DV-2012 winners from South Africa??

[Superkruz]

Good luck with the birth and getting the visa. FYI, another good source of information for South Africans moving to the US is the SAUSA forum.

 

[dubai-b]

Hi

Hi there. The process was pretty simple and straightforward from what I could see.
Answers to your questions:

1. I took 2 extra photos per person. Since we sent 2 pics per application to KCC they were already stapled to the forms. The guy who was collecting our documents did ask for another one for me since one was slightly damaged.
2. I scheduled an appointment at NMC. It was cheaper than Prime Medical center. If you don't drive, you can take the metro (green line) to Abu Hail station. Its right in front of the station. There is only one Dr. that does medicals so I would suggest going in early as it took over 4 hours for us. Cost at NMC was Dhs425 whereas Prime quoted Dhs1125. All excluding vaccinations.
3. There was nothing different required. Don't worry about the 3/4 frontal portrait pics. They didn't even ask me. I think its mainly for other visa categories.

Good luck. I have updated by interview process in the Abu Dhabi thread.

Thanks for the info......actually i know the NMC at abu hail so i will just call them. The best thing is to drive there in the morning with my wife and kid.

 

[Ice Queen]

Good luck with the birth and getting the visa. FYI, another good source of information for South Africans moving to the US is the SAUSA forum.

Thanks for that. I have registered on the site as well. After your comment on the visa etc, I started looking at options to have bubs 2 in US. Now I'm all confused! My primary concern is getting that unabridged birth certificate as soon as baby is born. I applied for my daughters in December 2009... still haven't received it? We do have the unabridged Dubai birth certificates so it wasn't a huge concern for us when we went for the interview. The passport should be easy to get within a short time period but the unabridged can take up to 4 months. So now back to the grindstone on thoughts of our options. Maybe I'm too scared to just take the plunge and have the baby there? After all so many people do it even when going in on a B visa.

We are submitting our passports today to the embassy so the visa will be dated for this week or next. This means we have until mid July to enter but I can only travel until mid April (32 weeks of gestation). So it does mean that we have to fast track trying to sell off our apartment here and tying up everything. The journey just doesn't look easy and uncomplicated either way.

 

[Ice Queen]

Thanks for the info......actually i know the NMC at abu hail so i will just call them. The best thing is to drive there in the morning with my wife and kid.

Call and make the appointment for approximately 2 weeks before your interview. They do get pretty booked up and as mentioned, there is only one doctor who only does US visa medicals. I would suggest that you call at least a month in advance to make the appointment. It did take them about a week to issue the reports to us.

Another thing to note when going for your interview: Make sure you get your Dubai Police clearance. You may never know if they will ask you for it. Although it states on the website that they apply for it on your behalf we were asked for it. We had it done as my husband needed it to apply for his India Police clearance (we just did my application at the same time). The person who collected the documents requested it as it was on his checklist for DV lottery docs. Another document that he asked for was work experience. It never crossed our minds to have these handy so you might want to get that as well. It didn't really matter as we were still granted the visa but better to be safe.

 

[dubai-b]

Hi

Call and make the appointment for approximately 2 weeks before your interview. They do get pretty booked up and as mentioned, there is only one doctor who only does US visa medicals. I would suggest that you call at least a month in advance to make the appointment. It did take them about a week to issue the reports to us.

Another thing to note when going for your interview: Make sure you get your Dubai Police clearance. You may never know if they will ask you for it. Although it states on the website that they apply for it on your behalf we were asked for it. We had it done as my husband needed it to apply for his India Police clearance (we just did my application at the same time). The person who collected the documents requested it as it was on his checklist for DV lottery docs. Another document that he asked for was work experience. It never crossed our minds to have these handy so you might want to get that as well. It didn't really matter as we were still granted the visa but better to be safe.

Thanks so much for the info....today we applied for our dubai police clearance though we have not received our interview dates. i hope they will still be valid in April as am guessing we might get the interview then. Am planning also to get a letter from my company stating when i joined them and my current salary. Did you make your decision on where to have the baby at? africa or states.

 

[Superkruz]

My primary concern is getting that unabridged birth certificate as soon as baby is born. I applied for my daughters in December 2009... still haven't received it?

I read on another forum that people wait much longer than 4 months for the Unabridged Birth Certs.... not uncommon top wait a year!! I guess having the baby in the US is one way of getting around that problem. Another way would be to use bynnyhop. I have never used them but lots of people do ant they can get it within a week or two. It is expensive, but worth it since you are pretty much guaranteed to get it quickly with no hassle. A word of caution though... they cant help you if you have already submitted an application for a Birth Cert. many people apply by themselves at Home Affairs and then run to bunnyhop after a few months, only to be turned away. So if you really need it quickly I suggest you go to them from the start.

 

[makeiteasier]

Great busy year 4u!

By chance I went on to the Abu Dhabi website to check the status of our case last night and it states that our visa is ready to issue! I thought the AP would take much longer than that. My guess is that my husband went under AP when we applied for our tourist visa 3 years ago and that took over 4 months then so this time it was much quicker. The wheel is now in motion.

Going to be a rather interesting year for us. We going to India on 25 January for a few days. Plan to go to Kenya in February for a masai mara. US in March to activate our green cards and then South Africa in April to have baby 2 who is due in Jun/Jul. Hopefully we will get all baby docs ready in time to come back to Dubai in September.

How long can one be out of the country after you activate your green card? By my calculation it looks like it will be at least 7 months as we plan to activate in March (probably around the middle of the month) and then move by the end of September or beginning of October.

I wish I could come with u to all those favorite places!
Congrats!