Consulate Review: Montreal, Canada
Review Topic: IR-1/CR-1 Visa
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| Event |
Description |
| Review Date : |
June 3, 2014 |
| Embassy Review : |
Here's a general review of our interview experience.
We stayed at the Day's Inn Downtown Montreal about a mile down the road from the consulate. Nice hotel, convenient location (tip: Go get a pizza from Amellio's. Best pizza we've ever had. It's about a mile from the hotel we stayed at). We got up around 5:30am, got ready, had coffee and walked down to the consulate.
We arrived around 7:00am. There were about a half dozen people standing out front (including VJ member Elaine; hanging with her made the whole morning a blast), all lined up to the right of the door. When the guards opened the gate at 7:30, he had us line up to the left of the door, as was laid out in Saylin's walkthrough. (Another tip: I carried all my paperwork, contained in an organizer, in an otherwise empty satchel. The guard had me take the paperwork out of my satchel and leave it behind. I found this odd, as another woman had a purse larger than my bag, and full of stuff, but she was allowed to bring hers in. Anyway, no biggie, but don't take ANYTHING with you if it is not absolutely necessary for the interview; had Elaine and her friend not been there to hang onto my bag, we'd have had to walk it back to the hotel.) We were about the 4th people let into the consulate. We were searched, scanned, and so on, then directed to the door leading down to the basement to wait for the elevator to the 19th floor.
At 8:00, a guard came into the waiting room and removed the line blocking the elevator doors, and told us the elevator would be down shortly, and we could line up. We boarded the elevator and stood at the back, facing the back wall. When the doors opened at the 19th foor, we were the second people out, were handed the number '2' from the receptionist, and asked to have a seat. At around 8:20, our number was called to window 2 on the far left side of the room. General observation: We noticed numbers were being called out of order to the initial windows - we figured out that this was only because the two windows do the initial document reviews/fingerprinting - windows 1 and 2 - were only taking odd or even numbers, whichever corresponded to theirs (window 1 took odds, 2 took evens). So we went up to the window, handed the woman (who was so sick she could barely talk, but a total sweetheart) the documents she asked for; the AOS package original documents, and the police certificates/court records, passport photos and my passport. Oddly enough, she didn't request my birth certificate or our marriage certificate. She had us verify the information she had on file, fingerprinted me, handed me a pamphlet on domestic abuse and had us take a seat.
About 10-15 minutes later, we were called to window 7 for our interview. The gentleman conducting our interview was very friendly and happy - joking around with us, even. He was going through our documents and asked why he didn't have my birth certificate. I told him it wasn't requested at the first window and handed it to him. He didn't ask for the marriage certificate either. He shuffled through our paperwork some more, checked a bunch of stuff off and asked us a few questions: my parents names, my occupation, my intended occupation in America, how we met, where/when we first met, how long after we first met did we start dating, when we were married, and if we had any children. He asked Blair (my beautiful American wife) her occupation, residence and phone number. After a little more shuffling of paperwork, he said "Congratulations, I am approving your visa" and then a bunch of other stuff I don't remember. He handed us the infamous "Welcome to the United States of America" paper and told me the next steps I would have to take; Loomis, border crossing, etc.
It was really a fantastic experience; no nerves, anxiety, stress or anything. It was actually fun (thanks again for the laughs and bag storage Elaine!), and we were out of there by about 8:50am. |
| Rating : |
Very Good |
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ver 5.0