PhilG

I went for my fiance's visa interview today. It was pretty painless, and took about two and a quarter hours from joining the queue to walking out. 99% of the time was spent doing the crossword and waiting for my number to come up.

The only problem was I spilt coffee all over my passport a couple of months ago, and the edges are a bit brown and wrinkled. The woman told me I could have my visa, but I'd have to get a new passport first because they wouldn't be able to stick the visa into the passport.

So now I have to spend ninety-something pounds on a new passport which has only two years left to run. Doh!

The application process has taken up about twelve hours of my time and cost me maybe £700. I told my fiance she was worth it.

The experience has not been as bad as I expected. I applied in late August, so it's taken just over seven months, but a couple of those months were down to delays on my part.

The questioning today was minimal - the woman just asked how we met, I told her, and that was it. And for evidence of support, I took along one year's worth of bank statements for one of my accounts. So good luck to anyone who's starting out on this journey.

LAL

No you'll get a shiny new 10 year passport with a chip in it and if you hand your old passport that has 2 years left on it in to be cancelled they will add up to nine months onto the life span of your new passport so it will last for 10 years 9 months!!! Better than nowt!!!
We did this in September for the whole family when hubby forgot his UK passport had expired, so now my daughter has a passport with 5 years 4 months on, my mum 10 years 4 months on and hubby 9 years 7months - mine was fine...

LAL

meauxna

Holy geez, that is the 2nd recent story about "damaged" passports needing to be replaced before London would kick down the visa.

Moral of the story: something ELSE to do before interviewing.


PhilG, can you please expand on this?
The application process has taken up about twelve hours of my time and cost me maybe £700.

fatbrit

Think it's pretty sensible anyway to start with a fresh passport for your long visa journey.

meauxna

True.. and we wound up renewing the UK pp before we did anything because we didn't understand everything that we were doing. That is, we took the most conservative route, but doing so cost me having my family over for the wedding (long story & nothing to do with the actual renewal or visa applications).

A happy story though: as a result of doing the emergency run up to the US PP Authority, Himself got a non chipped US passport. Now I'll just have to think of something clever when my time comes up.
(are they even issuing the chipped pps to non-diplomats yet?)

Rete

I recall your having spoken about this before your interview and I believe it was suggested that you apply for a new passport before your interview. How long is it going take you to receive the new one?

BritishGuy36

Yep....got that done a month or two back, mine expires Sept 2018 now...

nettlebed

And as it has a chip in in, you might want to go here:

http://www.difrwear.com/

No connection, just a satisfied customer...

fatbrit

20 seconds in the microwave will kill it, too.

nettlebed

True, but given the initiative, intelligence and flexibility of CBP folks (see my earlier post about a CBP droid in Victoria, BC telling me that I have received secondaries every time I've entered the US, when I know it's not true) I suspect that a fried RFID chip is going be become increasingly a ticket to delays and whatnot and possibly charges of being a terr'rist.

Don't forget, when they outlaw frying your passport in a microwave, only terr'rists will have microwaved passports...

fatbrit

Doubt it. Once they've determined you're a citizen, their job is done. The machine-readable crap at the bottom still works. Failing that, they can type your info into their terminal manually.