After several years in the US under various temporary F, J, L & H1B visa categories, today our DV immigrant visas have been approved by the US Consulate in our home country. It was a simple and rather straight forward process and we were in and out in just under one hour. As promised, a brief summary of our experience below.
The US consulate IV Sections process included three specific steps:
Step 1: Appointment verification, visa fee payment by credit card (Amexco, Visa, MasterCard all accepted) and re-confirmation of local address for Passport and Visa Package delivery (we had registered the address of our relatives through the consulate website previously, before the appointment date). Step 1 took approx. 10 minutes, not longer. After that we waited for approx. 10 min., before proceeding to the next window
Step 2: CO went through the list of documents one by one (birth & marriage certificates, police records, high school transcript & financial documentation) with us one by one and always requested to see originals (which were subsequently returned to us at end of step 3) and one copy of each document for consulate files (important: please bring copies of all documents with you to the interview!). We were slightly surprised they requested financial documentation, yet provided them with latest Fidelity account statement and this resolved the matter. We then provided fingerprint scans, updated photos etc. This step took approx. 20 minutes for our family of five. After that we waited for approx. another 10 minutes.
Step 3: A senior CO officer first checked our fingerprints against the ones provided in step 2, took our oaths (all five at the same time), thanked us for being so patient waiting and then engaged us in some "small talk", in order to confirm the information he already had available (i.e. how many years we have lived in the US and where, US college & school of children etc). After approx. 5 minutes of chatting with us, he told us that our visa application had been approved and that the IV department will proceed to the visa issue phase as soon as medical files have been received from the panel doctor. We told him that we completed medicals yesterday and had received confirmation that everything was fine and the records would arrive at the consulate today. He seemed happy that this information would become available shortly and the process could therefore be completed. He then asked us about the date of our return flight to the US and we told him that our kids had to be back for school shortly. He noted the date of our return flight and promised to assign us a high priority ranking, explaining that due to current printing issues, which he hoped would be resolved in the foreseeable future, the actual printing of visas was currently managed on priority assignment basis. He seemed rather confident that we should be fine (we had planned in some safety days already), yet emphasized that he could not guarantee it (which we had not expected anyway). We thanked him for the excellent communication and support, said our good byes and left. This step took an est. 15 minutes.
We had no real wait time to enter the embassy (dedicated IV line, bypassing temporary visa application line), just 5 minutes or so for security check on entering, had left consulate premises within 5 minutes max. - total time, as mentioned above, just less than one hour, couldn't possibly have gone more smoothly.
Hopefully our experience this morning may be of interest to folks in our cohort, going through the same process shortly. Please feel free to ask if you have any specific questions related to any of the above. Best.
You should have interview in August!!! How it is possible in July?
