I and my wife (H-1B/H-4) recently renewed our visa at the U.S. Consulate in Kolkata.The following is our nightmare-experience:
We were going to go to India for three weeks in January 2006 and we decided to renew our visas for the 7th year. We initially obtained an appointment date in April 2006 but upon emailing a request as a returning worker, we were able to have an expedited appointment in early January. However, we were kicked out of the consulate because of 2 reasons. First, I forgot to include my wife’s name in the request that we emailed. In the morning of the interview, I was surprised not to see my wife’s name on the list provided to the security personnel outside the consulate. Realizing what the blunder that I had caused, I begged the security to let both of us enter which they did, but there was another problem at the counter receiving the paperwork inside consulate. All visa applicants, who are “specially-treated” with an expedited appointment, are instructed to fill out DS-156 through a 2nd source, the State.gov website. Upon doing this, the difference will be that at the bottom of the page will be a spe-cial schematic (logo kind of thing) that they scan to upload all the data that you had filled out through the state.gov website. Make sure to print the pages only with a laser printer, which is another requirement.
My initial thought on this prior to going to the consulate was that it may be confusing to fill out the same DS-156 form through the VFS website and the State.gov website. Infact, I had called VFS to verify this and they said it was not necessary to fill out the form through the State.gov website. However, after all this, I was frustrated and we were instructed to come back will all necessary changes within two hours. This was impossible and we spent the worse two hours of our life trying to look for a cyber café in the vi-cinity of the consulate at 7:45am that had a laser printer. When I called from outside of the consulate to request for more time, we were told to come back and collect our passports because we had lost the ap-pointment for the day. We came back home and requested for another appointment before we were due to come back to the US (our visas were not cancelled). For some reason the visa Gods shined my luck and we were granted another appointment a couple of days prior to our departure.
On our second interview, everything went smooth for I had correctly fulfilled the requirements; however, there was another glitch, and this was something I could not have anticipated. My wife was told that since she was going to school full-time, she should have transferred her visa to F-1. She was instructed to do the same up on her return to the US (I am glad they let her come to the US and change her status) failing which my H-1B would not be eligible for renewal next year. When she came back and discussed this with her International Student Advisor, he was shocked for he hadn’t heard of such a thing; neither had our consulting layers. Anyway, we are in the process of obtaining an I-20 from the University and sending the package to BCIS.
If anyone would like to share their experience regarding related H-4 to F-1 change of status, please do so. Your help will be appreciated.
