DCF experience South Africa #1 (revised)
Dec 1st 2001, 10:56 pm
#1
Guest
Posts: n/a
This is the story so far, by all means get as familiar with the DCF process before
reading this. my wife is from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, i live in Los Angeles. We
decided to get married there on November 2nd and file a spousal visa directly at the
consulate afterwards(DCF). Before we did any of this however we sent away for all the
police records that she needed, since she had lived in the UK for a couple years we
needed one from the UK and one from South Africa. These both took exactly 4 weeks to
get after requesting them; the UK certificate requested by mail via family in london,
and the south african certificate requested in person. either the UK was very fast or
South africa is very slow, i believe its more the second possibility myself. We also
obtained her long form birth certificate which shows where her parents were born etc.
We got a joint sponsor because i didnt meet the 2001 poverty line specifications for
her and myself. i made sure i had both I-864 forms for myself and my joint sponsor as
well as the tax returns relevant to each. I "borrwed" my joint sponsor's original
birth certificate in case they asked to see it at the visa interview with much
assurance that it would be given back to them in person by both my wife and I at
christmas. i had printed out as many forms as i could from websites and practiced
filing them in to make sure we didnt have any other last minute questions, we wanted
to make this as fast a process as we could, i found a list of "ins certified"
physicians in the area from a website:
http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/...3338/index.htm and made a few calls to see
if we could get the medical over with any faster. it turns out the list was a bit old
so the physican we had hoped to go to in her home town, Port Elizabeth, was no longer
certified, we called the others on the list in johannesburg and found one who WAS
still certified on our next try. they told us we were supposed to bring forms from
the embasy for them to complete but that we had to get her x-ray done before the
medical which required no forms. so we got her chest x-ray done the week before we
went to johannesburg to the American embassy to do our initial filing. The x-ray
needed her passport info on it as well. The embassy only accepts long form birth
certificates as well as long form marriage certificates, so after the wedding we went
to the office of home affairs to get the long form one, (remember to ask the minister
to give you the forms for you to get the certificate yourself) we were lucky and the
minister came to the office with us to help us if he could and i think he had to fill
in a couple of forms himself, he also was fluent in Afrikaans and it helped the
situation alot in that way too. most of the workers there only know english as a
second language. We went to the embassy on the following monday after our wedding,(By
the way it was absolutely impossible to get ahold of anyone there by phone or fax,
and everyone we talked to said the same thing, they just didnt answer the phones or
call people back) we got there at 8:00 and the embassy opened at
8:30 there were only a few people ahead of us at first, but the line got much longer
by 8:30 and we were glad we had gotten there early. the people at the embassy were
very rude and we found out that they only accept petitions on WEDNESDAYS, which
upset us both because we hadnt seen any information regarding that fact, so we had
to cancel the medical appointment we had made for tuesday because we needed to file
the petition before we went to her medical appointment. so we went back on
wednesday and filed the I-130 petition. We had a short initial interview with one
consular official just explaining the situation and he asked us when we got married
etc. we explained to another that we had all of the documents in order for the
checklist, and they were slightly pleased at this. Then we were given our medical
appointment papers as well as some forms to fill in for the interview(a 9003 tax
form and a new version of the OF-230). We were also given a visa interview date for
December 19th. this really upset us because this was much longer than we wanted to
wait but the guy we were talking to said nothing could be done about it. we called
the physician and we were lucky enough to be able to get a medical appointment
later that day after the petition was filed, and then we hopped the 17 hour bus
ride back to Port Elizabeth so we could have our honeymoon on thursday.......whew.
We were glad that we had a date set for the interview, but December 19th messed up
alot of plans for us. in the packet of papers however he had given us a direct
phone number for us to contact him and i decided to give it a try and see if there
had been any cancelations. to my surprise i got a voice-mail mesage saying he had
gone on vacation and wasnt going to be back until the 10th of December, which is
why our appointment had been moved so far away from what we had hoped. I was pissed
that he didnt mention this and that we may have gotten the interview through
someone else that wasnt leaving. On his voice-mail he left 2 extensions for 2 other
workers there that could answer your questions in his absence, i called both and i
got voice-mail on both, and on both I left messages pleading for help and
explaining the situation, I waited a couple days and had no reply, then it dawned
on me that if I can just talk to one of them instead of their voicemail I might be
able to get it switched to a different interviewer at an earlier date. So this time
I left vague messages basically saying "I have a quick question regarding my
interview, if you could call me back I would appreciate it" and then they DID and I
was amazed, i explained the situation and got the interview moved to the 4th!!!
which was perfect. i had a flight planned for myself back to the US on the 19th of
november and she has her flight scheduled for the 5th of december, the day after
the interview.
The lady also told me that they usually issue the visas on the day of the
interview provided everything is in order. We've quadruple-checked our paperwork
and are hoping THEY dont screw anything up. I will inform you all of how the
interview went in my next posting. and many thanks to everyone who remembers
helping me out over the last few months even though ive disappeared lately to
put my newfound knowledge to practice. And special thanks to Alvena for
suggesting the DCF route. So ill let you know what happens in a couple weeks.
mr. Jon Debiase eagerly awaiting mrs. Pamela Debiase
reading this. my wife is from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, i live in Los Angeles. We
decided to get married there on November 2nd and file a spousal visa directly at the
consulate afterwards(DCF). Before we did any of this however we sent away for all the
police records that she needed, since she had lived in the UK for a couple years we
needed one from the UK and one from South Africa. These both took exactly 4 weeks to
get after requesting them; the UK certificate requested by mail via family in london,
and the south african certificate requested in person. either the UK was very fast or
South africa is very slow, i believe its more the second possibility myself. We also
obtained her long form birth certificate which shows where her parents were born etc.
We got a joint sponsor because i didnt meet the 2001 poverty line specifications for
her and myself. i made sure i had both I-864 forms for myself and my joint sponsor as
well as the tax returns relevant to each. I "borrwed" my joint sponsor's original
birth certificate in case they asked to see it at the visa interview with much
assurance that it would be given back to them in person by both my wife and I at
christmas. i had printed out as many forms as i could from websites and practiced
filing them in to make sure we didnt have any other last minute questions, we wanted
to make this as fast a process as we could, i found a list of "ins certified"
physicians in the area from a website:
http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/...3338/index.htm and made a few calls to see
if we could get the medical over with any faster. it turns out the list was a bit old
so the physican we had hoped to go to in her home town, Port Elizabeth, was no longer
certified, we called the others on the list in johannesburg and found one who WAS
still certified on our next try. they told us we were supposed to bring forms from
the embasy for them to complete but that we had to get her x-ray done before the
medical which required no forms. so we got her chest x-ray done the week before we
went to johannesburg to the American embassy to do our initial filing. The x-ray
needed her passport info on it as well. The embassy only accepts long form birth
certificates as well as long form marriage certificates, so after the wedding we went
to the office of home affairs to get the long form one, (remember to ask the minister
to give you the forms for you to get the certificate yourself) we were lucky and the
minister came to the office with us to help us if he could and i think he had to fill
in a couple of forms himself, he also was fluent in Afrikaans and it helped the
situation alot in that way too. most of the workers there only know english as a
second language. We went to the embassy on the following monday after our wedding,(By
the way it was absolutely impossible to get ahold of anyone there by phone or fax,
and everyone we talked to said the same thing, they just didnt answer the phones or
call people back) we got there at 8:00 and the embassy opened at
8:30 there were only a few people ahead of us at first, but the line got much longer
by 8:30 and we were glad we had gotten there early. the people at the embassy were
very rude and we found out that they only accept petitions on WEDNESDAYS, which
upset us both because we hadnt seen any information regarding that fact, so we had
to cancel the medical appointment we had made for tuesday because we needed to file
the petition before we went to her medical appointment. so we went back on
wednesday and filed the I-130 petition. We had a short initial interview with one
consular official just explaining the situation and he asked us when we got married
etc. we explained to another that we had all of the documents in order for the
checklist, and they were slightly pleased at this. Then we were given our medical
appointment papers as well as some forms to fill in for the interview(a 9003 tax
form and a new version of the OF-230). We were also given a visa interview date for
December 19th. this really upset us because this was much longer than we wanted to
wait but the guy we were talking to said nothing could be done about it. we called
the physician and we were lucky enough to be able to get a medical appointment
later that day after the petition was filed, and then we hopped the 17 hour bus
ride back to Port Elizabeth so we could have our honeymoon on thursday.......whew.
We were glad that we had a date set for the interview, but December 19th messed up
alot of plans for us. in the packet of papers however he had given us a direct
phone number for us to contact him and i decided to give it a try and see if there
had been any cancelations. to my surprise i got a voice-mail mesage saying he had
gone on vacation and wasnt going to be back until the 10th of December, which is
why our appointment had been moved so far away from what we had hoped. I was pissed
that he didnt mention this and that we may have gotten the interview through
someone else that wasnt leaving. On his voice-mail he left 2 extensions for 2 other
workers there that could answer your questions in his absence, i called both and i
got voice-mail on both, and on both I left messages pleading for help and
explaining the situation, I waited a couple days and had no reply, then it dawned
on me that if I can just talk to one of them instead of their voicemail I might be
able to get it switched to a different interviewer at an earlier date. So this time
I left vague messages basically saying "I have a quick question regarding my
interview, if you could call me back I would appreciate it" and then they DID and I
was amazed, i explained the situation and got the interview moved to the 4th!!!
which was perfect. i had a flight planned for myself back to the US on the 19th of
november and she has her flight scheduled for the 5th of december, the day after
the interview.
The lady also told me that they usually issue the visas on the day of the
interview provided everything is in order. We've quadruple-checked our paperwork
and are hoping THEY dont screw anything up. I will inform you all of how the
interview went in my next posting. and many thanks to everyone who remembers
helping me out over the last few months even though ive disappeared lately to
put my newfound knowledge to practice. And special thanks to Alvena for
suggesting the DCF route. So ill let you know what happens in a couple weeks.
mr. Jon Debiase eagerly awaiting mrs. Pamela Debiase
