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| Amsterdam, Netherlands |  Review on July 15, 2015: |
MeloTo
Rating:  | Review Topic: Other Experience
First of all, thank you all so much for your reviews, it really helps reading what you can expect before going trough it yourself.
I am a DV2015 lottery winner (unfortunately that wasn't one of the options I could select in this post) and I had my interview on June 11th at the US consulate in Amsterdam.
I applied in October 2013 for the lottery, found out I won May 2014, got married October 2014, and my Case Number became current (ready for an interview) in June 2015. My initial interview date was on June 2nd, but when me and my husband arrived at the embassy his name wasn't on the list. Very strange since we submitted his documents online to KCC, and KCC told me both were processed. I was still let in and tried my hardest to get my husband in as well, without any luck. I was first in line, and when we came in I could immediately submit my documents at window 5. Then at window 6 I did a small interview, which was pretty laid back. Then the CO said that obviously they need to speak to my husband as well, so I was put onto Administrative Processing and had to email as soon as possible to reschedule. They would find out what happened to my husbands documents. I emailed them right away when I got home. At the end of the day I saw another person was added to my CEAC account. It became the weekend and I hadn't heard of them yet. I decided to log into my DS260, and saw a third line was added with my husbands name, but spelled incorrectly. So I emailed them I didn't get a response yet and found out they had my husbands name spelled incorrectly on file. They emailed me first thing on Monday the 8th telling me they now have my husbands file, they will correct the spelling, and we could come back June 11th.
On June 11th we were both let in, but we were the last ones in since our interview was at 2:30pm (instead of the usual 1:30pm). My husband could submit all his documents at window 5, and the wait began. Unfortunately there were some technical issues, so everyone that was approved needed to come back later because they couldn't verify their fingerprints. When we were finally up, my husbands fingersprints did go trough *yay*. My fingerprints were already taken last time I was there. We were interviewed separately and it took almost 45 minutes in total. But at the end the CO said: everything looks fine and our visa's were approved!!!! Happy happy day!
Because of the technical issues it could take a while for our passports to be returned. Almost a month later our CEAC status finally turned to issued (on July 2nd). We received a message they were shipped on July 7th, and received them July 8th. First it seemed only my passport and immigration package was shipped, but when we got it, both of our passports and packages where there. Unfortunately I noticed an error in my visa, it said SNG (single) while my husbands said MAR (married). I emailed the consulate right away. On friday morning July 10th they called me that I could drop off our passports to correct the mistake. They said the mistake wasn't a big deal, but I really don't want to risk it, since my husbands visa is coupled to mine (I am the winner, he is the derivative) his visa is not valid without mine... so if mine says single, that looks like a risk to me.
Luckily we live a 20 minute bike ride away from the consulate, so we could drop the visa's off that afternoon. On Monday morning July 13th we got an email we could pick up our passports again that afternoon. We arrived around 2pm (we could pick them up around 2:30pm) and we asked the guard about our visa's. There were more people there for pick up, but somehow they immediately knew we were the 'immigrant case' and he even knew my name right away. He went inside, and came back within a few minutes with our passports and immigration packages. We checked them out and they look perfect  .
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #17324