My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Apr 18th 2005, 8:38 pm
#1
BE Enthusiast
Thread Starter
Joined: Feb 2003
Location: West Sussex, UK
Posts: 348
My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Today I had my K1 visa interview at the US Embassy in London. First of all, I should say that even though this website, and others like it (kamya.com, etc) have been extremely valuable resources to me, nothing I have read about peoples experience was anything like what I saw today. I guess it just goes to show that all of the help and advice can only go to act as a guide, and there are absolutely no hard and fast rules as to how anything will turn out when it comes to your own experience.
On with the day: I stayed up in London last night at my Aunts house. She lives in Norbury which is only a short train and tube ride away from the Embassy. I awoke at 7.15am and was at the train station by 8.00am. My interview was set for 9.30am, so I had an hour and a half to do what shouldn’t be more than a 40 minute journey. I took the train to Victoria, tube to Oxford Circus, then change to Marble Arch where I walked the 5 minutes to Grosvenor Square.
My first observation of the day was that the map the Embassy provides you misses out several roads, only showing you the main ones. This obviously caused me some confusion (I have been to the embassy before, but it was about 6 years ago). I had to stop and ask a guy in a newsagent if I was going the right way, and luckily I was.
I arrived around to the front of the embassy, at 9am, where there was already two substantial queues forming. Now, the first thing that confused me was that from what I had read, I didn’t think I had to queue up. Just to make sure though, I went up to the guy with the clipboard at the front and showed him my appointment letter and asked him where I should go. He promptly pointed me to the back of the queue to the right hand side. He said “all 9.30 appointments are over there.” This kind of pissed me off because I wasn’t expecting to have to wait. Anyway, go with the flow, nothing I can do.
All of my fellow queue waiters hung around until about 9.35am when the guy with the clipboard stood at the front (some distance away) and shouted something along the lines of:
“blah blah blah 9.30 blah blah left”
That’s literally what I heard. Pretty much everyone in the queue moved over to the more fast moving side on the left, basically people following people for no reason. I was a little bit concerned by now as not only did I think I shouldn’t be queuing, but also I couldn’t really hear what the guy had shouted. The queue I was now in however was moving faster, so I decided to go with it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who was confused. As I got to the front of the queue, it turns out that the people in front of me should have stayed in the right hand queue, and were then sent all the way to back of the now massive other queue. As I was waved through to the portacabin that x-rays your bags, I heard several other people being sent away to the back of the correct queue. I did feel for these people. There was no provision made to communicate properly with the people at the back, and I am sure dozens of people are made to wait hours extra just because no one told them exactly what to do. God knows it can be confusing. For people yet to go through this process, it seems as though you are put in the non moving right hand queue (as you are looking at it) until your appointment time. When your time comes, everyone who has the same appointment is asked to move over to the left hand moving queue. Make sure you get this part right, otherwise your wait will be extended.
Anyway, so I am now in the main room which has a hustle and bustle of around, I’m guessing, a couple hundred people. As I walk in the door, a lady gives me my ticket from the machine with my number on. As I am applying for an Immigrant visa (as opposed to a Non-Immigrant visa), I am given the number 006. Everyone else gets given ticket numbers like 343, etc. I take a seat, and about 5 minutes later, my number comes up and I am asked to go to window number one. I give my first winning smile of the day to an oriental lady sitting behind and I say hello. She tells me she is having a bad day (and I think, f****ng great, just my luck). I laugh, and say I’m sorry. The problem is, as I find out, there is a lady with a crying baby directly opposite her who has been screaming for the last hour. I work in sales, so I am used to trying to connect with people. I laugh about it with her, and jokingly ask her if there is anything I can do. She laughs and says no.
She gets my folder and starts asking me for: birth certificate and copy, police certificate and copy, payment stub from the bank, passport, photos (which by the way, were just regular photo machine type photos. She didn’t even bat an eyelid. She even cut them out for me) and the Affidavit of Support form. She then gave me a pink form which I am told to fill out and take the courier desk after my visa is approved to get it sent to me.
After that thoroughly painless moment, I return to my seat on her instructions, and wait for my name to be called for the interview.
Now, I had arrived in the actual Embassy building at 9.45am, and the time was now about 10.15am. Moving very fast so far.
This was where I was expecting there to be a massive wait of around 2 hours. So, I got out my book and settled down. Literally, about 10 minutes later (maybe not even), an American voice came over the tannoy and called for me by name to go to window 13. Wow, that was quick!
Here we go I thought, it’s now or never. I don’t usually get nervous about anything, certainly not at things like job interviews, but my stomach was doing loops and turns all over the place.
I take the short walk down the corridor to window 13 and give my second winning smile of the day and a friendly “hello”, to a young (35ish) looking guy. I looked behind him and saw the main Embassy office, with those rows and rows of computers and desks that everyone talks about.
This next part was the part that just simply amazed me. The conversation went pretty much like this:
ConOff: “So, how did a girl from Illinois meet a guy from Brighton?”
Me: “Well, I was out there in the summer of 2003, and we were introduced by mutual friends”
CO: “When was the next time you saw her?”
Me: “The next summer, 2004. And then she came over here in October, Christmas and this past March”
CO: (jokingly) “So somewhere in between all that it got pretty serious huh?”
Me: “Haha, yes.”
CO: “What do you do for a living?”
Me: “I work in sales”.
CO: “Can you work for the same company over there?”
Me: “No.”
CO: “Ok, well the only thing standing between you and the visa is us waiting for your medical results to come back. Once they do, we’ll have the visa couried out to you in a few days”.
Amazing. The whole thing took literally 2 minutes. If that. He then proceeded to tell me about what I should do when I arrive into JFK, about going into secondary inspection, etc. That was it. And then, just as he said we were all done and I turned to walk away, he said those immortal words….
“Welcome to America”.
My head was reeling – he didn’t ask to look at ANY of the documents I took with me. Not the tax returns, the bank statements, none of the notarized stuff, the photos, phone bills, emails, IM conversations, nothing. I spent hours and hours compiling it all, and no one asked for anything. They didn’t even look at the I-134 Affidavit of Support form, they just glanced at it and put it in my file! Amazing. I do think though that if I hadn’t of brought any of that stuff, they would of asked for it!
So just the last thing to do, go to the courier desk to pay my £9.50 (no picking up envelopes or anything like that. I just gave them the form with the address, paid my money, got my receipt and I was done). They actually had a systems failure when I stepped up to the desk, and again (as with my medical) the last thing you expect to be the most stressful turned out to be the worst! I had to wait 10 minutes while they fixed the system, but as I was expecting to be in there for 2.5 hours, and only ended up being in there for about 45 minutes, I had plenty of time to spare and was in no rush.
I walked out of the Embassy, straight to the nearest phone box to call the Princess (it was about 4.30am in Chicago). I woke her up as ordered by her, and gave her the good news. Of course, she was ecstatic and really happy. I then called my Mum and gave her the good news. Then, on to the tube, and then the train back to work! I was back in Brighton for lunchtime!! All in all, from when I entered the Embassy to when I walked back out the door couldn't of been any longer than 1 hour. I do think that this might of been because I had an early morning appointment. Perhaps it would of got much busier as the day went on? I don't know.
The only bad thing right now is just the waiting for the actual visa to arrive, and be in my hands. The medical experience really has kinda tarnished this whole thing for me. I wasn’t anywhere near as excited today as I should have been, and that’s just because my medical results weren’t at the Embassy yet. So instead of the guy giving me a definite yes, it was a conditional yes awaiting the results of the medical. I know it will all be ok in the end, but I just wanted it to all be over today you know?
Anyway, enough of that… It’s over!!!! For now!
I want to thank everyone who has helped me get this far. I really wouldn’t have been able to do it without the invaluable help that the people on here provide. I will be taking a little break from this website for a while – I need to start getting my life in order and concentrating on packing my life away! The plan is to leave around the 2nd week of June. The good news is that I have got myself a job to start pretty much as soon as I get there, and I am going to fly into JFK to try and get the EAD. I have explained the whole situation to my new employer and as long as I can show them a letter saying I have applied for my SS number, they are happy.
The next time you will probably hear from me will be when I post my POE experience, sometime in June. I will come back to this site for the next week or so to see any replies to this post, and any questions, but then I’ll be off!
Thanks again everyone, and the best of British luck to everyone who is still going through their visa processes in order to be re-united with their loved ones.
Matt
On with the day: I stayed up in London last night at my Aunts house. She lives in Norbury which is only a short train and tube ride away from the Embassy. I awoke at 7.15am and was at the train station by 8.00am. My interview was set for 9.30am, so I had an hour and a half to do what shouldn’t be more than a 40 minute journey. I took the train to Victoria, tube to Oxford Circus, then change to Marble Arch where I walked the 5 minutes to Grosvenor Square.
My first observation of the day was that the map the Embassy provides you misses out several roads, only showing you the main ones. This obviously caused me some confusion (I have been to the embassy before, but it was about 6 years ago). I had to stop and ask a guy in a newsagent if I was going the right way, and luckily I was.
I arrived around to the front of the embassy, at 9am, where there was already two substantial queues forming. Now, the first thing that confused me was that from what I had read, I didn’t think I had to queue up. Just to make sure though, I went up to the guy with the clipboard at the front and showed him my appointment letter and asked him where I should go. He promptly pointed me to the back of the queue to the right hand side. He said “all 9.30 appointments are over there.” This kind of pissed me off because I wasn’t expecting to have to wait. Anyway, go with the flow, nothing I can do.
All of my fellow queue waiters hung around until about 9.35am when the guy with the clipboard stood at the front (some distance away) and shouted something along the lines of:
“blah blah blah 9.30 blah blah left”
That’s literally what I heard. Pretty much everyone in the queue moved over to the more fast moving side on the left, basically people following people for no reason. I was a little bit concerned by now as not only did I think I shouldn’t be queuing, but also I couldn’t really hear what the guy had shouted. The queue I was now in however was moving faster, so I decided to go with it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who was confused. As I got to the front of the queue, it turns out that the people in front of me should have stayed in the right hand queue, and were then sent all the way to back of the now massive other queue. As I was waved through to the portacabin that x-rays your bags, I heard several other people being sent away to the back of the correct queue. I did feel for these people. There was no provision made to communicate properly with the people at the back, and I am sure dozens of people are made to wait hours extra just because no one told them exactly what to do. God knows it can be confusing. For people yet to go through this process, it seems as though you are put in the non moving right hand queue (as you are looking at it) until your appointment time. When your time comes, everyone who has the same appointment is asked to move over to the left hand moving queue. Make sure you get this part right, otherwise your wait will be extended.
Anyway, so I am now in the main room which has a hustle and bustle of around, I’m guessing, a couple hundred people. As I walk in the door, a lady gives me my ticket from the machine with my number on. As I am applying for an Immigrant visa (as opposed to a Non-Immigrant visa), I am given the number 006. Everyone else gets given ticket numbers like 343, etc. I take a seat, and about 5 minutes later, my number comes up and I am asked to go to window number one. I give my first winning smile of the day to an oriental lady sitting behind and I say hello. She tells me she is having a bad day (and I think, f****ng great, just my luck). I laugh, and say I’m sorry. The problem is, as I find out, there is a lady with a crying baby directly opposite her who has been screaming for the last hour. I work in sales, so I am used to trying to connect with people. I laugh about it with her, and jokingly ask her if there is anything I can do. She laughs and says no.
She gets my folder and starts asking me for: birth certificate and copy, police certificate and copy, payment stub from the bank, passport, photos (which by the way, were just regular photo machine type photos. She didn’t even bat an eyelid. She even cut them out for me) and the Affidavit of Support form. She then gave me a pink form which I am told to fill out and take the courier desk after my visa is approved to get it sent to me.
After that thoroughly painless moment, I return to my seat on her instructions, and wait for my name to be called for the interview.
Now, I had arrived in the actual Embassy building at 9.45am, and the time was now about 10.15am. Moving very fast so far.
This was where I was expecting there to be a massive wait of around 2 hours. So, I got out my book and settled down. Literally, about 10 minutes later (maybe not even), an American voice came over the tannoy and called for me by name to go to window 13. Wow, that was quick!
Here we go I thought, it’s now or never. I don’t usually get nervous about anything, certainly not at things like job interviews, but my stomach was doing loops and turns all over the place.
I take the short walk down the corridor to window 13 and give my second winning smile of the day and a friendly “hello”, to a young (35ish) looking guy. I looked behind him and saw the main Embassy office, with those rows and rows of computers and desks that everyone talks about.
This next part was the part that just simply amazed me. The conversation went pretty much like this:
ConOff: “So, how did a girl from Illinois meet a guy from Brighton?”
Me: “Well, I was out there in the summer of 2003, and we were introduced by mutual friends”
CO: “When was the next time you saw her?”
Me: “The next summer, 2004. And then she came over here in October, Christmas and this past March”
CO: (jokingly) “So somewhere in between all that it got pretty serious huh?”
Me: “Haha, yes.”
CO: “What do you do for a living?”
Me: “I work in sales”.
CO: “Can you work for the same company over there?”
Me: “No.”
CO: “Ok, well the only thing standing between you and the visa is us waiting for your medical results to come back. Once they do, we’ll have the visa couried out to you in a few days”.
Amazing. The whole thing took literally 2 minutes. If that. He then proceeded to tell me about what I should do when I arrive into JFK, about going into secondary inspection, etc. That was it. And then, just as he said we were all done and I turned to walk away, he said those immortal words….
“Welcome to America”.
My head was reeling – he didn’t ask to look at ANY of the documents I took with me. Not the tax returns, the bank statements, none of the notarized stuff, the photos, phone bills, emails, IM conversations, nothing. I spent hours and hours compiling it all, and no one asked for anything. They didn’t even look at the I-134 Affidavit of Support form, they just glanced at it and put it in my file! Amazing. I do think though that if I hadn’t of brought any of that stuff, they would of asked for it!
So just the last thing to do, go to the courier desk to pay my £9.50 (no picking up envelopes or anything like that. I just gave them the form with the address, paid my money, got my receipt and I was done). They actually had a systems failure when I stepped up to the desk, and again (as with my medical) the last thing you expect to be the most stressful turned out to be the worst! I had to wait 10 minutes while they fixed the system, but as I was expecting to be in there for 2.5 hours, and only ended up being in there for about 45 minutes, I had plenty of time to spare and was in no rush.
I walked out of the Embassy, straight to the nearest phone box to call the Princess (it was about 4.30am in Chicago). I woke her up as ordered by her, and gave her the good news. Of course, she was ecstatic and really happy. I then called my Mum and gave her the good news. Then, on to the tube, and then the train back to work! I was back in Brighton for lunchtime!! All in all, from when I entered the Embassy to when I walked back out the door couldn't of been any longer than 1 hour. I do think that this might of been because I had an early morning appointment. Perhaps it would of got much busier as the day went on? I don't know.
The only bad thing right now is just the waiting for the actual visa to arrive, and be in my hands. The medical experience really has kinda tarnished this whole thing for me. I wasn’t anywhere near as excited today as I should have been, and that’s just because my medical results weren’t at the Embassy yet. So instead of the guy giving me a definite yes, it was a conditional yes awaiting the results of the medical. I know it will all be ok in the end, but I just wanted it to all be over today you know?
Anyway, enough of that… It’s over!!!! For now!
I want to thank everyone who has helped me get this far. I really wouldn’t have been able to do it without the invaluable help that the people on here provide. I will be taking a little break from this website for a while – I need to start getting my life in order and concentrating on packing my life away! The plan is to leave around the 2nd week of June. The good news is that I have got myself a job to start pretty much as soon as I get there, and I am going to fly into JFK to try and get the EAD. I have explained the whole situation to my new employer and as long as I can show them a letter saying I have applied for my SS number, they are happy.
The next time you will probably hear from me will be when I post my POE experience, sometime in June. I will come back to this site for the next week or so to see any replies to this post, and any questions, but then I’ll be off!
Thanks again everyone, and the best of British luck to everyone who is still going through their visa processes in order to be re-united with their loved ones.
Matt
Apr 18th 2005, 8:53 pm
#2
MODERATOR
Joined: Apr 2003
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
Posts: 58,679
Re: My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Yaay, congratulations, Matt!! 
Apr 18th 2005, 8:56 pm
#3
Forum Regular
Joined: Feb 2004
Location: Kentucky (husband is from W. Yorkshire)
Posts: 227
Re: My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Great detailed post, and congrats!!
Apr 18th 2005, 9:02 pm
#4
Just Joined
Joined: Apr 2005
Posts: 19
Re: My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Originally Posted by ukmancoll
Today I had my K1 visa interview at the US Embassy in London. First of all, I should say that even though this website, and others like it (kamya.com, etc) have been extremely valuable resources to me, nothing I have read about peoples experience was anything like what I saw today. I guess it just goes to show that all of the help and advice can only go to act as a guide, and there are absolutely no hard and fast rules as to how anything will turn out when it comes to your own experience.
On with the day: I stayed up in London last night at my Aunts house. She lives in Norbury which is only a short train and tube ride away from the Embassy. I awoke at 7.15am and was at the train station by 8.00am. My interview was set for 9.30am, so I had an hour and a half to do what shouldn’t be more than a 40 minute journey. I took the train to Victoria, tube to Oxford Circus, then change to Marble Arch where I walked the 5 minutes to Grosvenor Square.
My first observation of the day was that the map the Embassy provides you misses out several roads, only showing you the main ones. This obviously caused me some confusion (I have been to the embassy before, but it was about 6 years ago). I had to stop and ask a guy in a newsagent if I was going the right way, and luckily I was.
I arrived around to the front of the embassy, at 9am, where there was already two substantial queues forming. Now, the first thing that confused me was that from what I had read, I didn’t think I had to queue up. Just to make sure though, I went up to the guy with the clipboard at the front and showed him my appointment letter and asked him where I should go. He promptly pointed me to the back of the queue to the right hand side. He said “all 9.30 appointments are over there.” This kind of pissed me off because I wasn’t expecting to have to wait. Anyway, go with the flow, nothing I can do.
All of my fellow queue waiters hung around until about 9.35am when the guy with the clipboard stood at the front (some distance away) and shouted something along the lines of:
“blah blah blah 9.30 blah blah left”
That’s literally what I heard. Pretty much everyone in the queue moved over to the more fast moving side on the left, basically people following people for no reason. I was a little bit concerned by now as not only did I think I shouldn’t be queuing, but also I couldn’t really hear what the guy had shouted. The queue I was now in however was moving faster, so I decided to go with it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who was confused. As I got to the front of the queue, it turns out that the people in front of me should have stayed in the right hand queue, and were then sent all the way to back of the now massive other queue. As I was waved through to the portacabin that x-rays your bags, I heard several other people being sent away to the back of the correct queue. I did feel for these people. There was no provision made to communicate properly with the people at the back, and I am sure dozens of people are made to wait hours extra just because no one told them exactly what to do. God knows it can be confusing. For people yet to go through this process, it seems as though you are put in the non moving right hand queue (as you are looking at it) until your appointment time. When your time comes, everyone who has the same appointment is asked to move over to the left hand moving queue. Make sure you get this part right, otherwise your wait will be extended.
Anyway, so I am now in the main room which has a hustle and bustle of around, I’m guessing, a couple hundred people. As I walk in the door, a lady gives me my ticket from the machine with my number on. As I am applying for an Immigrant visa (as opposed to a Non-Immigrant visa), I am given the number 006. Everyone else gets given ticket numbers like 343, etc. I take a seat, and about 5 minutes later, my number comes up and I am asked to go to window number one. I give my first winning smile of the day to an oriental lady sitting behind and I say hello. She tells me she is having a bad day (and I think, f****ng great, just my luck). I laugh, and say I’m sorry. The problem is, as I find out, there is a lady with a crying baby directly opposite her who has been screaming for the last hour. I work in sales, so I am used to trying to connect with people. I laugh about it with her, and jokingly ask her if there is anything I can do. She laughs and says no.
She gets my folder and starts asking me for: birth certificate and copy, police certificate and copy, payment stub from the bank, passport, photos (which by the way, were just regular photo machine type photos. She didn’t even bat an eyelid. She even cut them out for me) and the Affidavit of Support form. She then gave me a pink form which I am told to fill out and take the courier desk after my visa is approved to get it sent to me.
After that thoroughly painless moment, I return to my seat on her instructions, and wait for my name to be called for the interview.
Now, I had arrived in the actual Embassy building at 9.45am, and the time was now about 10.15am. Moving very fast so far.
This was where I was expecting there to be a massive wait of around 2 hours. So, I got out my book and settled down. Literally, about 10 minutes later (maybe not even), an American voice came over the tannoy and called for me by name to go to window 13. Wow, that was quick!
Here we go I thought, it’s now or never. I don’t usually get nervous about anything, certainly not at things like job interviews, but my stomach was doing loops and turns all over the place.
I take the short walk down the corridor to window 13 and give my second winning smile of the day and a friendly “hello”, to a young (35ish) looking guy. I looked behind him and saw the main Embassy office, with those rows and rows of computers and desks that everyone talks about.
This next part was the part that just simply amazed me. The conversation went pretty much like this:
ConOff: “So, how did a girl from Illinois meet a guy from Brighton?”
Me: “Well, I was out there in the summer of 2003, and we were introduced by mutual friends”
CO: “When was the next time you saw her?”
Me: “The next summer, 2004. And then she came over here in October, Christmas and this past March”
CO: (jokingly) “So somewhere in between all that it got pretty serious huh?”
Me: “Haha, yes.”
CO: “What do you do for a living?”
Me: “I work in sales”.
CO: “Can you work for the same company over there?”
Me: “No.”
CO: “Ok, well the only thing standing between you and the visa is us waiting for your medical results to come back. Once they do, we’ll have the visa couried out to you in a few days”.
Amazing. The whole thing took literally 2 minutes. If that. He then proceeded to tell me about what I should do when I arrive into JFK, about going into secondary inspection, etc. That was it. And then, just as he said we were all done and I turned to walk away, he said those immortal words….
“Welcome to America”.
My head was reeling – he didn’t ask to look at ANY of the documents I took with me. Not the tax returns, the bank statements, none of the notarized stuff, the photos, phone bills, emails, IM conversations, nothing. I spent hours and hours compiling it all, and no one asked for anything. They didn’t even look at the I-134 Affidavit of Support form, they just glanced at it and put it in my file! Amazing. I do think though that if I hadn’t of brought any of that stuff, they would of asked for it!
So just the last thing to do, go to the courier desk to pay my £9.50 (no picking up envelopes or anything like that. I just gave them the form with the address, paid my money, got my receipt and I was done). They actually had a systems failure when I stepped up to the desk, and again (as with my medical) the last thing you expect to be the most stressful turned out to be the worst! I had to wait 10 minutes while they fixed the system, but as I was expecting to be in there for 2.5 hours, and only ended up being in there for about 45 minutes, I had plenty of time to spare and was in no rush.
I walked out of the Embassy, straight to the nearest phone box to call the Princess (it was about 4.30am in Chicago). I woke her up as ordered by her, and gave her the good news. Of course, she was ecstatic and really happy. I then called my Mum and gave her the good news. Then, on to the tube, and then the train back to work! I was back in Brighton for lunchtime!! All in all, from when I entered the Embassy to when I walked back out the door couldn't of been any longer than 1 hour. I do think that this might of been because I had an early morning appointment. Perhaps it would of got much busier as the day went on? I don't know.
The only bad thing right now is just the waiting for the actual visa to arrive, and be in my hands. The medical experience really has kinda tarnished this whole thing for me. I wasn’t anywhere near as excited today as I should have been, and that’s just because my medical results weren’t at the Embassy yet. So instead of the guy giving me a definite yes, it was a conditional yes awaiting the results of the medical. I know it will all be ok in the end, but I just wanted it to all be over today you know?
Anyway, enough of that… It’s over!!!! For now!
I want to thank everyone who has helped me get this far. I really wouldn’t have been able to do it without the invaluable help that the people on here provide. I will be taking a little break from this website for a while – I need to start getting my life in order and concentrating on packing my life away! The plan is to leave around the 2nd week of June. The good news is that I have got myself a job to start pretty much as soon as I get there, and I am going to fly into JFK to try and get the EAD. I have explained the whole situation to my new employer and as long as I can show them a letter saying I have applied for my SS number, they are happy.
The next time you will probably hear from me will be when I post my POE experience, sometime in June. I will come back to this site for the next week or so to see any replies to this post, and any questions, but then I’ll be off!
Thanks again everyone, and the best of British luck to everyone who is still going through their visa processes in order to be re-united with their loved ones.
Matt
On with the day: I stayed up in London last night at my Aunts house. She lives in Norbury which is only a short train and tube ride away from the Embassy. I awoke at 7.15am and was at the train station by 8.00am. My interview was set for 9.30am, so I had an hour and a half to do what shouldn’t be more than a 40 minute journey. I took the train to Victoria, tube to Oxford Circus, then change to Marble Arch where I walked the 5 minutes to Grosvenor Square.
My first observation of the day was that the map the Embassy provides you misses out several roads, only showing you the main ones. This obviously caused me some confusion (I have been to the embassy before, but it was about 6 years ago). I had to stop and ask a guy in a newsagent if I was going the right way, and luckily I was.
I arrived around to the front of the embassy, at 9am, where there was already two substantial queues forming. Now, the first thing that confused me was that from what I had read, I didn’t think I had to queue up. Just to make sure though, I went up to the guy with the clipboard at the front and showed him my appointment letter and asked him where I should go. He promptly pointed me to the back of the queue to the right hand side. He said “all 9.30 appointments are over there.” This kind of pissed me off because I wasn’t expecting to have to wait. Anyway, go with the flow, nothing I can do.
All of my fellow queue waiters hung around until about 9.35am when the guy with the clipboard stood at the front (some distance away) and shouted something along the lines of:
“blah blah blah 9.30 blah blah left”
That’s literally what I heard. Pretty much everyone in the queue moved over to the more fast moving side on the left, basically people following people for no reason. I was a little bit concerned by now as not only did I think I shouldn’t be queuing, but also I couldn’t really hear what the guy had shouted. The queue I was now in however was moving faster, so I decided to go with it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who was confused. As I got to the front of the queue, it turns out that the people in front of me should have stayed in the right hand queue, and were then sent all the way to back of the now massive other queue. As I was waved through to the portacabin that x-rays your bags, I heard several other people being sent away to the back of the correct queue. I did feel for these people. There was no provision made to communicate properly with the people at the back, and I am sure dozens of people are made to wait hours extra just because no one told them exactly what to do. God knows it can be confusing. For people yet to go through this process, it seems as though you are put in the non moving right hand queue (as you are looking at it) until your appointment time. When your time comes, everyone who has the same appointment is asked to move over to the left hand moving queue. Make sure you get this part right, otherwise your wait will be extended.
Anyway, so I am now in the main room which has a hustle and bustle of around, I’m guessing, a couple hundred people. As I walk in the door, a lady gives me my ticket from the machine with my number on. As I am applying for an Immigrant visa (as opposed to a Non-Immigrant visa), I am given the number 006. Everyone else gets given ticket numbers like 343, etc. I take a seat, and about 5 minutes later, my number comes up and I am asked to go to window number one. I give my first winning smile of the day to an oriental lady sitting behind and I say hello. She tells me she is having a bad day (and I think, f****ng great, just my luck). I laugh, and say I’m sorry. The problem is, as I find out, there is a lady with a crying baby directly opposite her who has been screaming for the last hour. I work in sales, so I am used to trying to connect with people. I laugh about it with her, and jokingly ask her if there is anything I can do. She laughs and says no.
She gets my folder and starts asking me for: birth certificate and copy, police certificate and copy, payment stub from the bank, passport, photos (which by the way, were just regular photo machine type photos. She didn’t even bat an eyelid. She even cut them out for me) and the Affidavit of Support form. She then gave me a pink form which I am told to fill out and take the courier desk after my visa is approved to get it sent to me.
After that thoroughly painless moment, I return to my seat on her instructions, and wait for my name to be called for the interview.
Now, I had arrived in the actual Embassy building at 9.45am, and the time was now about 10.15am. Moving very fast so far.
This was where I was expecting there to be a massive wait of around 2 hours. So, I got out my book and settled down. Literally, about 10 minutes later (maybe not even), an American voice came over the tannoy and called for me by name to go to window 13. Wow, that was quick!
Here we go I thought, it’s now or never. I don’t usually get nervous about anything, certainly not at things like job interviews, but my stomach was doing loops and turns all over the place.
I take the short walk down the corridor to window 13 and give my second winning smile of the day and a friendly “hello”, to a young (35ish) looking guy. I looked behind him and saw the main Embassy office, with those rows and rows of computers and desks that everyone talks about.
This next part was the part that just simply amazed me. The conversation went pretty much like this:
ConOff: “So, how did a girl from Illinois meet a guy from Brighton?”
Me: “Well, I was out there in the summer of 2003, and we were introduced by mutual friends”
CO: “When was the next time you saw her?”
Me: “The next summer, 2004. And then she came over here in October, Christmas and this past March”
CO: (jokingly) “So somewhere in between all that it got pretty serious huh?”
Me: “Haha, yes.”
CO: “What do you do for a living?”
Me: “I work in sales”.
CO: “Can you work for the same company over there?”
Me: “No.”
CO: “Ok, well the only thing standing between you and the visa is us waiting for your medical results to come back. Once they do, we’ll have the visa couried out to you in a few days”.
Amazing. The whole thing took literally 2 minutes. If that. He then proceeded to tell me about what I should do when I arrive into JFK, about going into secondary inspection, etc. That was it. And then, just as he said we were all done and I turned to walk away, he said those immortal words….
“Welcome to America”.
My head was reeling – he didn’t ask to look at ANY of the documents I took with me. Not the tax returns, the bank statements, none of the notarized stuff, the photos, phone bills, emails, IM conversations, nothing. I spent hours and hours compiling it all, and no one asked for anything. They didn’t even look at the I-134 Affidavit of Support form, they just glanced at it and put it in my file! Amazing. I do think though that if I hadn’t of brought any of that stuff, they would of asked for it!
So just the last thing to do, go to the courier desk to pay my £9.50 (no picking up envelopes or anything like that. I just gave them the form with the address, paid my money, got my receipt and I was done). They actually had a systems failure when I stepped up to the desk, and again (as with my medical) the last thing you expect to be the most stressful turned out to be the worst! I had to wait 10 minutes while they fixed the system, but as I was expecting to be in there for 2.5 hours, and only ended up being in there for about 45 minutes, I had plenty of time to spare and was in no rush.
I walked out of the Embassy, straight to the nearest phone box to call the Princess (it was about 4.30am in Chicago). I woke her up as ordered by her, and gave her the good news. Of course, she was ecstatic and really happy. I then called my Mum and gave her the good news. Then, on to the tube, and then the train back to work! I was back in Brighton for lunchtime!! All in all, from when I entered the Embassy to when I walked back out the door couldn't of been any longer than 1 hour. I do think that this might of been because I had an early morning appointment. Perhaps it would of got much busier as the day went on? I don't know.
The only bad thing right now is just the waiting for the actual visa to arrive, and be in my hands. The medical experience really has kinda tarnished this whole thing for me. I wasn’t anywhere near as excited today as I should have been, and that’s just because my medical results weren’t at the Embassy yet. So instead of the guy giving me a definite yes, it was a conditional yes awaiting the results of the medical. I know it will all be ok in the end, but I just wanted it to all be over today you know?
Anyway, enough of that… It’s over!!!! For now!
I want to thank everyone who has helped me get this far. I really wouldn’t have been able to do it without the invaluable help that the people on here provide. I will be taking a little break from this website for a while – I need to start getting my life in order and concentrating on packing my life away! The plan is to leave around the 2nd week of June. The good news is that I have got myself a job to start pretty much as soon as I get there, and I am going to fly into JFK to try and get the EAD. I have explained the whole situation to my new employer and as long as I can show them a letter saying I have applied for my SS number, they are happy.
The next time you will probably hear from me will be when I post my POE experience, sometime in June. I will come back to this site for the next week or so to see any replies to this post, and any questions, but then I’ll be off!
Thanks again everyone, and the best of British luck to everyone who is still going through their visa processes in order to be re-united with their loved ones.
Matt
Congratulations
The Phoenix
Apr 18th 2005, 9:59 pm
#5
Account Closed
Joined: Aug 2002
Location: Kentucky
Posts: 38,865
Re: My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Originally Posted by ukmancoll
Anyway, enough of that… It’s over!!!! For now!
Ian
Apr 18th 2005, 10:07 pm
#6
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 35,082
Re: My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Originally Posted by ukmancoll
“Welcome to America”.
Great report, Matt! I'm sorry you got such a long interview; they're normally much shorter than that.. it must be because you're in sales
Best to you and happy travels. Welcome to America, indeed!
mo
Apr 19th 2005, 12:05 am
#7
SUPER CRUNCHY BALCONY COW
Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 9,476
Re: My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Originally Posted by ukmancoll
Today I had my K1 visa interview at the US Embassy in London. First of all, I should say that even though this website, and others like it (kamya.com, etc) have been extremely valuable resources to me, nothing I have read about peoples experience was anything like what I saw today. I guess it just goes to show that all of the help and advice can only go to act as a guide, and there are absolutely no hard and fast rules as to how anything will turn out when it comes to your own experience.
On with the day: I stayed up in London last night at my Aunts house. She lives in Norbury which is only a short train and tube ride away from the Embassy. I awoke at 7.15am and was at the train station by 8.00am. My interview was set for 9.30am, so I had an hour and a half to do what shouldn’t be more than a 40 minute journey. I took the train to Victoria, tube to Oxford Circus, then change to Marble Arch where I walked the 5 minutes to Grosvenor Square.
My first observation of the day was that the map the Embassy provides you misses out several roads, only showing you the main ones. This obviously caused me some confusion (I have been to the embassy before, but it was about 6 years ago). I had to stop and ask a guy in a newsagent if I was going the right way, and luckily I was.
I arrived around to the front of the embassy, at 9am, where there was already two substantial queues forming. Now, the first thing that confused me was that from what I had read, I didn’t think I had to queue up. Just to make sure though, I went up to the guy with the clipboard at the front and showed him my appointment letter and asked him where I should go. He promptly pointed me to the back of the queue to the right hand side. He said “all 9.30 appointments are over there.” This kind of pissed me off because I wasn’t expecting to have to wait. Anyway, go with the flow, nothing I can do.
All of my fellow queue waiters hung around until about 9.35am when the guy with the clipboard stood at the front (some distance away) and shouted something along the lines of:
“blah blah blah 9.30 blah blah left”
That’s literally what I heard. Pretty much everyone in the queue moved over to the more fast moving side on the left, basically people following people for no reason. I was a little bit concerned by now as not only did I think I shouldn’t be queuing, but also I couldn’t really hear what the guy had shouted. The queue I was now in however was moving faster, so I decided to go with it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who was confused. As I got to the front of the queue, it turns out that the people in front of me should have stayed in the right hand queue, and were then sent all the way to back of the now massive other queue. As I was waved through to the portacabin that x-rays your bags, I heard several other people being sent away to the back of the correct queue. I did feel for these people. There was no provision made to communicate properly with the people at the back, and I am sure dozens of people are made to wait hours extra just because no one told them exactly what to do. God knows it can be confusing. For people yet to go through this process, it seems as though you are put in the non moving right hand queue (as you are looking at it) until your appointment time. When your time comes, everyone who has the same appointment is asked to move over to the left hand moving queue. Make sure you get this part right, otherwise your wait will be extended.
Anyway, so I am now in the main room which has a hustle and bustle of around, I’m guessing, a couple hundred people. As I walk in the door, a lady gives me my ticket from the machine with my number on. As I am applying for an Immigrant visa (as opposed to a Non-Immigrant visa), I am given the number 006. Everyone else gets given ticket numbers like 343, etc. I take a seat, and about 5 minutes later, my number comes up and I am asked to go to window number one. I give my first winning smile of the day to an oriental lady sitting behind and I say hello. She tells me she is having a bad day (and I think, f****ng great, just my luck). I laugh, and say I’m sorry. The problem is, as I find out, there is a lady with a crying baby directly opposite her who has been screaming for the last hour. I work in sales, so I am used to trying to connect with people. I laugh about it with her, and jokingly ask her if there is anything I can do. She laughs and says no.
She gets my folder and starts asking me for: birth certificate and copy, police certificate and copy, payment stub from the bank, passport, photos (which by the way, were just regular photo machine type photos. She didn’t even bat an eyelid. She even cut them out for me) and the Affidavit of Support form. She then gave me a pink form which I am told to fill out and take the courier desk after my visa is approved to get it sent to me.
After that thoroughly painless moment, I return to my seat on her instructions, and wait for my name to be called for the interview.
Now, I had arrived in the actual Embassy building at 9.45am, and the time was now about 10.15am. Moving very fast so far.
This was where I was expecting there to be a massive wait of around 2 hours. So, I got out my book and settled down. Literally, about 10 minutes later (maybe not even), an American voice came over the tannoy and called for me by name to go to window 13. Wow, that was quick!
Here we go I thought, it’s now or never. I don’t usually get nervous about anything, certainly not at things like job interviews, but my stomach was doing loops and turns all over the place.
I take the short walk down the corridor to window 13 and give my second winning smile of the day and a friendly “hello”, to a young (35ish) looking guy. I looked behind him and saw the main Embassy office, with those rows and rows of computers and desks that everyone talks about.
This next part was the part that just simply amazed me. The conversation went pretty much like this:
ConOff: “So, how did a girl from Illinois meet a guy from Brighton?”
Me: “Well, I was out there in the summer of 2003, and we were introduced by mutual friends”
CO: “When was the next time you saw her?”
in between all that it got pretty serious huh?”
Me: “Haha, yes.”
CO: “What do you do for a living?”
Me: “I work in sales”.
CO: “Can you work for the same company over there?”
Me: “No.”
Amazing. The whole thing took literally 2 minutes. If that. He then proceeded to tell me about what I should d when I arrive into JFK, about going into secondary inspectAnyway, enough of that… It’s over!!!! For now!
Matt
On with the day: I stayed up in London last night at my Aunts house. She lives in Norbury which is only a short train and tube ride away from the Embassy. I awoke at 7.15am and was at the train station by 8.00am. My interview was set for 9.30am, so I had an hour and a half to do what shouldn’t be more than a 40 minute journey. I took the train to Victoria, tube to Oxford Circus, then change to Marble Arch where I walked the 5 minutes to Grosvenor Square.
My first observation of the day was that the map the Embassy provides you misses out several roads, only showing you the main ones. This obviously caused me some confusion (I have been to the embassy before, but it was about 6 years ago). I had to stop and ask a guy in a newsagent if I was going the right way, and luckily I was.
I arrived around to the front of the embassy, at 9am, where there was already two substantial queues forming. Now, the first thing that confused me was that from what I had read, I didn’t think I had to queue up. Just to make sure though, I went up to the guy with the clipboard at the front and showed him my appointment letter and asked him where I should go. He promptly pointed me to the back of the queue to the right hand side. He said “all 9.30 appointments are over there.” This kind of pissed me off because I wasn’t expecting to have to wait. Anyway, go with the flow, nothing I can do.
All of my fellow queue waiters hung around until about 9.35am when the guy with the clipboard stood at the front (some distance away) and shouted something along the lines of:
“blah blah blah 9.30 blah blah left”
That’s literally what I heard. Pretty much everyone in the queue moved over to the more fast moving side on the left, basically people following people for no reason. I was a little bit concerned by now as not only did I think I shouldn’t be queuing, but also I couldn’t really hear what the guy had shouted. The queue I was now in however was moving faster, so I decided to go with it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who was confused. As I got to the front of the queue, it turns out that the people in front of me should have stayed in the right hand queue, and were then sent all the way to back of the now massive other queue. As I was waved through to the portacabin that x-rays your bags, I heard several other people being sent away to the back of the correct queue. I did feel for these people. There was no provision made to communicate properly with the people at the back, and I am sure dozens of people are made to wait hours extra just because no one told them exactly what to do. God knows it can be confusing. For people yet to go through this process, it seems as though you are put in the non moving right hand queue (as you are looking at it) until your appointment time. When your time comes, everyone who has the same appointment is asked to move over to the left hand moving queue. Make sure you get this part right, otherwise your wait will be extended.
Anyway, so I am now in the main room which has a hustle and bustle of around, I’m guessing, a couple hundred people. As I walk in the door, a lady gives me my ticket from the machine with my number on. As I am applying for an Immigrant visa (as opposed to a Non-Immigrant visa), I am given the number 006. Everyone else gets given ticket numbers like 343, etc. I take a seat, and about 5 minutes later, my number comes up and I am asked to go to window number one. I give my first winning smile of the day to an oriental lady sitting behind and I say hello. She tells me she is having a bad day (and I think, f****ng great, just my luck). I laugh, and say I’m sorry. The problem is, as I find out, there is a lady with a crying baby directly opposite her who has been screaming for the last hour. I work in sales, so I am used to trying to connect with people. I laugh about it with her, and jokingly ask her if there is anything I can do. She laughs and says no.
She gets my folder and starts asking me for: birth certificate and copy, police certificate and copy, payment stub from the bank, passport, photos (which by the way, were just regular photo machine type photos. She didn’t even bat an eyelid. She even cut them out for me) and the Affidavit of Support form. She then gave me a pink form which I am told to fill out and take the courier desk after my visa is approved to get it sent to me.
After that thoroughly painless moment, I return to my seat on her instructions, and wait for my name to be called for the interview.
Now, I had arrived in the actual Embassy building at 9.45am, and the time was now about 10.15am. Moving very fast so far.
This was where I was expecting there to be a massive wait of around 2 hours. So, I got out my book and settled down. Literally, about 10 minutes later (maybe not even), an American voice came over the tannoy and called for me by name to go to window 13. Wow, that was quick!
Here we go I thought, it’s now or never. I don’t usually get nervous about anything, certainly not at things like job interviews, but my stomach was doing loops and turns all over the place.
I take the short walk down the corridor to window 13 and give my second winning smile of the day and a friendly “hello”, to a young (35ish) looking guy. I looked behind him and saw the main Embassy office, with those rows and rows of computers and desks that everyone talks about.
This next part was the part that just simply amazed me. The conversation went pretty much like this:
ConOff: “So, how did a girl from Illinois meet a guy from Brighton?”
Me: “Well, I was out there in the summer of 2003, and we were introduced by mutual friends”
CO: “When was the next time you saw her?”
in between all that it got pretty serious huh?”
Me: “Haha, yes.”
CO: “What do you do for a living?”
Me: “I work in sales”.
CO: “Can you work for the same company over there?”
Me: “No.”
Amazing. The whole thing took literally 2 minutes. If that. He then proceeded to tell me about what I should d when I arrive into JFK, about going into secondary inspectAnyway, enough of that… It’s over!!!! For now!
Matt
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
I can't wait to hear you received your visa!!
Apr 19th 2005, 12:12 am
#8
Stuff and Nonsense
Joined: Sep 2003
Location: Russ: Vermont Jayne: was London, UK to VT
Posts: 358
Re: My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Originally Posted by meauxna
Great report, Matt! I'm sorry you got such a long interview; they're normally much shorter than that.. it must be because you're in sales
Yep mine was way shorter too. OH missed it cos he went to the bathroom and I had been called and approved in the time he went. Told you it would be easy, Matt....now start thinking about filing for your GC
Apr 19th 2005, 12:16 am
#9
The Missus
Joined: Sep 2002
Location: Northwest of Chicago
Posts: 6,239
Re: My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Congrats, Matt.....sorry you didn't need the I-134, but I liked your attitude about that----"if I hadn't had it, they would have asked for it..."
Now that you're on your way, how's about a meetup? You and the future Missus will only be about an hour away from us.
Congratulations, again. I remember that feeling.
~SecretGarden
~and Mr. Pink
Now that you're on your way, how's about a meetup? You and the future Missus will only be about an hour away from us.
Congratulations, again. I remember that feeling.
~SecretGarden
~and Mr. Pink
Apr 19th 2005, 1:53 am
#10
Visa in hand!!!
Joined: Jul 2004
Location: London - San Francisco
Posts: 62
Re: My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Fantastic detailed report...thanks Matt!
Reading it made me feel nervous and then happy for you!
Good luck with your move!
Mike
Reading it made me feel nervous and then happy for you!
Good luck with your move!
Mike
Apr 19th 2005, 7:03 am
#11
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Aug 2003
Location: Nevada b4 California b4 Colorado b4 Valley of plastic and sand, b4 London
Posts: 2,025
Re: My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Party On dude!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Originally Posted by ukmancoll
Today I had my K1 visa interview at the US Embassy in London. First of all, I should say that even though this website, and others like it (kamya.com, etc) have been extremely valuable resources to me, nothing I have read about peoples experience was anything like what I saw today. I guess it just goes to show that all of the help and advice can only go to act as a guide, and there are absolutely no hard and fast rules as to how anything will turn out when it comes to your own experience.
On with the day: I stayed up in London last night at my Aunts house. She lives in Norbury which is only a short train and tube ride away from the Embassy. I awoke at 7.15am and was at the train station by 8.00am. My interview was set for 9.30am, so I had an hour and a half to do what shouldn’t be more than a 40 minute journey. I took the train to Victoria, tube to Oxford Circus, then change to Marble Arch where I walked the 5 minutes to Grosvenor Square.
My first observation of the day was that the map the Embassy provides you misses out several roads, only showing you the main ones. This obviously caused me some confusion (I have been to the embassy before, but it was about 6 years ago). I had to stop and ask a guy in a newsagent if I was going the right way, and luckily I was.
I arrived around to the front of the embassy, at 9am, where there was already two substantial queues forming. Now, the first thing that confused me was that from what I had read, I didn’t think I had to queue up. Just to make sure though, I went up to the guy with the clipboard at the front and showed him my appointment letter and asked him where I should go. He promptly pointed me to the back of the queue to the right hand side. He said “all 9.30 appointments are over there.” This kind of pissed me off because I wasn’t expecting to have to wait. Anyway, go with the flow, nothing I can do.
All of my fellow queue waiters hung around until about 9.35am when the guy with the clipboard stood at the front (some distance away) and shouted something along the lines of:
“blah blah blah 9.30 blah blah left”
That’s literally what I heard. Pretty much everyone in the queue moved over to the more fast moving side on the left, basically people following people for no reason. I was a little bit concerned by now as not only did I think I shouldn’t be queuing, but also I couldn’t really hear what the guy had shouted. The queue I was now in however was moving faster, so I decided to go with it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who was confused. As I got to the front of the queue, it turns out that the people in front of me should have stayed in the right hand queue, and were then sent all the way to back of the now massive other queue. As I was waved through to the portacabin that x-rays your bags, I heard several other people being sent away to the back of the correct queue. I did feel for these people. There was no provision made to communicate properly with the people at the back, and I am sure dozens of people are made to wait hours extra just because no one told them exactly what to do. God knows it can be confusing. For people yet to go through this process, it seems as though you are put in the non moving right hand queue (as you are looking at it) until your appointment time. When your time comes, everyone who has the same appointment is asked to move over to the left hand moving queue. Make sure you get this part right, otherwise your wait will be extended.
Anyway, so I am now in the main room which has a hustle and bustle of around, I’m guessing, a couple hundred people. As I walk in the door, a lady gives me my ticket from the machine with my number on. As I am applying for an Immigrant visa (as opposed to a Non-Immigrant visa), I am given the number 006. Everyone else gets given ticket numbers like 343, etc. I take a seat, and about 5 minutes later, my number comes up and I am asked to go to window number one. I give my first winning smile of the day to an oriental lady sitting behind and I say hello. She tells me she is having a bad day (and I think, f****ng great, just my luck). I laugh, and say I’m sorry. The problem is, as I find out, there is a lady with a crying baby directly opposite her who has been screaming for the last hour. I work in sales, so I am used to trying to connect with people. I laugh about it with her, and jokingly ask her if there is anything I can do. She laughs and says no.
She gets my folder and starts asking me for: birth certificate and copy, police certificate and copy, payment stub from the bank, passport, photos (which by the way, were just regular photo machine type photos. She didn’t even bat an eyelid. She even cut them out for me) and the Affidavit of Support form. She then gave me a pink form which I am told to fill out and take the courier desk after my visa is approved to get it sent to me.
After that thoroughly painless moment, I return to my seat on her instructions, and wait for my name to be called for the interview.
Now, I had arrived in the actual Embassy building at 9.45am, and the time was now about 10.15am. Moving very fast so far.
This was where I was expecting there to be a massive wait of around 2 hours. So, I got out my book and settled down. Literally, about 10 minutes later (maybe not even), an American voice came over the tannoy and called for me by name to go to window 13. Wow, that was quick!
Here we go I thought, it’s now or never. I don’t usually get nervous about anything, certainly not at things like job interviews, but my stomach was doing loops and turns all over the place.
I take the short walk down the corridor to window 13 and give my second winning smile of the day and a friendly “hello”, to a young (35ish) looking guy. I looked behind him and saw the main Embassy office, with those rows and rows of computers and desks that everyone talks about.
This next part was the part that just simply amazed me. The conversation went pretty much like this:
ConOff: “So, how did a girl from Illinois meet a guy from Brighton?”
Me: “Well, I was out there in the summer of 2003, and we were introduced by mutual friends”
CO: “When was the next time you saw her?”
Me: “The next summer, 2004. And then she came over here in October, Christmas and this past March”
CO: (jokingly) “So somewhere in between all that it got pretty serious huh?”
Me: “Haha, yes.”
CO: “What do you do for a living?”
Me: “I work in sales”.
CO: “Can you work for the same company over there?”
Me: “No.”
CO: “Ok, well the only thing standing between you and the visa is us waiting for your medical results to come back. Once they do, we’ll have the visa couried out to you in a few days”.
Amazing. The whole thing took literally 2 minutes. If that. He then proceeded to tell me about what I should do when I arrive into JFK, about going into secondary inspection, etc. That was it. And then, just as he said we were all done and I turned to walk away, he said those immortal words….
“Welcome to America”.
My head was reeling – he didn’t ask to look at ANY of the documents I took with me. Not the tax returns, the bank statements, none of the notarized stuff, the photos, phone bills, emails, IM conversations, nothing. I spent hours and hours compiling it all, and no one asked for anything. They didn’t even look at the I-134 Affidavit of Support form, they just glanced at it and put it in my file! Amazing. I do think though that if I hadn’t of brought any of that stuff, they would of asked for it!
So just the last thing to do, go to the courier desk to pay my £9.50 (no picking up envelopes or anything like that. I just gave them the form with the address, paid my money, got my receipt and I was done). They actually had a systems failure when I stepped up to the desk, and again (as with my medical) the last thing you expect to be the most stressful turned out to be the worst! I had to wait 10 minutes while they fixed the system, but as I was expecting to be in there for 2.5 hours, and only ended up being in there for about 45 minutes, I had plenty of time to spare and was in no rush.
I walked out of the Embassy, straight to the nearest phone box to call the Princess (it was about 4.30am in Chicago). I woke her up as ordered by her, and gave her the good news. Of course, she was ecstatic and really happy. I then called my Mum and gave her the good news. Then, on to the tube, and then the train back to work! I was back in Brighton for lunchtime!! All in all, from when I entered the Embassy to when I walked back out the door couldn't of been any longer than 1 hour. I do think that this might of been because I had an early morning appointment. Perhaps it would of got much busier as the day went on? I don't know.
The only bad thing right now is just the waiting for the actual visa to arrive, and be in my hands. The medical experience really has kinda tarnished this whole thing for me. I wasn’t anywhere near as excited today as I should have been, and that’s just because my medical results weren’t at the Embassy yet. So instead of the guy giving me a definite yes, it was a conditional yes awaiting the results of the medical. I know it will all be ok in the end, but I just wanted it to all be over today you know?
Anyway, enough of that… It’s over!!!! For now!
I want to thank everyone who has helped me get this far. I really wouldn’t have been able to do it without the invaluable help that the people on here provide. I will be taking a little break from this website for a while – I need to start getting my life in order and concentrating on packing my life away! The plan is to leave around the 2nd week of June. The good news is that I have got myself a job to start pretty much as soon as I get there, and I am going to fly into JFK to try and get the EAD. I have explained the whole situation to my new employer and as long as I can show them a letter saying I have applied for my SS number, they are happy.
The next time you will probably hear from me will be when I post my POE experience, sometime in June. I will come back to this site for the next week or so to see any replies to this post, and any questions, but then I’ll be off!
Thanks again everyone, and the best of British luck to everyone who is still going through their visa processes in order to be re-united with their loved ones.
Matt
On with the day: I stayed up in London last night at my Aunts house. She lives in Norbury which is only a short train and tube ride away from the Embassy. I awoke at 7.15am and was at the train station by 8.00am. My interview was set for 9.30am, so I had an hour and a half to do what shouldn’t be more than a 40 minute journey. I took the train to Victoria, tube to Oxford Circus, then change to Marble Arch where I walked the 5 minutes to Grosvenor Square.
My first observation of the day was that the map the Embassy provides you misses out several roads, only showing you the main ones. This obviously caused me some confusion (I have been to the embassy before, but it was about 6 years ago). I had to stop and ask a guy in a newsagent if I was going the right way, and luckily I was.
I arrived around to the front of the embassy, at 9am, where there was already two substantial queues forming. Now, the first thing that confused me was that from what I had read, I didn’t think I had to queue up. Just to make sure though, I went up to the guy with the clipboard at the front and showed him my appointment letter and asked him where I should go. He promptly pointed me to the back of the queue to the right hand side. He said “all 9.30 appointments are over there.” This kind of pissed me off because I wasn’t expecting to have to wait. Anyway, go with the flow, nothing I can do.
All of my fellow queue waiters hung around until about 9.35am when the guy with the clipboard stood at the front (some distance away) and shouted something along the lines of:
“blah blah blah 9.30 blah blah left”
That’s literally what I heard. Pretty much everyone in the queue moved over to the more fast moving side on the left, basically people following people for no reason. I was a little bit concerned by now as not only did I think I shouldn’t be queuing, but also I couldn’t really hear what the guy had shouted. The queue I was now in however was moving faster, so I decided to go with it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who was confused. As I got to the front of the queue, it turns out that the people in front of me should have stayed in the right hand queue, and were then sent all the way to back of the now massive other queue. As I was waved through to the portacabin that x-rays your bags, I heard several other people being sent away to the back of the correct queue. I did feel for these people. There was no provision made to communicate properly with the people at the back, and I am sure dozens of people are made to wait hours extra just because no one told them exactly what to do. God knows it can be confusing. For people yet to go through this process, it seems as though you are put in the non moving right hand queue (as you are looking at it) until your appointment time. When your time comes, everyone who has the same appointment is asked to move over to the left hand moving queue. Make sure you get this part right, otherwise your wait will be extended.
Anyway, so I am now in the main room which has a hustle and bustle of around, I’m guessing, a couple hundred people. As I walk in the door, a lady gives me my ticket from the machine with my number on. As I am applying for an Immigrant visa (as opposed to a Non-Immigrant visa), I am given the number 006. Everyone else gets given ticket numbers like 343, etc. I take a seat, and about 5 minutes later, my number comes up and I am asked to go to window number one. I give my first winning smile of the day to an oriental lady sitting behind and I say hello. She tells me she is having a bad day (and I think, f****ng great, just my luck). I laugh, and say I’m sorry. The problem is, as I find out, there is a lady with a crying baby directly opposite her who has been screaming for the last hour. I work in sales, so I am used to trying to connect with people. I laugh about it with her, and jokingly ask her if there is anything I can do. She laughs and says no.
She gets my folder and starts asking me for: birth certificate and copy, police certificate and copy, payment stub from the bank, passport, photos (which by the way, were just regular photo machine type photos. She didn’t even bat an eyelid. She even cut them out for me) and the Affidavit of Support form. She then gave me a pink form which I am told to fill out and take the courier desk after my visa is approved to get it sent to me.
After that thoroughly painless moment, I return to my seat on her instructions, and wait for my name to be called for the interview.
Now, I had arrived in the actual Embassy building at 9.45am, and the time was now about 10.15am. Moving very fast so far.
This was where I was expecting there to be a massive wait of around 2 hours. So, I got out my book and settled down. Literally, about 10 minutes later (maybe not even), an American voice came over the tannoy and called for me by name to go to window 13. Wow, that was quick!
Here we go I thought, it’s now or never. I don’t usually get nervous about anything, certainly not at things like job interviews, but my stomach was doing loops and turns all over the place.
I take the short walk down the corridor to window 13 and give my second winning smile of the day and a friendly “hello”, to a young (35ish) looking guy. I looked behind him and saw the main Embassy office, with those rows and rows of computers and desks that everyone talks about.
This next part was the part that just simply amazed me. The conversation went pretty much like this:
ConOff: “So, how did a girl from Illinois meet a guy from Brighton?”
Me: “Well, I was out there in the summer of 2003, and we were introduced by mutual friends”
CO: “When was the next time you saw her?”
Me: “The next summer, 2004. And then she came over here in October, Christmas and this past March”
CO: (jokingly) “So somewhere in between all that it got pretty serious huh?”
Me: “Haha, yes.”
CO: “What do you do for a living?”
Me: “I work in sales”.
CO: “Can you work for the same company over there?”
Me: “No.”
CO: “Ok, well the only thing standing between you and the visa is us waiting for your medical results to come back. Once they do, we’ll have the visa couried out to you in a few days”.
Amazing. The whole thing took literally 2 minutes. If that. He then proceeded to tell me about what I should do when I arrive into JFK, about going into secondary inspection, etc. That was it. And then, just as he said we were all done and I turned to walk away, he said those immortal words….
“Welcome to America”.
My head was reeling – he didn’t ask to look at ANY of the documents I took with me. Not the tax returns, the bank statements, none of the notarized stuff, the photos, phone bills, emails, IM conversations, nothing. I spent hours and hours compiling it all, and no one asked for anything. They didn’t even look at the I-134 Affidavit of Support form, they just glanced at it and put it in my file! Amazing. I do think though that if I hadn’t of brought any of that stuff, they would of asked for it!
So just the last thing to do, go to the courier desk to pay my £9.50 (no picking up envelopes or anything like that. I just gave them the form with the address, paid my money, got my receipt and I was done). They actually had a systems failure when I stepped up to the desk, and again (as with my medical) the last thing you expect to be the most stressful turned out to be the worst! I had to wait 10 minutes while they fixed the system, but as I was expecting to be in there for 2.5 hours, and only ended up being in there for about 45 minutes, I had plenty of time to spare and was in no rush.
I walked out of the Embassy, straight to the nearest phone box to call the Princess (it was about 4.30am in Chicago). I woke her up as ordered by her, and gave her the good news. Of course, she was ecstatic and really happy. I then called my Mum and gave her the good news. Then, on to the tube, and then the train back to work! I was back in Brighton for lunchtime!! All in all, from when I entered the Embassy to when I walked back out the door couldn't of been any longer than 1 hour. I do think that this might of been because I had an early morning appointment. Perhaps it would of got much busier as the day went on? I don't know.
The only bad thing right now is just the waiting for the actual visa to arrive, and be in my hands. The medical experience really has kinda tarnished this whole thing for me. I wasn’t anywhere near as excited today as I should have been, and that’s just because my medical results weren’t at the Embassy yet. So instead of the guy giving me a definite yes, it was a conditional yes awaiting the results of the medical. I know it will all be ok in the end, but I just wanted it to all be over today you know?
Anyway, enough of that… It’s over!!!! For now!
I want to thank everyone who has helped me get this far. I really wouldn’t have been able to do it without the invaluable help that the people on here provide. I will be taking a little break from this website for a while – I need to start getting my life in order and concentrating on packing my life away! The plan is to leave around the 2nd week of June. The good news is that I have got myself a job to start pretty much as soon as I get there, and I am going to fly into JFK to try and get the EAD. I have explained the whole situation to my new employer and as long as I can show them a letter saying I have applied for my SS number, they are happy.
The next time you will probably hear from me will be when I post my POE experience, sometime in June. I will come back to this site for the next week or so to see any replies to this post, and any questions, but then I’ll be off!
Thanks again everyone, and the best of British luck to everyone who is still going through their visa processes in order to be re-united with their loved ones.
Matt
Apr 19th 2005, 7:22 am
#12
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 2,033
Re: My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Congratulations! Glad that after the 'queue-mess' everything went so smoothly. Congrats again!
Elaine
Elaine
Apr 19th 2005, 10:47 am
#13
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 2,532
Re: My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Originally Posted by HunterGreen
Congratulations! Glad that after the 'queue-mess' everything went so smoothly. Congrats again!
Elaine
Elaine
Apr 19th 2005, 10:53 am
#14
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 2,532
Re: My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Originally Posted by ukmancoll
Today I had my K1 visa interview at the US Embassy in London. First of all, I should say that even though this website, and others like it (kamya.com, etc) have been extremely valuable resources to me, nothing I have read about peoples experience was anything like what I saw today. I guess it just goes to show that all of the help and advice can only go to act as a guide, and there are absolutely no hard and fast rules as to how anything will turn out when it comes to your own experience.
On with the day: I stayed up in London last night at my Aunts house. She lives in Norbury which is only a short train and tube ride away from the Embassy. I awoke at 7.15am and was at the train station by 8.00am. My interview was set for 9.30am, so I had an hour and a half to do what shouldn’t be more than a 40 minute journey. I took the train to Victoria, tube to Oxford Circus, then change to Marble Arch where I walked the 5 minutes to Grosvenor Square.
My first observation of the day was that the map the Embassy provides you misses out several roads, only showing you the main ones. This obviously caused me some confusion (I have been to the embassy before, but it was about 6 years ago). I had to stop and ask a guy in a newsagent if I was going the right way, and luckily I was.
I arrived around to the front of the embassy, at 9am, where there was already two substantial queues forming. Now, the first thing that confused me was that from what I had read, I didn’t think I had to queue up. Just to make sure though, I went up to the guy with the clipboard at the front and showed him my appointment letter and asked him where I should go. He promptly pointed me to the back of the queue to the right hand side. He said “all 9.30 appointments are over there.” This kind of pissed me off because I wasn’t expecting to have to wait. Anyway, go with the flow, nothing I can do.
All of my fellow queue waiters hung around until about 9.35am when the guy with the clipboard stood at the front (some distance away) and shouted something along the lines of:
“blah blah blah 9.30 blah blah left”
That’s literally what I heard. Pretty much everyone in the queue moved over to the more fast moving side on the left, basically people following people for no reason. I was a little bit concerned by now as not only did I think I shouldn’t be queuing, but also I couldn’t really hear what the guy had shouted. The queue I was now in however was moving faster, so I decided to go with it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who was confused. As I got to the front of the queue, it turns out that the people in front of me should have stayed in the right hand queue, and were then sent all the way to back of the now massive other queue. As I was waved through to the portacabin that x-rays your bags, I heard several other people being sent away to the back of the correct queue. I did feel for these people. There was no provision made to communicate properly with the people at the back, and I am sure dozens of people are made to wait hours extra just because no one told them exactly what to do. God knows it can be confusing. For people yet to go through this process, it seems as though you are put in the non moving right hand queue (as you are looking at it) until your appointment time. When your time comes, everyone who has the same appointment is asked to move over to the left hand moving queue. Make sure you get this part right, otherwise your wait will be extended.
Anyway, so I am now in the main room which has a hustle and bustle of around, I’m guessing, a couple hundred people. As I walk in the door, a lady gives me my ticket from the machine with my number on. As I am applying for an Immigrant visa (as opposed to a Non-Immigrant visa), I am given the number 006. Everyone else gets given ticket numbers like 343, etc. I take a seat, and about 5 minutes later, my number comes up and I am asked to go to window number one. I give my first winning smile of the day to an oriental lady sitting behind and I say hello. She tells me she is having a bad day (and I think, f****ng great, just my luck). I laugh, and say I’m sorry. The problem is, as I find out, there is a lady with a crying baby directly opposite her who has been screaming for the last hour. I work in sales, so I am used to trying to connect with people. I laugh about it with her, and jokingly ask her if there is anything I can do. She laughs and says no.
She gets my folder and starts asking me for: birth certificate and copy, police certificate and copy, payment stub from the bank, passport, photos (which by the way, were just regular photo machine type photos. She didn’t even bat an eyelid. She even cut them out for me) and the Affidavit of Support form. She then gave me a pink form which I am told to fill out and take the courier desk after my visa is approved to get it sent to me.
After that thoroughly painless moment, I return to my seat on her instructions, and wait for my name to be called for the interview.
Now, I had arrived in the actual Embassy building at 9.45am, and the time was now about 10.15am. Moving very fast so far.
This was where I was expecting there to be a massive wait of around 2 hours. So, I got out my book and settled down. Literally, about 10 minutes later (maybe not even), an American voice came over the tannoy and called for me by name to go to window 13. Wow, that was quick!
Here we go I thought, it’s now or never. I don’t usually get nervous about anything, certainly not at things like job interviews, but my stomach was doing loops and turns all over the place.
I take the short walk down the corridor to window 13 and give my second winning smile of the day and a friendly “hello”, to a young (35ish) looking guy. I looked behind him and saw the main Embassy office, with those rows and rows of computers and desks that everyone talks about.
This next part was the part that just simply amazed me. The conversation went pretty much like this:
ConOff: “So, how did a girl from Illinois meet a guy from Brighton?”
Me: “Well, I was out there in the summer of 2003, and we were introduced by mutual friends”
CO: “When was the next time you saw her?”
Me: “The next summer, 2004. And then she came over here in October, Christmas and this past March”
CO: (jokingly) “So somewhere in between all that it got pretty serious huh?”
Me: “Haha, yes.”
CO: “What do you do for a living?”
Me: “I work in sales”.
CO: “Can you work for the same company over there?”
Me: “No.”
CO: “Ok, well the only thing standing between you and the visa is us waiting for your medical results to come back. Once they do, we’ll have the visa couried out to you in a few days”.
Amazing. The whole thing took literally 2 minutes. If that. He then proceeded to tell me about what I should do when I arrive into JFK, about going into secondary inspection, etc. That was it. And then, just as he said we were all done and I turned to walk away, he said those immortal words….
“Welcome to America”.
My head was reeling – he didn’t ask to look at ANY of the documents I took with me. Not the tax returns, the bank statements, none of the notarized stuff, the photos, phone bills, emails, IM conversations, nothing. I spent hours and hours compiling it all, and no one asked for anything. They didn’t even look at the I-134 Affidavit of Support form, they just glanced at it and put it in my file! Amazing. I do think though that if I hadn’t of brought any of that stuff, they would of asked for it!
So just the last thing to do, go to the courier desk to pay my £9.50 (no picking up envelopes or anything like that. I just gave them the form with the address, paid my money, got my receipt and I was done). They actually had a systems failure when I stepped up to the desk, and again (as with my medical) the last thing you expect to be the most stressful turned out to be the worst! I had to wait 10 minutes while they fixed the system, but as I was expecting to be in there for 2.5 hours, and only ended up being in there for about 45 minutes, I had plenty of time to spare and was in no rush.
I walked out of the Embassy, straight to the nearest phone box to call the Princess (it was about 4.30am in Chicago). I woke her up as ordered by her, and gave her the good news. Of course, she was ecstatic and really happy. I then called my Mum and gave her the good news. Then, on to the tube, and then the train back to work! I was back in Brighton for lunchtime!! All in all, from when I entered the Embassy to when I walked back out the door couldn't of been any longer than 1 hour. I do think that this might of been because I had an early morning appointment. Perhaps it would of got much busier as the day went on? I don't know.
The only bad thing right now is just the waiting for the actual visa to arrive, and be in my hands. The medical experience really has kinda tarnished this whole thing for me. I wasn’t anywhere near as excited today as I should have been, and that’s just because my medical results weren’t at the Embassy yet. So instead of the guy giving me a definite yes, it was a conditional yes awaiting the results of the medical. I know it will all be ok in the end, but I just wanted it to all be over today you know?
Anyway, enough of that… It’s over!!!! For now!
I want to thank everyone who has helped me get this far. I really wouldn’t have been able to do it without the invaluable help that the people on here provide. I will be taking a little break from this website for a while – I need to start getting my life in order and concentrating on packing my life away! The plan is to leave around the 2nd week of June. The good news is that I have got myself a job to start pretty much as soon as I get there, and I am going to fly into JFK to try and get the EAD. I have explained the whole situation to my new employer and as long as I can show them a letter saying I have applied for my SS number, they are happy.
The next time you will probably hear from me will be when I post my POE experience, sometime in June. I will come back to this site for the next week or so to see any replies to this post, and any questions, but then I’ll be off!
Thanks again everyone, and the best of British luck to everyone who is still going through their visa processes in order to be re-united with their loved ones.
Matt
On with the day: I stayed up in London last night at my Aunts house. She lives in Norbury which is only a short train and tube ride away from the Embassy. I awoke at 7.15am and was at the train station by 8.00am. My interview was set for 9.30am, so I had an hour and a half to do what shouldn’t be more than a 40 minute journey. I took the train to Victoria, tube to Oxford Circus, then change to Marble Arch where I walked the 5 minutes to Grosvenor Square.
My first observation of the day was that the map the Embassy provides you misses out several roads, only showing you the main ones. This obviously caused me some confusion (I have been to the embassy before, but it was about 6 years ago). I had to stop and ask a guy in a newsagent if I was going the right way, and luckily I was.
I arrived around to the front of the embassy, at 9am, where there was already two substantial queues forming. Now, the first thing that confused me was that from what I had read, I didn’t think I had to queue up. Just to make sure though, I went up to the guy with the clipboard at the front and showed him my appointment letter and asked him where I should go. He promptly pointed me to the back of the queue to the right hand side. He said “all 9.30 appointments are over there.” This kind of pissed me off because I wasn’t expecting to have to wait. Anyway, go with the flow, nothing I can do.
All of my fellow queue waiters hung around until about 9.35am when the guy with the clipboard stood at the front (some distance away) and shouted something along the lines of:
“blah blah blah 9.30 blah blah left”
That’s literally what I heard. Pretty much everyone in the queue moved over to the more fast moving side on the left, basically people following people for no reason. I was a little bit concerned by now as not only did I think I shouldn’t be queuing, but also I couldn’t really hear what the guy had shouted. The queue I was now in however was moving faster, so I decided to go with it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who was confused. As I got to the front of the queue, it turns out that the people in front of me should have stayed in the right hand queue, and were then sent all the way to back of the now massive other queue. As I was waved through to the portacabin that x-rays your bags, I heard several other people being sent away to the back of the correct queue. I did feel for these people. There was no provision made to communicate properly with the people at the back, and I am sure dozens of people are made to wait hours extra just because no one told them exactly what to do. God knows it can be confusing. For people yet to go through this process, it seems as though you are put in the non moving right hand queue (as you are looking at it) until your appointment time. When your time comes, everyone who has the same appointment is asked to move over to the left hand moving queue. Make sure you get this part right, otherwise your wait will be extended.
Anyway, so I am now in the main room which has a hustle and bustle of around, I’m guessing, a couple hundred people. As I walk in the door, a lady gives me my ticket from the machine with my number on. As I am applying for an Immigrant visa (as opposed to a Non-Immigrant visa), I am given the number 006. Everyone else gets given ticket numbers like 343, etc. I take a seat, and about 5 minutes later, my number comes up and I am asked to go to window number one. I give my first winning smile of the day to an oriental lady sitting behind and I say hello. She tells me she is having a bad day (and I think, f****ng great, just my luck). I laugh, and say I’m sorry. The problem is, as I find out, there is a lady with a crying baby directly opposite her who has been screaming for the last hour. I work in sales, so I am used to trying to connect with people. I laugh about it with her, and jokingly ask her if there is anything I can do. She laughs and says no.
She gets my folder and starts asking me for: birth certificate and copy, police certificate and copy, payment stub from the bank, passport, photos (which by the way, were just regular photo machine type photos. She didn’t even bat an eyelid. She even cut them out for me) and the Affidavit of Support form. She then gave me a pink form which I am told to fill out and take the courier desk after my visa is approved to get it sent to me.
After that thoroughly painless moment, I return to my seat on her instructions, and wait for my name to be called for the interview.
Now, I had arrived in the actual Embassy building at 9.45am, and the time was now about 10.15am. Moving very fast so far.
This was where I was expecting there to be a massive wait of around 2 hours. So, I got out my book and settled down. Literally, about 10 minutes later (maybe not even), an American voice came over the tannoy and called for me by name to go to window 13. Wow, that was quick!
Here we go I thought, it’s now or never. I don’t usually get nervous about anything, certainly not at things like job interviews, but my stomach was doing loops and turns all over the place.
I take the short walk down the corridor to window 13 and give my second winning smile of the day and a friendly “hello”, to a young (35ish) looking guy. I looked behind him and saw the main Embassy office, with those rows and rows of computers and desks that everyone talks about.
This next part was the part that just simply amazed me. The conversation went pretty much like this:
ConOff: “So, how did a girl from Illinois meet a guy from Brighton?”
Me: “Well, I was out there in the summer of 2003, and we were introduced by mutual friends”
CO: “When was the next time you saw her?”
Me: “The next summer, 2004. And then she came over here in October, Christmas and this past March”
CO: (jokingly) “So somewhere in between all that it got pretty serious huh?”
Me: “Haha, yes.”
CO: “What do you do for a living?”
Me: “I work in sales”.
CO: “Can you work for the same company over there?”
Me: “No.”
CO: “Ok, well the only thing standing between you and the visa is us waiting for your medical results to come back. Once they do, we’ll have the visa couried out to you in a few days”.
Amazing. The whole thing took literally 2 minutes. If that. He then proceeded to tell me about what I should do when I arrive into JFK, about going into secondary inspection, etc. That was it. And then, just as he said we were all done and I turned to walk away, he said those immortal words….
“Welcome to America”.
My head was reeling – he didn’t ask to look at ANY of the documents I took with me. Not the tax returns, the bank statements, none of the notarized stuff, the photos, phone bills, emails, IM conversations, nothing. I spent hours and hours compiling it all, and no one asked for anything. They didn’t even look at the I-134 Affidavit of Support form, they just glanced at it and put it in my file! Amazing. I do think though that if I hadn’t of brought any of that stuff, they would of asked for it!
So just the last thing to do, go to the courier desk to pay my £9.50 (no picking up envelopes or anything like that. I just gave them the form with the address, paid my money, got my receipt and I was done). They actually had a systems failure when I stepped up to the desk, and again (as with my medical) the last thing you expect to be the most stressful turned out to be the worst! I had to wait 10 minutes while they fixed the system, but as I was expecting to be in there for 2.5 hours, and only ended up being in there for about 45 minutes, I had plenty of time to spare and was in no rush.
I walked out of the Embassy, straight to the nearest phone box to call the Princess (it was about 4.30am in Chicago). I woke her up as ordered by her, and gave her the good news. Of course, she was ecstatic and really happy. I then called my Mum and gave her the good news. Then, on to the tube, and then the train back to work! I was back in Brighton for lunchtime!! All in all, from when I entered the Embassy to when I walked back out the door couldn't of been any longer than 1 hour. I do think that this might of been because I had an early morning appointment. Perhaps it would of got much busier as the day went on? I don't know.
The only bad thing right now is just the waiting for the actual visa to arrive, and be in my hands. The medical experience really has kinda tarnished this whole thing for me. I wasn’t anywhere near as excited today as I should have been, and that’s just because my medical results weren’t at the Embassy yet. So instead of the guy giving me a definite yes, it was a conditional yes awaiting the results of the medical. I know it will all be ok in the end, but I just wanted it to all be over today you know?
Anyway, enough of that… It’s over!!!! For now!
I want to thank everyone who has helped me get this far. I really wouldn’t have been able to do it without the invaluable help that the people on here provide. I will be taking a little break from this website for a while – I need to start getting my life in order and concentrating on packing my life away! The plan is to leave around the 2nd week of June. The good news is that I have got myself a job to start pretty much as soon as I get there, and I am going to fly into JFK to try and get the EAD. I have explained the whole situation to my new employer and as long as I can show them a letter saying I have applied for my SS number, they are happy.
The next time you will probably hear from me will be when I post my POE experience, sometime in June. I will come back to this site for the next week or so to see any replies to this post, and any questions, but then I’ll be off!
Thanks again everyone, and the best of British luck to everyone who is still going through their visa processes in order to be re-united with their loved ones.
Matt
Apr 19th 2005, 11:06 am
#15
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 2,532
Re: My K1 Interview experience (London) - Approved!!
Originally Posted by ukmancoll
Today I had my K1 visa interview at the US Embassy in London. First of all, I should say that even though this website, and others like it (kamya.com, etc) have been extremely valuable resources to me, nothing I have read about peoples experience was anything like what I saw today. I guess it just goes to show that all of the help and advice can only go to act as a guide, and there are absolutely no hard and fast rules as to how anything will turn out when it comes to your own experience.
On with the day: I stayed up in London last night at my Aunts house. She lives in Norbury which is only a short train and tube ride away from the Embassy. I awoke at 7.15am and was at the train station by 8.00am. My interview was set for 9.30am, so I had an hour and a half to do what shouldn’t be more than a 40 minute journey. I took the train to Victoria, tube to Oxford Circus, then change to Marble Arch where I walked the 5 minutes to Grosvenor Square.
My first observation of the day was that the map the Embassy provides you misses out several roads, only showing you the main ones. This obviously caused me some confusion (I have been to the embassy before, but it was about 6 years ago). I had to stop and ask a guy in a newsagent if I was going the right way, and luckily I was.
I arrived around to the front of the embassy, at 9am, where there was already two substantial queues forming. Now, the first thing that confused me was that from what I had read, I didn’t think I had to queue up. Just to make sure though, I went up to the guy with the clipboard at the front and showed him my appointment letter and asked him where I should go. He promptly pointed me to the back of the queue to the right hand side. He said “all 9.30 appointments are over there.” This kind of pissed me off because I wasn’t expecting to have to wait. Anyway, go with the flow, nothing I can do.
All of my fellow queue waiters hung around until about 9.35am when the guy with the clipboard stood at the front (some distance away) and shouted something along the lines of:
“blah blah blah 9.30 blah blah left”
That’s literally what I heard. Pretty much everyone in the queue moved over to the more fast moving side on the left, basically people following people for no reason. I was a little bit concerned by now as not only did I think I shouldn’t be queuing, but also I couldn’t really hear what the guy had shouted. The queue I was now in however was moving faster, so I decided to go with it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who was confused. As I got to the front of the queue, it turns out that the people in front of me should have stayed in the right hand queue, and were then sent all the way to back of the now massive other queue. As I was waved through to the portacabin that x-rays your bags, I heard several other people being sent away to the back of the correct queue. I did feel for these people. There was no provision made to communicate properly with the people at the back, and I am sure dozens of people are made to wait hours extra just because no one told them exactly what to do. God knows it can be confusing. For people yet to go through this process, it seems as though you are put in the non moving right hand queue (as you are looking at it) until your appointment time. When your time comes, everyone who has the same appointment is asked to move over to the left hand moving queue. Make sure you get this part right, otherwise your wait will be extended.
Anyway, so I am now in the main room which has a hustle and bustle of around, I’m guessing, a couple hundred people. As I walk in the door, a lady gives me my ticket from the machine with my number on. As I am applying for an Immigrant visa (as opposed to a Non-Immigrant visa), I am given the number 006. Everyone else gets given ticket numbers like 343, etc. I take a seat, and about 5 minutes later, my number comes up and I am asked to go to window number one. I give my first winning smile of the day to an oriental lady sitting behind and I say hello. She tells me she is having a bad day (and I think, f****ng great, just my luck). I laugh, and say I’m sorry. The problem is, as I find out, there is a lady with a crying baby directly opposite her who has been screaming for the last hour. I work in sales, so I am used to trying to connect with people. I laugh about it with her, and jokingly ask her if there is anything I can do. She laughs and says no.
She gets my folder and starts asking me for: birth certificate and copy, police certificate and copy, payment stub from the bank, passport, photos (which by the way, were just regular photo machine type photos. She didn’t even bat an eyelid. She even cut them out for me) and the Affidavit of Support form. She then gave me a pink form which I am told to fill out and take the courier desk after my visa is approved to get it sent to me.
After that thoroughly painless moment, I return to my seat on her instructions, and wait for my name to be called for the interview.
Now, I had arrived in the actual Embassy building at 9.45am, and the time was now about 10.15am. Moving very fast so far.
This was where I was expecting there to be a massive wait of around 2 hours. So, I got out my book and settled down. Literally, about 10 minutes later (maybe not even), an American voice came over the tannoy and called for me by name to go to window 13. Wow, that was quick!
Here we go I thought, it’s now or never. I don’t usually get nervous about anything, certainly not at things like job interviews, but my stomach was doing loops and turns all over the place.
I take the short walk down the corridor to window 13 and give my second winning smile of the day and a friendly “hello”, to a young (35ish) looking guy. I looked behind him and saw the main Embassy office, with those rows and rows of computers and desks that everyone talks about.
This next part was the part that just simply amazed me. The conversation went pretty much like this:
ConOff: “So, how did a girl from Illinois meet a guy from Brighton?”
Me: “Well, I was out there in the summer of 2003, and we were introduced by mutual friends”
CO: “When was the next time you saw her?”
Me: “The next summer, 2004. And then she came over here in October, Christmas and this past March”
CO: (jokingly) “So somewhere in between all that it got pretty serious huh?”
Me: “Haha, yes.”
CO: “What do you do for a living?”
Me: “I work in sales”.
CO: “Can you work for the same company over there?”
Me: “No.”
CO: “Ok, well the only thing standing between you and the visa is us waiting for your medical results to come back. Once they do, we’ll have the visa couried out to you in a few days”.
Amazing. The whole thing took literally 2 minutes. If that. He then proceeded to tell me about what I should do when I arrive into JFK, about going into secondary inspection, etc. That was it. And then, just as he said we were all done and I turned to walk away, he said those immortal words….
“Welcome to America”.
My head was reeling – he didn’t ask to look at ANY of the documents I took with me. Not the tax returns, the bank statements, none of the notarized stuff, the photos, phone bills, emails, IM conversations, nothing. I spent hours and hours compiling it all, and no one asked for anything. They didn’t even look at the I-134 Affidavit of Support form, they just glanced at it and put it in my file! Amazing. I do think though that if I hadn’t of brought any of that stuff, they would of asked for it!
So just the last thing to do, go to the courier desk to pay my £9.50 (no picking up envelopes or anything like that. I just gave them the form with the address, paid my money, got my receipt and I was done). They actually had a systems failure when I stepped up to the desk, and again (as with my medical) the last thing you expect to be the most stressful turned out to be the worst! I had to wait 10 minutes while they fixed the system, but as I was expecting to be in there for 2.5 hours, and only ended up being in there for about 45 minutes, I had plenty of time to spare and was in no rush.
I walked out of the Embassy, straight to the nearest phone box to call the Princess (it was about 4.30am in Chicago). I woke her up as ordered by her, and gave her the good news. Of course, she was ecstatic and really happy. I then called my Mum and gave her the good news. Then, on to the tube, and then the train back to work! I was back in Brighton for lunchtime!! All in all, from when I entered the Embassy to when I walked back out the door couldn't of been any longer than 1 hour. I do think that this might of been because I had an early morning appointment. Perhaps it would of got much busier as the day went on? I don't know.
The only bad thing right now is just the waiting for the actual visa to arrive, and be in my hands. The medical experience really has kinda tarnished this whole thing for me. I wasn’t anywhere near as excited today as I should have been, and that’s just because my medical results weren’t at the Embassy yet. So instead of the guy giving me a definite yes, it was a conditional yes awaiting the results of the medical. I know it will all be ok in the end, but I just wanted it to all be over today you know?
Anyway, enough of that… It’s over!!!! For now!
I want to thank everyone who has helped me get this far. I really wouldn’t have been able to do it without the invaluable help that the people on here provide. I will be taking a little break from this website for a while – I need to start getting my life in order and concentrating on packing my life away! The plan is to leave around the 2nd week of June. The good news is that I have got myself a job to start pretty much as soon as I get there, and I am going to fly into JFK to try and get the EAD. I have explained the whole situation to my new employer and as long as I can show them a letter saying I have applied for my SS number, they are happy.
The next time you will probably hear from me will be when I post my POE experience, sometime in June. I will come back to this site for the next week or so to see any replies to this post, and any questions, but then I’ll be off!
Thanks again everyone, and the best of British luck to everyone who is still going through their visa processes in order to be re-united with their loved ones.
Matt
On with the day: I stayed up in London last night at my Aunts house. She lives in Norbury which is only a short train and tube ride away from the Embassy. I awoke at 7.15am and was at the train station by 8.00am. My interview was set for 9.30am, so I had an hour and a half to do what shouldn’t be more than a 40 minute journey. I took the train to Victoria, tube to Oxford Circus, then change to Marble Arch where I walked the 5 minutes to Grosvenor Square.
My first observation of the day was that the map the Embassy provides you misses out several roads, only showing you the main ones. This obviously caused me some confusion (I have been to the embassy before, but it was about 6 years ago). I had to stop and ask a guy in a newsagent if I was going the right way, and luckily I was.
I arrived around to the front of the embassy, at 9am, where there was already two substantial queues forming. Now, the first thing that confused me was that from what I had read, I didn’t think I had to queue up. Just to make sure though, I went up to the guy with the clipboard at the front and showed him my appointment letter and asked him where I should go. He promptly pointed me to the back of the queue to the right hand side. He said “all 9.30 appointments are over there.” This kind of pissed me off because I wasn’t expecting to have to wait. Anyway, go with the flow, nothing I can do.
All of my fellow queue waiters hung around until about 9.35am when the guy with the clipboard stood at the front (some distance away) and shouted something along the lines of:
“blah blah blah 9.30 blah blah left”
That’s literally what I heard. Pretty much everyone in the queue moved over to the more fast moving side on the left, basically people following people for no reason. I was a little bit concerned by now as not only did I think I shouldn’t be queuing, but also I couldn’t really hear what the guy had shouted. The queue I was now in however was moving faster, so I decided to go with it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who was confused. As I got to the front of the queue, it turns out that the people in front of me should have stayed in the right hand queue, and were then sent all the way to back of the now massive other queue. As I was waved through to the portacabin that x-rays your bags, I heard several other people being sent away to the back of the correct queue. I did feel for these people. There was no provision made to communicate properly with the people at the back, and I am sure dozens of people are made to wait hours extra just because no one told them exactly what to do. God knows it can be confusing. For people yet to go through this process, it seems as though you are put in the non moving right hand queue (as you are looking at it) until your appointment time. When your time comes, everyone who has the same appointment is asked to move over to the left hand moving queue. Make sure you get this part right, otherwise your wait will be extended.
Anyway, so I am now in the main room which has a hustle and bustle of around, I’m guessing, a couple hundred people. As I walk in the door, a lady gives me my ticket from the machine with my number on. As I am applying for an Immigrant visa (as opposed to a Non-Immigrant visa), I am given the number 006. Everyone else gets given ticket numbers like 343, etc. I take a seat, and about 5 minutes later, my number comes up and I am asked to go to window number one. I give my first winning smile of the day to an oriental lady sitting behind and I say hello. She tells me she is having a bad day (and I think, f****ng great, just my luck). I laugh, and say I’m sorry. The problem is, as I find out, there is a lady with a crying baby directly opposite her who has been screaming for the last hour. I work in sales, so I am used to trying to connect with people. I laugh about it with her, and jokingly ask her if there is anything I can do. She laughs and says no.
She gets my folder and starts asking me for: birth certificate and copy, police certificate and copy, payment stub from the bank, passport, photos (which by the way, were just regular photo machine type photos. She didn’t even bat an eyelid. She even cut them out for me) and the Affidavit of Support form. She then gave me a pink form which I am told to fill out and take the courier desk after my visa is approved to get it sent to me.
After that thoroughly painless moment, I return to my seat on her instructions, and wait for my name to be called for the interview.
Now, I had arrived in the actual Embassy building at 9.45am, and the time was now about 10.15am. Moving very fast so far.
This was where I was expecting there to be a massive wait of around 2 hours. So, I got out my book and settled down. Literally, about 10 minutes later (maybe not even), an American voice came over the tannoy and called for me by name to go to window 13. Wow, that was quick!
Here we go I thought, it’s now or never. I don’t usually get nervous about anything, certainly not at things like job interviews, but my stomach was doing loops and turns all over the place.
I take the short walk down the corridor to window 13 and give my second winning smile of the day and a friendly “hello”, to a young (35ish) looking guy. I looked behind him and saw the main Embassy office, with those rows and rows of computers and desks that everyone talks about.
This next part was the part that just simply amazed me. The conversation went pretty much like this:
ConOff: “So, how did a girl from Illinois meet a guy from Brighton?”
Me: “Well, I was out there in the summer of 2003, and we were introduced by mutual friends”
CO: “When was the next time you saw her?”
Me: “The next summer, 2004. And then she came over here in October, Christmas and this past March”
CO: (jokingly) “So somewhere in between all that it got pretty serious huh?”
Me: “Haha, yes.”
CO: “What do you do for a living?”
Me: “I work in sales”.
CO: “Can you work for the same company over there?”
Me: “No.”
CO: “Ok, well the only thing standing between you and the visa is us waiting for your medical results to come back. Once they do, we’ll have the visa couried out to you in a few days”.
Amazing. The whole thing took literally 2 minutes. If that. He then proceeded to tell me about what I should do when I arrive into JFK, about going into secondary inspection, etc. That was it. And then, just as he said we were all done and I turned to walk away, he said those immortal words….
“Welcome to America”.
My head was reeling – he didn’t ask to look at ANY of the documents I took with me. Not the tax returns, the bank statements, none of the notarized stuff, the photos, phone bills, emails, IM conversations, nothing. I spent hours and hours compiling it all, and no one asked for anything. They didn’t even look at the I-134 Affidavit of Support form, they just glanced at it and put it in my file! Amazing. I do think though that if I hadn’t of brought any of that stuff, they would of asked for it!
So just the last thing to do, go to the courier desk to pay my £9.50 (no picking up envelopes or anything like that. I just gave them the form with the address, paid my money, got my receipt and I was done). They actually had a systems failure when I stepped up to the desk, and again (as with my medical) the last thing you expect to be the most stressful turned out to be the worst! I had to wait 10 minutes while they fixed the system, but as I was expecting to be in there for 2.5 hours, and only ended up being in there for about 45 minutes, I had plenty of time to spare and was in no rush.
I walked out of the Embassy, straight to the nearest phone box to call the Princess (it was about 4.30am in Chicago). I woke her up as ordered by her, and gave her the good news. Of course, she was ecstatic and really happy. I then called my Mum and gave her the good news. Then, on to the tube, and then the train back to work! I was back in Brighton for lunchtime!! All in all, from when I entered the Embassy to when I walked back out the door couldn't of been any longer than 1 hour. I do think that this might of been because I had an early morning appointment. Perhaps it would of got much busier as the day went on? I don't know.
The only bad thing right now is just the waiting for the actual visa to arrive, and be in my hands. The medical experience really has kinda tarnished this whole thing for me. I wasn’t anywhere near as excited today as I should have been, and that’s just because my medical results weren’t at the Embassy yet. So instead of the guy giving me a definite yes, it was a conditional yes awaiting the results of the medical. I know it will all be ok in the end, but I just wanted it to all be over today you know?
Anyway, enough of that… It’s over!!!! For now!
I want to thank everyone who has helped me get this far. I really wouldn’t have been able to do it without the invaluable help that the people on here provide. I will be taking a little break from this website for a while – I need to start getting my life in order and concentrating on packing my life away! The plan is to leave around the 2nd week of June. The good news is that I have got myself a job to start pretty much as soon as I get there, and I am going to fly into JFK to try and get the EAD. I have explained the whole situation to my new employer and as long as I can show them a letter saying I have applied for my SS number, they are happy.
The next time you will probably hear from me will be when I post my POE experience, sometime in June. I will come back to this site for the next week or so to see any replies to this post, and any questions, but then I’ll be off!
Thanks again everyone, and the best of British luck to everyone who is still going through their visa processes in order to be re-united with their loved ones.
Matt