TM_001

Appointment is at 10:30 - let's see how it goes....!

carin123

I,m sure everything will be fine, but wishing you luck anyway!
Let us all know how it went.

Ozzidoc

Good luck - watching with interest!

mellybrown

Good luck - hope it goes well

TM_001

OK, so we're back from the Embassy - and APPROVED! We should get our passports by Friday.

The basic flow was:
- We decided to drive up as we had to take our young son (8 months) with us. We left at 7:30, expecting with traffic to get there about 9:30. Finally parked up at 10, mildly stressed :-).
- For reference, we parked in the NCP just around the corner, the walk to the embassy from there is only 2-3 mins, BUT it's expensive. We were there for 1 1/2 hours and it cost about 15 GBP!
- We turned up at the embassy, and there was a long queue just to get inside. We were told that, even at 10am they were running 1hr late (how is that possible?!), BUT someone came up and checked our papers then noticed we had a young son, so fast tracked us to security, bypassing about 1hr of queues :-)
- Went through security - as many people have mentioned before, they are more relaxed than you think. We decided not to take anything with us, but lots of people were going through with mobiles etc. They just ask you to turn them off.
- Went to reception, they scanned our docs in, gave us a number and we went upstairs to the waiting room.
- It was obviously just starting as there was hardly anyone there and we were called to the first window in about 5 minutes.
- Nice young guy - he basically pulled apart all of my papers which our lawyer had prepared, took out the I-797, I156/7's and I-129s, plus the photo's. He scanned everything in, checked passports, got our fingerprints taken then gave me back all of the other paperwork. I had to pay the Fraud Detection fee ($500!!), so he gave me a form for that and the document for the posting back of our documents.
- I went to pay the $500, then we sat for what we expected would be a long wait. It wasn't(!), we were called to the next desk in about 10 minutes.
- We went up, and the guy spent some time looking at our paperwork, then asked the 'hard' questions. a) what does your company do, b) what is your job here, c) what will you do in the US. Then he asked my wife (which I think was more about filling time...) what her qualifications were and what she does as a job.
- He then asked me to go and pay for the L2 ($105 each) - I went over, paid this up, came back to him and he just said 'it's approved'!
- We went over to the mail service desk (no queues!), paid for express delivery (36 GBP) then left.

All in all, very painless in comparison to what we expected. I suspect part of it was due to our type of visa (blanket L1 petition) - I take it that we were lucky on many fronts!

Now we're hoping to get the passports on Friday....I'll keep you all posted!

Thanks to everyone for their updates as they've gone through this process - your write up's have helped us prepare accordingly!

chicagojlo

We were told it's very frowned upon to take small children!
(Also didn't have to pay any fraud detection fee).

But congratulations anyway!

mellybrown

what is the fraud detection fee???? We didnt pay it either!!

lucky you for the no SMS queue!!!

You can get excited now

TM_001

This is on the US embassy's website - this fee is specifically for L1 blanket visa's - I suppose it's required as I did not have an individual application go via USCIS so they need to check me 'out' real-time.

From the embassy's website:

From March 8, 2005 blanket L-1 visa applicants will be required to pay a $500.00 Fraud Prevention and Detection Fee. The fee will be paid to the Embassy's cashier on the day of the visa interview. Fees may be paid in cash - sterling or dollar equivalent, or by Credit Card - Visa, MasterCard, Diners Club, Discover or American Express. The Embassy does not accept any other credit or debit cards, or personal checks.

Ozzidoc

Great thread - really prepared me well foor my little adventure there today