Superduper

Hi,

My wife and I have to attend an interview at the embassy in London tomorrow morning, after receiving O1 approval. I was told that in total it was 2-3 hours long at the embassy. What kind of questions should I expect in this interview? They're not going to give me a body cavity search are they? Even though their website says its a 6 week wait, I could pick an appointment any day of the week! Is that because its an O1? Do they reserve slots for different visa types?

Lilyella

Hello -- I have no idea why that is, my impression was that they prioritise interviews for student and tourist visas over job visas, which I thought all got the same wait time. Weird...

If you get a chance, will you come back tomorrow and let us know what the interview was like? I'd be very interested what kind of questions they ask for an O1. Thanks!

Ray

Yes !! that is totally normal ..... There will be no searches ....
just normal questions

2 or 3 hours waiting for a 4 minute interview ....

Superduper

Good stuff, thanks

It is at 8am so I wonder if there'll be that much waiting around. Time to double-check and triple check the paperwork..!

Superduper

Lilyella

This all went fine for us today. It took about 25 minutes to get into the embassy, although this gets progressively longer throughout the day apparently. Quite a few people were turned back for not having all the correct documents, needless to say this is quite important to double-check! Some others got turned away for having backpacks, gutted.

We got in at about 8:11 eventually, and got assigned a number (that appeared to increment with each new visitor). There are actually two different booths that you visit.

The first booth had an english person in who took our documents (I-797B, passports, DS-156 for my wife and I, and a DS-157 for me, MRV receipts). He checked over all the information and took our fingerprints, the four fingers on each hand seperately, and two thumbs together. He then said our papers were in order, kept all the paperwork and gave us another ticket (with the same number as we originally had) to go to our second booth. He seemd quite a jovial chap, I was expecting much harsher treatment. I calculated at that stage that they were seeing on average one person a minute (I think they had about 12 booths open for that initial phase).

I asked him about the timing of the appointment, and whether there are seperate slots for different types of visa. He told me that they reserve slots in the morning for O1s and various other professional visa types such as journalists, and they do get priority treatment (), so the waiting time isn't neccesarily what it says on the website.

It was about a 15 minute wait for the next booth, to visit the immigration official. She took our prints again and asked a couple of questions, such as where I'll be working and what I'll be doing. With that, she said that our visas had been approved, and that we should take our blue slip (that the first man had given us) to the "Secure Mail Services" desk. We paid our monies for the delivery, and we were out of there by 9! Good stuff

Lilyella, are you/have you applied for an O1 yet? Are you waiting for approval or your visa interview?

Lilyella

Thanks so much for letting me know everything! And congratulations.

I haven't submitted an O1 application yet, but I'm intending to in the next couple of months. I was expecting to have to wait another month for an interview if I was lucky enough to get an approval, so good to know that's not the case. And it's reassuring to hear that the interview itself is very routine.

MsElui

wer are off for our L1 interview in October - so its nice to hear how the process works.