cautiousjon

Hi,

I visited the US Embassy in London today in order to apply for an L1A visa for an upcoming relocation to sunny California. I was pleasantly surprised by the whole experience. It only took me about 1.5 hours between queueing outside the embassy to walking away with the knowledge that the visa application had been successful.

I was expecting there to be a huge amount of security everywhere, multiple hour long waiting times and very overbearing immigration officers. My experience was anything but that. I arrived at 8:10am (for an 8:30am appointment) and was welcomed into the embassy by a friendly security officer at about 8:50am. My name was called to one of the counters for the paperwork checks by about 9:15am and I had an Irish dude who was quite straight to the point, but not impolite in the slightest. After I paid the $500 'anti-fraud fee' to a smiling cashier, I only had to wait for another 20 minutes before my name was called for the interview by about 9:40am. The interview was conducted by a relatively cheerful immigration officer who asked me all of three questions, I think, before informing me that the visa was going to be granted.

I'm sure that part of the ease of my experience was because my company has a blanket L1 visa petition (30,000 strong global workforce, $25+ billion revenue) and fortunately pays for (likely incredibly expensive) specialist corporate immigration lawyers that handle all the necessary paperwork other than the DS-160.

Now that I have my visa, I can really get stuck into the mountain of things that I have to do before I can relocate. I'm really looking forward to moving! I'll no doubt be asking some questions on the boards in the days to come.


Jon

SecondRow

Congratulations, I had a similarly smooth experience on Tuesday and mine was for an individual L1 application

SmallShinyAnt

Likewise on the 30th, very smooth and uneventful. Now if i can just stop myself from continuously checking the processing status i shall be much happier.

cautiousjon

Hmm. I just checked the CEAC website and my application status is 'Administrative Processing'. Does this just mean that the application is being processed / visa printed, etc, or do I have something more to worry about (and inform my company's lawyers about)?

Thanks,
Jon

ian-mstm

Yes.

Ian

cautiousjon

Awesome, thanks.

SmallShinyAnt

My one changed after 6 days to Issued and then a few(2/3) days later I get an email from Courier, for it to arrive tomorrow(Friday).

md95065

The quick "three question" interview that is over in less than a minute is actually quite common but, of course, they don't all go as well as yours did ...

SecondRow

I had my interview on Tuesday 7th and it's been set to issued today (Friday 10th). I'm hoping it is delivered by Monday but I guess we shall see.

SecondRow

So it's now with DX and arriving Monday.

October 7th: Interview
October 10th: Visa status = Issued and email received with tracking
October 13th: Visa & Passport delivered.
October 14th: Flying to MIA

Wibblypig

I was there too on Tuesday and received my passport back today. So much for it being sent by secure courier, it was just posted through the letter box.

bewildering

Your case was straightforward. My interview in London in 2004 was for the J1, and similar to yourself the whole experience was easy. The immigration person was more curious about my scientific research than the application.

I think it may be a relief for the officials to deal with easy cases. I remember my Green card marriage interviewer seemed visibly happy upon seeing my wife and myself. She told us in very general terms that her previous case had not been much fun.

cautiousjon

My visa case status changed to 'Issued' on 10th but I haven't received an email with the delivery details yet. Can I contact the embassy to find this information out or should I just 'trust the system'?

N.B. I paid £18 to have my passport delivered to my company's office address.

EDIT: Apologies. I just received the email from the CSC Visa Appointment and Information Service Team saying that my passport will be delivered tomorrow. Woop!

Chapmandan

Likewise, We were there yesterday and had a similar experience and were in and out in about 2hrs. Things of note:
Security was fine with small bags, mobiles and kindles - i even made a call whilst waiting.
Both anti fraud fee and reciprocity fees were paid by card (WTF is the anti fraud fee anyway?!)
Every person we spoke to was totally friendly and helpful.
My huge pile of paper submission in triplicate was useful only for about 5 bits of paper that the guy took out apparently! I guess they must have an electronic copy submitted by our attorneys in the US.
We'd travelled about 10 days before the appointment on ESTA - no worries. Didn't even come up.

That's it - we had a verbal approval of my L1-B (and derivative L2) and are waiting on the passports to come back