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| Juarez, Mexico |  Review on May 6, 2010: |
dbarker2
Rating:  | Review Topic: K3 Visa
I flew into Mexico City from Denver and my wife from Minatitlan. We then flew into Juarez together the next morning after spending the night at her sister's house. We flew Aeromexico and got into Juarez at about 1 PM (I highly recommend getting a flight that arrives during the day). Once we got to the Hotel (La Quinta Inn: I'll talk more about the hotel situation in a second) we had the hotel shuttle take us to Banamex across the street from the Consulate and we paid about 150 dollars and got the receipt. We then returned to the hotel and relaxed the rest of the afternoon/night.
Hotel: La Quinta Inn. I highly recommend this hotel for anyone going to Juarez for Visa Purposes. It is right around the corner from all of the consular services and you can see it from the hotel. The Hotel provides a free shuttle to any of the places that you need to go for the visa, and they will take you to the international bridges once you get the visa. It is well secured and felt very safe. They have a great free breakfast as well with good food.
The next morning we went to the clinic at 6 AM. I went and waited at a covered waiting area behind the clinic with everyone else. There is someone there who has a radio and would call our names when our family member was ready or when they needed us to go in and pay. We were there for about 2.5 hours and then returned at 2 PM for the results. They gave us a CD with the torso x-ray and the immunization form. They also gave us a black packet to take to the Consulate and with instructions not to open.
The next morning my wife was scheduled at 8:15 for her appointment. We arrived around 7:55 and she was let in pretty quickly. However, that was the only quick part of the day. There is a waiting area kind of far from where they go in and come out, but close to the parking area at the front of the consulate. It is in doors and has TV's and food to buy. I waited there for about 3 hours before I got restless and decided to go and wait by where my wife would be coming out. I figured it would be maybe another hour. I was wrong. I waited for 3 more hours in the hot sun waiting and hoping she would come out soon. Around 2 o'clock my wife finally came out and looked around for me. I couldn't tell if she was happy or not at first because she was just looking around, but when she saw me she had a huge smile on her face and gave me a thumbs up. Well, we started walking away to go to the hotel and I asked if she had the DHL tracking number. She told me that when she was approved she was so excited that she forgot to go to the kiosk! haha So we talked to security and she was allowed back in and she paid the 8 dollars and got the tracking number. At the interview (which all took place in the last 30 minutes!) they asked her what my name is, when we got married, who went to our wedding, and then she showed them a few pictures. She asked if they wanted to see more evidence and the nice american lady told her "no, that won't be necessary. Congratulations, your visa has been approved." Luckily at one point during the day a nice lady bought my wife (4.5 months pregnant) a sandwich because she was getting restless waiting for her number to pop up.
So far everything had gone according to plan. We were planning on receiving our visa that day or the next because at the DHL kiosk they told her it should be ready by noon the next day. Well, noon came and noon went and there was still no change on the status of the package. Unfortunately our reservation ran out at La Quinta and they didn't have any openings for that night. So we went to Krystal Business Hotel which used to be Hilton. It was nice, but we were on the top floor and we had a terrible time trying to sleep, because there were a lot of noises. The next day when we realized we would have to stay at least another night we moved to the hotel Casa Grande which was next door. It was great and we stayed there for three nights. We tried not to leave the hotel room much because we were scared to leave. We even took the hotel shuttle across the street to a pharmacy. We probably heard/saw an average of one ambulance an hour passing in front of the hotel and we were kind of scared. In the week we were in Juarez there were about 150 murders, so we tried to stay in quite a bit.
Well, we were hoping to get home by saturday evening for the reception that my parents had planned, so we were checking constantly the DHL website for changes. Nothing changed. We then were informed by the hotel that the consulate closes for an administrative day the last friday of every month, and they do not to visa processing or printing, so when we heard that our hopes were shattered and we knew we wouldn't make it home. Well my parents had invited 250 people, and had a lot of food, so they weren't able to cancel/delay it. So they set up a big screen TV and we set up the SKYPE and we talked to everyone on the internet for our reception  Not quite what we had planned, but it turned out well. We decided to go to the consulate on Monday and see if we could get some information. We stood in an information line for about 30 minutes and moved about 5 feet. At the point, my wife started feeling dizzy and nauseous and she was having trouble breathing so we decided to head back to the hotel. Luckily the shuttle was dropping some more people off and we were able to get back quickly. We then contacted our senators office and she called the consulate. They said it could be until thursday before it was printed because of the 5 de mayo holiday that the consulate was taking off. We were pretty disappointed and just were getting restless. It was costing us a lot of money and I lost a job because I wasn't able to make it back in time for training. (They may still let me train next week ::Crossing fingers::
Well, my wife was sleeping almost all day and I was checking the DHL website. At about 3 I checked and nothing had changed so I got in bed and got ready to sleep a bit and spend another night there. At 3:30 my dad called and said that he had been tracking the package too and that it had changed! I got up and checked right away and it had just left the consulate and was on its way to DHL! I woke my wife and we got dressed and ran downstairs. The shuttle wasn't available so we got a taxi and rushed to DHL. We decided that we didn't care if we lost the money from the hotel for that night and we rushed back to the hotel, packed our things and headed for the border. The Taxista drove us to the Cordoba bridge and parked his car. He walked us to the Mexican immigration place to get my passport stamped. He then walked with us across the bridge (about 10-15 minutes) And he showed us where to go. He charged us a ton (50 dollars) but we didn't care eventhough we knew it was too much and we even gave him about 10 dollars more cuz we were so happy to be out of that city. We then went inside and about 30 minutes later my wifes passport was stamped and ready to go. We crossed into El Paso, waited for our taxi and went to another La Quinta inn in El Paso. In the Taxi I signed onto Southwest Airlines website, got ticked for the next morning at 7:25 AM and checked in all from my phone and the next day at 11:30 we were here in Denver, safe at last.
Overall it was a difficult frustrating experience, but well worth it. If anyone needs more advice or has questions feel free to message me. Thanks!
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #6024