Consulate Review: Montreal, Canada
Review Topic: K1 Visa
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| Event |
Description |
| Review Date : |
November 17, 2005 |
| Embassy Review : |
So yesterday morning, Mom and I bussed in to Montreal and walked over to the consulate. I had a letter saying that my interview was at 9:30 and we got there at 9, but there was already a queue. Just as we got there, a b***h of a security guard was letting a few people in so mom was convinced that they all had appointments and shoved me in ahead of everyone else. I wasn't impressed, I doubt they people outside were impressed ... but hey. I was in. We were in a foyer behing a very thick set of smoked glass double doors and they were letting people in, one at a time. When I got to the top, the b***h told me I had to ditch the bag (I had all of my documents in my backpack) before I could come in. Luckily, mom was at the coffee shop in front of the building (Consulate was on the side) so I just ran over and gave her the non-essential stuff and ran back. They were not letting anyone in with a bag of any kind, except for small purses. They were telling people to go put them in a locker at the shopping mall. They let me past the doors and into a little room that had 2 desks, a small one behind a big one.
Two guards were standing at the big one, and there was another guard sitting behind a computer monitor at the little one. There was a visitor standing behind the big desk, having a metal detector thing waved over him while he stood there, spread-eagled. I was asked to go to the guard on the left, where she asked for my letter and passport. She took all of my papers and put them in a wooden tray thing and told me to empty my pockets into a plastic bin. I didn't have much, just the money for the fee us$100. They xrayed everything and asked me to walk through a metal detector. I'm assuming that the guy with the screens was watching for any potential bad thing that I might have had on me. He nodded and said I was fine, so the girl didn't have to wand me. She said to me "go down the stairs, take the elevator to the 19th floor and go to the 14th window". When she said down the stairs, for some reason I thought that she meant I was going to be taking the elevator down to the 19th floor, as thought it was underground and I thought 'wow, that's so COOL!'. So I went through a door, down a flight of stairs and into a huge waiting room. It was weird because there were no windows, nothing on the walls, just a bunch of chairs set out. I looked around and at the back of the room was the elevator.
It was really big, like a transport elevator. Another girl came and I commented on his creepy it was, and she agreed. The elevator doors opened and we got in. There were 3 buttons. RC, 19 and 22. 19 was labelled "US Consulate" and 22 was labelled "Authorized persons ONLY". I was so tempted to push 22. After what felt like an hour, the elevator finally made it to 19 and we walked into a huge room with a ton of chairs that were divided into 3 seconds, temp visas and students, immigration and us citizens. I looked to me right and saw windows 1 through 12 but no 14. I had to walk around a bit of a wall to my left and saw windows 14 through 20. I went up to 14 and the lady asked to see my letter of appointment. I gave it to her and she gave me 2 little tags with C18 on them and told me to go sit and wait. The chairs were all facing a board that was divided into 4, A B C and C. Every few seconds, a new number would be called to a different window. Fortunately, when your number was called, an arrow would point which direction you had to go. My number was called relatively quickly so I went into the back to window 10. The lady started asking for original of this, copy of that, it got confusing really quickly. HINT: When putting your paperwork together, put it in one envelope, the photocopy behind the original all in one stack. It will make it easier. I wish she could have just said 'put this and this and this together and give it to me'. I could barely hear her (did I mention that so far all of these people were behind thick panes of glass?) because a guy at a window a few down from me was yelling at his lady behind the glass. I gave her all of the papers and she gave me a small card. She said "take this to the cashier, pay your bill, then bring this back here. No one will be at the window but just leave it in the slot, then go back to the waiting room until they call you again." I did as I was told and went and had a seat. Yelly guy and his fiancee were sitting behind me, so I started chatting with them. I won't get into the details but he was an arrogant jerk who didn't know anything and then complained about that lack of knowledge, saying that no one had told him, and she was an airhead who saw his word as law. Yeah, it was interesting.
Anyway, they called C5 in for an interview. I started to get worried because if they had 13 people to go before me and they were taking ~ 20 mins per interview ... my poor mom was going to be sitting in that coffee shop for a good 3 hours. I went back downstairs in the elevator of creepiness and asked if I could go out. The b***hy security guard gave me a big smile and said "but your mom seems to be enjoying her book, why bother her?" weird. a) how did they know she was my mom and b ) how did they know she was reading a book?!? Anyway, I went over and told mom that it ws going to be a while, so she decided to go do some shopping. I grabbed my coat and her book so I had something to do while waiting and went back. They x-rayed me again and I went back upstairs. Arrogant yelly dude told me that they called in someone else and it looked like it wasn't going in any sort of numerical order because they called C14. He got all excited thinking he was up soon because he was C16 until I pointed out that he just said that they weren't going in numerical order. He then asked me if it was really only an hour to Quebec City and I said no, it was more like 4. He didn't talk to me again. I read my book and an hour and a half passed (during which one younger couple came out of an interrogation room, smiling, crying and kissing, they were so happy. It was cute!), when my number was called over the loudspeaker, but not on the board. Arrogant yelly guy and Blondy gave me dirty looks as I skipped into the interview room. It was a really narrow room, I could have stretched my arms out and touched both walls. There was a chair, a coat rack and a guy behind a glass pane. He was SO nice. He apologised for keeping me waiting and then thanked me for having such a simple application. He said it was the most uncomplicated one he had seen all day. He scanned the fingerprints on both of my index fingers and swore me in by asking me to raise my right hand and swearing to tell the truth. He said that since my application was so straight-forward, he only had 2 questions for me, 1) how did we meet and 2) how was I proposed to. When I told him that I had proposed to Chris, he thought it was awesome. He said that he had never heard of that before, and asked about the ring and stuff. He was such a nice guy. He said I was approved and congradulated me on everything.
He then gave me back my birth certificate and divorce certificate that lady B had taken with the rest of the papers, told me that I could pick up my visa anytime after 3pm the next day but then remembered that I had given the courier envelope so I should receive it either Thursday or Friday (gonna be Friday because I didn't receive it today) and then went through some procedures about what happens after I get to the states. I think I was in there for a whole 5 minutes. I left the room, gave a thumbs-up to Arrogant and Blondy, and left. |
| Rating : |
Good |
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ver 5.0