Visa Approved in Bogota 03/22/12

[Jon&Clau 1]

Hello VJ community, Clau´s Visa was approved today at the US Embassy in Bogota!! Many thanks to everyone who contributed their experience here as the discussions really helped me with a smooth and quick experience. I think anyone who is about to have an interview in Bogota, it is wise to review the posts of those who recently had interviews because what many of us have found, the information the embassy dispenses tends to be inaccurate or inconsistent from one petition to the next. I was reading the recent post where someone this past week was asked for form DS230. I thought this topic was beaten to death here at this forum and it seemed it was a dead issue...not required for K type visas. I did not even bring this form to her interview, and it was not on the card they handed us for documents they wanted put together. But with that said, had I known it was possible they would ask for it, I would have brought it with me just in case, so my advice, when in doubt, bring it as your back-up just in case. So here is a recap of our experience.

I had scheduled Clau´s medical on a Wednesday with her interview the next day. I would have preferred to have had a couple days gap between the medical and interview, but I could only get both during the same week the week of March 19th unless I wanted to wait until April. I only bring this up in case some of you are concerned that this can be done and it can provided nothing unexpected with the medical comes up.

Lodging: I stayed at the Embassy Suites hotel. It´s a very nice hotel with hot water!! It is about a 30 minute taxi ride give or take a few minutes with traffic to the embassy.

Vaccinations: The US requires the following shots: MMR, TD, Varicela, and influenza. You can get the shots prior to the medical exam, but you must get them done within one week prior to the medical exam or they will tell you the shots are too old, which is BS. In Claudia´s case, she had a health plan called EPS in Colombia. Her plan allowed her to get the MMR and TD at no charge, but the Varicela and influenza was not included. When we called Dr. Dennis to find out the cost of the Varicela and influenza, and it was just slightly more than what she could get in Barranquilla, but we decided to just get all the shots done on the same day in Barranquilla. Just make sure you bring the shot records with you to the medical exam.

Photos required by the embassy: I might have glossed over this one, but there is a difference between passport photos and visa photos. The visa photos are larger, and this is what the embassy wants. When I arrived in Bogota, Clau showed me her photos and they were passport photos. She claims I told her to get passport photos, and she might be correct so just be aware there is a difference. I had her get another set of photos using the correct size for visas.

Lab Tests: We got there around 6:30am. There were about 5 other people ahead of us but Clau was out of there in about 1 hour. One added note…the petitioner is not allowed to wait in the waiting room and has to wait outside, so bring a coat if you decide to go with your fiancee´.

Medical Exam: Clau made her appointment with Dr. Dennis. She said he was very nice and felt comfortable with him. Our appointment was at 3:30pm, but we arrived there at 3:00pm, and were out of there about 5pm. The low point this trip was that it took almost an hour to get back to the hotel as the traffic was so bad at that hour.

Visa Interview: Clau´s interview was scheduled at 7:30am, but we got there at 7:00am. When we arrived, there was this huge line of people. If you are there for a K1 or K2 visa, walk towards the embassy and look for the sign that says line 3. We could not see the sign with the line number because line 4 was so long, so just walk towards the embassy and you will see line 3 has only a small number of people waiting.

Security took our cell phones while we were in the embassy, but no problem getting it back when we were finished. We were handed this laminated card with the documents they wanted and in the order they wanted it. They also wanted and kept the confirmation page from the on-line system when you scheduled the interview. As I said in the beginning of this post, the DS230 was not mentioned on the card, but I think you should bring it anyway, since a prior poster said he was asked for it as recently as 3/19/12. For her birth certificate, the card never said anything about turning over an English version, so I told Clau to just give them the Spanish version, and if they wanted the English version, we had it ready. They never asked for the English version, but we did include her baptismal certificate. They also never asked for any proof of our relationship which I also had ready. The questions they asked were very general, where and when did you meet, where does he work, where will you get married in the US. They never asked me a single question, and only put me on the phone to remind me to make sure the on-line account specified the location of where the visa should get delivered to, and it would take two weeks for delivery. This entire event took 2 hours.

So that´s my report. My last piece of advice to anyone about to do this is when in doubt of what to bring, bring it anyway because it´s not worth having to make a second trip back.

Best wishes to all,

Jon & Clau

[Leatherneck 693]

Congratulations!

[andrea y arturo 14]

Congrats!

[patient2010 93]

congrats!

[stefan y karen 23]

Very nice summary. CONGRATULATIONS!

[OZ62 17]

Congratulations!!! Felicitaciones!! Los Felicitos!!! Que Tenga Muy Buena Suerte!!!

[D N Medellin COL 75]

Congrats and thank you for posting as this paves the way for people like me and my fiancee whowill be scheduling our interview date next week.

Thanks again!

[C-ma'am 684]

Congratulations!!!

[Jon&Clau 1]

Congrats and thank you for posting as this paves the way for people like me and my fiancee whowill be scheduling our interview date next week.

Thanks again!

Sure thing D N Medellin...I just got back from my trip so send me an eMail if there is anything I can help you with!!

Jon&Clau