had heard her talking to a man before yes and she told him “Please, yes or no answers!” in a not very pleasant tone so when we were called to her window I was disappointed and afraid. But we were lucky and got the “easy” interview. She told both of us to raise our right hands and swear and we did, and then she asked me, in English, (practically ignoring my fiancé) if I had been on an exchange program when I met Juan and I explained to her how my study abroad worked and the program I came here with and then she asked how long we had been together and I said almost three years (I added, wow, time flies and I actually got a small laugh/smile out of her) and then she reached up for the so-called pink slip (though I must say that it is actually purple) and said that our visa was approved. We said thank you and I all but collapsed before leaving the booth.
We then headed over to DHL and paid our $6 (it is $6 to send it to another DHL office and $8 to send it to your home) and we were done with everything by about 1pm and we had been one of the last people, there were not too many people still waiting after us. The other VJ couple was approved as well though I do not know the details.
Overall we had a good experience and I would suggest that people relax a bit because I know that I have been extremely stressed preparing for this interview and as I said my fiancé was so nervous that he was trembling and answered incorrectly a few answers he easily knew. With that said, I do not want people to think that the process is easy and that they do not need to prepare. Recently it seems that VJers have been having a much higher success rate with Guayaquil this year than last year but I do not know if that is because there has been a change in Guayaquil or a change in the applicants. I was with my fiancé every step of the way and I feel that that is a large reason as to why we had a pretty easy interview, I think they saw the love in how we responded to each other (for example when my fiancé messed up, I told him relax it’s OK, nothing changes, just take your time). So, I would continue to support those who STRONGLY recommend that the USC goes to the interview. In addition to this, I had come very prepared with evidence, I stated what I brought previously but I also had a “just in case” folder with extra copies of everything important as well as things I didn’t know if we would need or not (like the original NOA, e-mails with the embassy, certified translations, etc) which I didn’t end up needing but might have helped prevent me from having anymore hassles. As I said, I also took about 100 photos and a lot of evidence which again, might have helped us to get the “easy” interview instead of the “not-so-easy” one the guy (probably for another type of immigrant visa) before us had. So, take heed of other’s experience, have the USC go to the interview, be organized, be prepared with lots of evidence and then RELAX, hopefully everything will be OK.
(I would have rated the interview as a 4 but my experience with Guayaquil and especially their Visa Information Service (VIS) line before the interview made me drop it to a 3)
Feel free to PM me if you have any questions!
(updated on December 3, 2009)
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #5348