kevd321
Difficulty:  | Review Topic: Port of Entry Review
POE was very smooth and while I was slightly nervous on edge, the two border guards at the Blaine, WA, Peace Arch crossing were very personable.
When I pulled up to the border crossing in my car full of my personal belongings with my US fiancee in the passenger seat, I let the agent know I was entering on a K1 Visa and would also like to import my car. From there I was given a piece of paper and told to go park in secondary processing and to bring the slip of paper inside to and wait for an agent to call me up.
Once inside it felt very much like check-in at the airport. We arrived at the border at about 8:45pm and waiting about 15 minutes for the a few other people ahead of us in the queue.
Eventually I saw the same agent that I had initially spoken with in the car walking towards the desk with another agent.
At this point they called me up and let me know that one would be handling the processing of my K1 entrance while the other would be handling the importation of my car.
The agent assisting with the K1 processing asked me and my fiancee a few questions such as when we intended to get married and jokingly asked if we had opened the envelope from the consulate which is VERY clearly marked DO NOT OPEN.
All in all the processing of the K1 entrance took about 10 minutes including finger printing as well as a brief explanation of the rules regarding leaving the USA before receiving the green card as well as the AOS process.
The agent stamped my passport with date of entry and also made it clear that the Visa was a 1 time entry. He then stapled the I-94a departure record into my passport and let me know I was done with K1 processing and I would just have to wait a few moments for my car importation to be completed.
I had forgotten to bring in my car registration so I had to run out and grab that from the car which was no trouble. I did that while the border agent completed some paperwork which he had me verify for accuracy upon my return.
As my car is a 2002 Totota Echo that was manufactured in Japan I had to pay an import tax, which came to about $42.
To ensure the process was smooth I was also sure to call Toyota a few months in advance to have them email me an official letter of compliance as I found out from researching online in this forum as well as other sources.
Once I confirmed all the details on the importation document were accurate the agent walked us over to the Cashier where we paid the import tax on the car as well as a $10 processing fee for the visa and we were on our way.
The whole process took somewhere between 30-50 minutes.
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Port of Entry Member Review #16333
Entry Date: 2017-03-11