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| Dominican Republic |  Review on August 1, 2011: |
RMC2000
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
So we had an interview date for August 3rd. My mom asked me to see whether I could do anything to expedite the process due to my dad's health problems. I contacted my congressman but did not feel confident that they were going to do anything - a young man called me and was insensitive toward the issues with my dad and did not sound on the ball at all. As further evidence of his incompetence, he left me a message on Thursday June 30th telling me that my fiance had an appointment on July 6th and that he should be getting something in the mail - we all know he's not going to get something in the mail that quickly and that's not enough time for the medical plus the weekend and July 4th holiday.
So anyways, a friend's mom handles visa issues for another congressman. She sent a letter directly to the consulate asking for the expedite. She told me that 9 times out of 10 they are not granted for family illness. But to our surprise, it was granted and she emailed me the response from the consulate with a scanned copy of the appointment letter. The consulate and medical office was closed the day I received the email due to a dominican holiday. We had to scramble to get everything done but it all worked out. Now, the interview . . .
We stayed at the Jardin del Teatro. It is very convenient to the consulate. We got in line about 5:45 am. After we got through security we went into the room with the benches. I was surprised by how light it was. White walls and bright lights with some natural light coming in as well - it somewhat open air on one side. We got a receipt number outside while we were in line in exchange for the appointment letter. We noticed that the numbers weren't called in any particular order. We were called up to give our forms and pay our $210 dollars at one of the windows that run down the left side. They didn't ask for my I-864 (or I 34). My fiance was speaking in english some of the time while the officer was asking for our forms. Next we were called up for his fingerprints. After that we waited for a while and watched the people being interviewed in front of us. We saw one very nicely dressed couple get separated during the interview. Afterwards, they sat back down on the benches, which I think means they probably had to go to window 11.
I was so nervous. Finally, we were called up. The interviewer was a young caucasian woman. She started to speak in english and I said (in spanish) that I preferred to do the interview in english since my fiance's english is better than my spanish. He acted modest about it and she swore him in in spanish.
She asked if he had applied for a tourist visa before. I said "yes at my request (and my parents request)."
She asked when we met (June 2008).
She asked if my parents had visited. I said they had planned to in January but then my dad was diagnosed with cancer in November and that I had a doctor's letter - she said she didn't need to see it and she was sorry about my dad.
She asked "Do we have plans for the wedding?" - i said "not really. We'll we'll probably get married in my town and do a church wedding but it all depends on my dad."
She asked to look at my passport.
She asked to see photos. I only had about 8 but I think we both look pretty genuinely happy in them.
She didn't really ask anything directly to my fiance.
She gave us a green slip and told us to pay DomEx. We paid and they said it might be ready in 3 days. We said we wanted to pick it up, hoping that would make things faster. We called after 2 days and we were told that it wasn't on the list for Monday and it could be in a couple days or weeks.
I followed up with NVC and was told visa was issued on Friday July 15th. it was delivered to Santiago on Wednesday July 20th. Fiance picked it up thursday and flew Friday. He arrived into Miami around 5:30. Immigration took 5 hours. Mostly just waiting because there were a lot of people some of whom seemed to qet questioned for a long time. They didn't question him too hard. But he missed the connecting flight and had to stay the night and arrived in dc the next morning.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #8036