My wife received her immigrant visa on Dec 3, we returned Dec 8. I have been lazy in doing my writeup, here it my diatribe. It will
be in 2 parts as I have exceeded the maximum message length.
Background
Full K3/I-130 timelines can be found at
http://www.omersaeed.com/immigration.html
Our I-130 was approved by CSC before MSC approved the I-129F, so we proceeded as if we had not filed the 129F. When the I-129F was approved 1 month later, the I-130 was progressing at a nice rate. Since AOS can take a long time in California, we decided to forgo AOS and opt for consular processing for the immigrant visa, even if the K3 was approved. Since I was going to be unable to take any time off from work till Nov/Dec, we hoped that the immigrant visa would be ready by the time I went to Pakistan. Otherwise, Maria would enter the US on the K3 and return to Pakistan at the appropriate time for her immigrant visa interview.
The last stages before the interview
NVC completed its review in late October and sent the app to Islamabad. Around the same time, my vacation dates were finalized. I was going to take 2 weeks off (week of and week after Thanksgiving). Due to commitments at work, the dates were inflexible. I made my travel plans in the last week of October as we waited for Islamabad to recieve the file. Unfortunately, do to my inflexible dates and increased holiday travel to South Asia, I was unable to find any seats on my preferred routes, we would have to travel via Frankfurt. This meant that Maria would have to obtain a transit visa (German requirement for Pakistani citizens). Maria immediately contacted the German consulate, they scheduled an interview on Nov 21 (and refused to give anything soon). At that time they claimed the visa issuance would take 2 weeks (we later found out that was true only for visitor visas, transit visas take 2-3 days).
Maria received her packet from Islamabad on Nov 8. She had to send some items back to the embassy. After review of the docs, the embassy would schedule the interview. The following items were to be sent
1. Medical report
2. Original birth certificate and english transalation
3. Original marriage certificate and english translation
4. Passport
5. Police certificates
6. DS 230 Parts I and II
7. I-864 and tax papers.
Some things were easy for us (her original birth and marriage certificates were already in english, DS-230 Part I and I-864 had been previously submitted to NVC, so the embassy said they did not need to be resubmitted to them), but we had a bunch of issues lined up, and I got to drive the embassy nuts with phone calls.
Police Certificate -- Maria had a police certificate from her previous place
of residence, but not from Islamabad, where she had been living for the last 9 months. She had tried to obtain one earlier, but was refused as she had lost her identity card. We were still awaiting the arrival of her identity card. The consulate said her other police certificate would be sufficient along with an explanation of why she cannot obtain an Islamabad certificate. Notheless, she tried again to get a certificate. Initially she was told it would take 2-3 weeks. Then they went to another police station, and her brother ran into an old fried. He issued a polcie certificate the same day (fortunately, she had a photocopy of her lost ID card, so that along with her passport sufficed for identity purposes).
Passport -- Due to the interview for the German transit visa, it would be impossible to submit her passport with her packet. The embassy said a photocopy would be sufficient as long as we presented the actual passport at time of interview. BTW, one paper I received from NVC stated that all applicants from India and Pakistan need to have a "married" passport stating the husband's name. Maria's passport
had her maiden name and did not state my name (we decided she should stick with her maiden name since it is a pain to get official documents changed in Pakistan, she will change her name if she wants when applying for naturalization). However, she was not bugged at the time of K3, and she never received such an instruction from the Islamabad embassy, so we decided to take the risk of not having my
name in her passport.
Medical -- Maria had just gone through the K3 medical 2 months earlier. I asked if she would have to go through the complete medical or if she could just have the vaccinations and resubmit reports from the last medical. The embassy said the doctor could use the results from the last medical.
Interview timeline -- The embassy said they would take 2 weeks to review the docs, then schedule the interview 2-4 weeks after that. I asked if there was any way to expedite the review process. They said I would have to make the request in person at the embassy. I said I would be happy to do so once I arrived.
Additionally, we decided to submit the K3 sealed brown envelope so that they could extract any necessary medical reports etc. to complete their files.
Getting the interview
I arrived in Islamabad the night of Monday, 11/25/02 and went to the embassy the next morning (I will discuss all the fun logistical issues of visiting the embassy later on). After waiting inside for about 15 minutes, my name was called and I went to the consular officer. I explained my situation, that we would like to obtain an expedited interview before my 12/08/02 departure. This would mean that I would need an interview on 12/04/02 or earlier (due to Eid holidays and the weekend). If we could not get an interview, we would need them to return our K3 packet. The consular officer said they would make a decision by Friday 11/29/02 and would mail us the decision. I said OK. The very next day 11/27/02 we received a phone call telling us that the interview would be on 12/03/02. We were extremely thrilled. They asked us to come by on Friday 11/29/02 to pick up the interview letter (as it was required for Maria to enter the embassy, and it was too late to mail the letter).
The day of interview
We received an 8am interview time (along with a bunch of other immigrant visa,K1,K3,and V1 applicants). At around 8:45, 3 consular officers explained the interview procedure and administered an oath en masse. There were 3 steps
1. Collection of fees
2. Interview by a Pakistani consular officer
3. Interview by an American consular officer
At about 9:30, we were called for fee collection. Our fees had been paid
in full to NVC, but they still asked for the money. I presented the officer
with my fee letter from NVC and a photocopy of my money order. She then looked in our file and saw that the fees had been paid.
10 minutes later, Maria was called by the Pakistani consular officer. I went along, but the officer told me to get lost, Maria was the one to be interviewed. He asked her some tough questions and tried to confuse her. First question: Are you a terrorist or do you have any links to known terrorists? Followed by questions about where I live, my job, how we met, etc. He asked a few things about the application to make sure that Maria was invovled in the process (have you submitted photos, did you send in tax papers). He also made a comment that he knew she had been given an expedited interview and wondered why had made travel plans without an immigrant visa, she said she had a K3 already. He then looked at the few photos we brought along (about 10 photos of various wedding functions and a few trips we made). He then asked if she had any additional proof of relationship, she presented a folder containg emails, cards, copies of phone card receipts. At this point, based on other interview experiences, especially those from India,
we knew we were in the clear.
About 15 minuets later was the interview with the American officer. Again, I was asked to get lost. This interview went very smoothly. She just asked for details about the photos, then got confused as to why a "fees paid" receipt was not attached to the front of our file. So she went away for 10 minutes and found out that our fees had been paid to NVC, thus no receipt from Islambad was attached to the file. The lady said that everything was done, we could pick up everything after 1:30. Of course, we were thrilled.
It was about 11:00, so we had a few hours to kill. We went to do some shopping and returned at about 3:30 (embassy closes at 4 or 4:30). My wife was chewed out for coming back so late, she was the last person to pick up her visa (I guess most people just wait around because it is
a pain to make multiple trips to the embassy in a day, more later in the logistics section).
End of Part 1
be in 2 parts as I have exceeded the maximum message length.
Background
Full K3/I-130 timelines can be found at
http://www.omersaeed.com/immigration.html
Our I-130 was approved by CSC before MSC approved the I-129F, so we proceeded as if we had not filed the 129F. When the I-129F was approved 1 month later, the I-130 was progressing at a nice rate. Since AOS can take a long time in California, we decided to forgo AOS and opt for consular processing for the immigrant visa, even if the K3 was approved. Since I was going to be unable to take any time off from work till Nov/Dec, we hoped that the immigrant visa would be ready by the time I went to Pakistan. Otherwise, Maria would enter the US on the K3 and return to Pakistan at the appropriate time for her immigrant visa interview.
The last stages before the interview
NVC completed its review in late October and sent the app to Islamabad. Around the same time, my vacation dates were finalized. I was going to take 2 weeks off (week of and week after Thanksgiving). Due to commitments at work, the dates were inflexible. I made my travel plans in the last week of October as we waited for Islamabad to recieve the file. Unfortunately, do to my inflexible dates and increased holiday travel to South Asia, I was unable to find any seats on my preferred routes, we would have to travel via Frankfurt. This meant that Maria would have to obtain a transit visa (German requirement for Pakistani citizens). Maria immediately contacted the German consulate, they scheduled an interview on Nov 21 (and refused to give anything soon). At that time they claimed the visa issuance would take 2 weeks (we later found out that was true only for visitor visas, transit visas take 2-3 days).
Maria received her packet from Islamabad on Nov 8. She had to send some items back to the embassy. After review of the docs, the embassy would schedule the interview. The following items were to be sent
1. Medical report
2. Original birth certificate and english transalation
3. Original marriage certificate and english translation
4. Passport
5. Police certificates
6. DS 230 Parts I and II
7. I-864 and tax papers.
Some things were easy for us (her original birth and marriage certificates were already in english, DS-230 Part I and I-864 had been previously submitted to NVC, so the embassy said they did not need to be resubmitted to them), but we had a bunch of issues lined up, and I got to drive the embassy nuts with phone calls.
Police Certificate -- Maria had a police certificate from her previous place
of residence, but not from Islamabad, where she had been living for the last 9 months. She had tried to obtain one earlier, but was refused as she had lost her identity card. We were still awaiting the arrival of her identity card. The consulate said her other police certificate would be sufficient along with an explanation of why she cannot obtain an Islamabad certificate. Notheless, she tried again to get a certificate. Initially she was told it would take 2-3 weeks. Then they went to another police station, and her brother ran into an old fried. He issued a polcie certificate the same day (fortunately, she had a photocopy of her lost ID card, so that along with her passport sufficed for identity purposes).
Passport -- Due to the interview for the German transit visa, it would be impossible to submit her passport with her packet. The embassy said a photocopy would be sufficient as long as we presented the actual passport at time of interview. BTW, one paper I received from NVC stated that all applicants from India and Pakistan need to have a "married" passport stating the husband's name. Maria's passport
had her maiden name and did not state my name (we decided she should stick with her maiden name since it is a pain to get official documents changed in Pakistan, she will change her name if she wants when applying for naturalization). However, she was not bugged at the time of K3, and she never received such an instruction from the Islamabad embassy, so we decided to take the risk of not having my
name in her passport.
Medical -- Maria had just gone through the K3 medical 2 months earlier. I asked if she would have to go through the complete medical or if she could just have the vaccinations and resubmit reports from the last medical. The embassy said the doctor could use the results from the last medical.
Interview timeline -- The embassy said they would take 2 weeks to review the docs, then schedule the interview 2-4 weeks after that. I asked if there was any way to expedite the review process. They said I would have to make the request in person at the embassy. I said I would be happy to do so once I arrived.
Additionally, we decided to submit the K3 sealed brown envelope so that they could extract any necessary medical reports etc. to complete their files.
Getting the interview
I arrived in Islamabad the night of Monday, 11/25/02 and went to the embassy the next morning (I will discuss all the fun logistical issues of visiting the embassy later on). After waiting inside for about 15 minutes, my name was called and I went to the consular officer. I explained my situation, that we would like to obtain an expedited interview before my 12/08/02 departure. This would mean that I would need an interview on 12/04/02 or earlier (due to Eid holidays and the weekend). If we could not get an interview, we would need them to return our K3 packet. The consular officer said they would make a decision by Friday 11/29/02 and would mail us the decision. I said OK. The very next day 11/27/02 we received a phone call telling us that the interview would be on 12/03/02. We were extremely thrilled. They asked us to come by on Friday 11/29/02 to pick up the interview letter (as it was required for Maria to enter the embassy, and it was too late to mail the letter).
The day of interview
We received an 8am interview time (along with a bunch of other immigrant visa,K1,K3,and V1 applicants). At around 8:45, 3 consular officers explained the interview procedure and administered an oath en masse. There were 3 steps
1. Collection of fees
2. Interview by a Pakistani consular officer
3. Interview by an American consular officer
At about 9:30, we were called for fee collection. Our fees had been paid
in full to NVC, but they still asked for the money. I presented the officer
with my fee letter from NVC and a photocopy of my money order. She then looked in our file and saw that the fees had been paid.
10 minutes later, Maria was called by the Pakistani consular officer. I went along, but the officer told me to get lost, Maria was the one to be interviewed. He asked her some tough questions and tried to confuse her. First question: Are you a terrorist or do you have any links to known terrorists? Followed by questions about where I live, my job, how we met, etc. He asked a few things about the application to make sure that Maria was invovled in the process (have you submitted photos, did you send in tax papers). He also made a comment that he knew she had been given an expedited interview and wondered why had made travel plans without an immigrant visa, she said she had a K3 already. He then looked at the few photos we brought along (about 10 photos of various wedding functions and a few trips we made). He then asked if she had any additional proof of relationship, she presented a folder containg emails, cards, copies of phone card receipts. At this point, based on other interview experiences, especially those from India,
we knew we were in the clear.
About 15 minuets later was the interview with the American officer. Again, I was asked to get lost. This interview went very smoothly. She just asked for details about the photos, then got confused as to why a "fees paid" receipt was not attached to the front of our file. So she went away for 10 minutes and found out that our fees had been paid to NVC, thus no receipt from Islambad was attached to the file. The lady said that everything was done, we could pick up everything after 1:30. Of course, we were thrilled.
It was about 11:00, so we had a few hours to kill. We went to do some shopping and returned at about 3:30 (embassy closes at 4 or 4:30). My wife was chewed out for coming back so late, she was the last person to pick up her visa (I guess most people just wait around because it is
a pain to make multiple trips to the embassy in a day, more later in the logistics section).
End of Part 1
