We went down for our interview today, myself my USC husband of almost 9 years and my son (his adopted son).
I was so stressed last night after reading how someone had been at the Embassy for 5 hours. We were told to leave 2 to 3 hours, and so I'd booked our train back 4 hours after our appointment time. To change our train ticket was going to cost some ridiculous amount of money too!
Also I had read USC's weren't being let in, so I was stressing about that too.
Anyway, we got up at 4.30am to catch our train down to London, we arrived at the Embassy half an hour before our time, and with no line outside the embassy all three of us were allowed right in. We were given a ticket and asked to wait for our number to be called.
An hour and a half later our ticket was called. The three of us went to our window, paid the fee. Then the woman started asking for the documents. She asked for our US address...we don't have one! We live in the UK. We had send a cover letter with our I-130 giving Dave's Aunt's address in case they NEEDED one. The woman at the desk said it wasn't there, and although we had a bag full of extra paper work "just in case" the one thing we didn't have was my address book. So PANIC number one! Thankfully she looked again and found it. Phew! Then back to the documents she asked for my son's birth certificate, long form. OK I have it. Long story but my son's biological father is not named on the birth certificate. So she halted the process again to say it HAD to have his name on. Er No it doesn't, his father has never had anything to do with him. And gave up any rights he did have when my husband adopted him!! She asked for the adoption certificate and then she went off to check it out. Eventually returning and saying that was OK. Phew - heart failure round two over!!
There were a couple of hiccups with the affidavit of support form, but we had lots of back up paper work which served it's purpose well. She told us to take a seat and we'd be called back for another interview. Time was getting on, and I asked how long she thought that would take, "Within the hour". Looking at my watch I realised that we would be pushing it for time if we had to wait an hour and then the interview took a long time.
About 15 minutes later we were called back for our interview. A really nice woman said she had some questions about my son and his father, and that was fine we could answer all of them. She said we'd filed the wrong form for him, as he's adopted by the USC and we had to have another form. Thankfully we hadn't been sure which one we needed so Dave had completed both. Phew!! I was expecting the "Where did you meet?" type questions but we got none, maybe being married 9 years means we don't have to answer stuff like that I don't know. She asked when we hoped to go over and I think that was about it. She told us we were approved and that we could go and pay for the mailing fee's - which by the way have gone up!!
That done we had time for a quick bite to eat before we got our train back. Now we just have to wait for our Visa's to arrive.
