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| Montreal, Canada |  Review on April 7, 2011: |
M and D
Rating:  | Review Topic: IR-1/CR-1 Visa
Montreal Consulate Review
I arrived at the door of the consulate at 7:00am on Thursday morning. No one else showed up until about 7:20. As people started to arrive I realized I must have been one of the only ones who is a member of VJ, because many of them came with backpacks, cellphones etc. All I brought was a plastic shopping bag containing my file folder of documents, and a passport holder containing my passport and photos.
At 7:30 (at least I think it was 7:30 – I didn’t have my cell phone and wasn’t wearing a watch), a guard came to the door and asked who was first in line. I said I was and he asked to see my invitation letter and passport, which I had ready.
He let me in the door, and then up a very short flight of stairs there is another set of doors. I was told to go through the door on the left. This is where the “airport-style” security takes place. You empty your pockets, remove your belt, a watch if you have one, your jacket etc. and everything goes through the scanner. The guards don’t have much to say – they aren’t unfriendly, but seem kind of indifferent.
Once I got through that I went through the door on the left which takes you to the basement, and just like so many others have advised on VJ, I sat in the seat closest to the elevator. About 10 minutes later an officer/guard came in and told everyone waiting for immigrant visas to follow him onto the elevator.
Just as I read from other VJ members, I stood at the BACK of the elevator because that’s the door that opens when you reach the right floor. So I was first off of the elevator.
Once off of the elevator I wasn’t sure exactly where to go. Just look at the floor; there are yellow arrows that guide you to the line you have to get into to get your number (if you are still confused the line starts directly in front of the cashier’s window to the left and there is a yellow sign that tells you to line up here).
I was first in line and received two tickets with C1 on them. They instructed me to wait in the middle of the room until my number was called but there wasn’t enough time to sit, they called my number so fast.
I was directed to go to window 12, which is the last one at the end of the hall. The woman there wasn’t friendly… she barely looked at me. She requested all of my original documents, including the affidavit of support, and my husband’s divorce decree (which our documents indicated WAS NOT REQUIRED… I had it anyway so it didn’t matter).
Just when I thought I was going to have the fastest processing ever, she holds up a copy of the DS-230 Application and asks if I filled it out. I told her I had filled out the online version, but that didn’t seem to matter – I had to fill it out AGAIN, right on the spot. This is the document that asks where you’ve lived since you were 15 and your employers for the last 10 years… going from memory it took me about 30 minutes to fill it out… so much for my quick processing. As far as I could tell, no one else was asked to do this.
She took the document from me and told me to go wait in the waiting room for my name to be called. By about 10:30 a.m. most of the people who were on the elevator with me were gone and I was starting to wonder why my name hadn’t been called, so I asked the girl at the cashier’s window if there was some way to find out. She told me to go back to the original window and ask.
The girl wasn’t there but I managed to flag down another guy who was surprised I was still there. I saw him pull up my picture on his computer screen, then he came back and asked if I’d been processed there when I first got in. I said “yes of course” and when I told him window 12 he rolled his eyes and told me to wait a minute. Then he came back and took my finger prints – something everyone else had done during original processing. So obviously my processing wasn’t completed properly, resulting in a 2 hour delay.
My name got called very quickly after that – a nice blond girl, probably about my age (30) came to window 7 and asked me a few questions all while handing back my original documents. The tone was very conversational, even friendly at times. She asked me where I met my husband , what he did for a living, if I’d had any run-ins with the law etc. It was less than 5 minutes before she told me to enjoy California, congratulations and welcome to the United States.
Then she handed me some documents about my visa and how to register for DHL (which we had already done). And that was it… left the consulate at 11am.
Recommendations: Take a cab to the interview if you’re close by. I stayed at the Holiday Inn- Midtown. It was $5 each way, and the driver dropped me off right at the door avoiding any confusion. Also didn’t have to worry about getting the car out/parking etc
Don’t bring backpacks, laptop bags or big purses. They won’t even let you through the door with them and lots of people got turned away.
Bring a completed copy of your visa application form if you did online processing. That alone will save you at least 30 minutes. They explained to me later that the online system is new and that they can’t process it yet.
Bring copies of documents you think you won’t need, like divorce decrees etc. You never know when they might ask for them.
HUGE THANKS TO EVERYONE ON VISA JOURNEY! Having read the step-by-step accounts of what to do made the morning go much easier and allowed me to be first in line all the way through… under normal circumstances this would have meant much less time at the consulate.
It was a long wait, but totally worth it... now back to living our beautiful life together!
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #7391