K-1 Interview question

[JVG 31]

1 hour ago, EllisAndRenz said:

We finally have NOA2 ...  the weight of the world has been lifted off of our shoulders.  

 

Now preparing for the next steps.  I have a question.

 

For the K-1 interview.  If it happens i the expected timeframe, then it happens during a peak part of a work project I am a director on making it all but impossible to break away without impacting my standing with my employer.   So, my question is as follows:

 

- How much does it help if I join my lovely bride-to-be at the interview or, conversely, how much does it hurt our chances if I am not there?

 

(There is also the financial aspect of flying there for the interview, to fly home and then to fly there again to go get her.  She has zero sense of direction and no way could she do that trip by herself.  She'll end up lost in Hong Kong or some such place)

 

 

I did not go to the interview because of work as well. My fiancé did fine without me and knew that I was supporting her 10000 miles away.  

[Jay Jones 261]

Where does she live?  If she lives near Manila she should have no problem getting to the Embassy and handling the interview herself, then you can save your money for when you come and her get for the permanent move.  You might want to consider having her stay overnight at one of the local hotels the evening before the interview and then she can leave her electronics in the room or hotel safe.  I live here in the Philippines with my fiance for over 3 years now and I plan to go to the interview with her.  There are some documents I need to show when I'm at the interview.

[EllisAndRenz 193]

49 minutes ago, Jay Jones said:

Where does she live?  If she lives near Manila she should have no problem getting to the Embassy and handling the interview herself, then you can save your money for when you come and her get for the permanent move.  You might want to consider having her stay overnight at one of the local hotels the evening before the interview and then she can leave her electronics in the room or hotel safe.  I live here in the Philippines with my fiance for over 3 years now and I plan to go to the interview with her.  There are some documents I need to show when I'm at the interview.

She lives in Manila.  

I think we've got it all worked out .... thank you to yourself and everyone here.   She's going to do the interview by herself.  I'll book a flight as soon as she has her Visa.

[Randyandyuni 2,682]

even if she lives in Manila consider getting her a hotel close to the embassy, it made my wife much more relaxed and much less to do to prepare. Her hotel was maybe a 5 minute walk away from the embassy it allows her to get there on time without worrying about traffic, eating etc .. she was much more relaxed for her interview 

[EllisAndRenz 193]

2 minutes ago, Randyandyuni said:

even if she lives in Manila consider getting her a hotel close to the embassy, it made my wife much more relaxed and much less to do to prepare. Her hotel was maybe a 5 minute walk away from the embassy it allows her to get there on time without worrying about traffic, eating etc .. she was much more relaxed for her interview 

That is actually a good idea.  I'm going to do that.  She will be happy.  

[lolhahaha 6]

No electronics allowed but they weren't taking peoples watches off of them. I didn't wear one but just about everyone else had one on. If I had thought about it I would have wore mine and recorded my fiances interview but my fiance didn't want me to even wear a watch lol.

 

I heard one interviewer tell the US Citizen Fiance to go sit down while he was interviewing his fiance. He wasn't even allowed to be there from the start of the interview. He said that if he needed to ask him a question he'd call him back over. Apparently every interviewer does it differently so you can't know what to expect until you walk up.

 

There are about 6-7 interviewers. One of them sounded like a US Marine drill SGT female, loud, hardcore asking questions, I could imagine the people in her line were probably pissing themselves considering the way people act when I am direct about something here in the Philippines lol. I was really hoping that my fiance didn't get in her line. I could hear everything she said to everyone who went into her line.

 

There was another female interviewer who was asking each person a lot of questions, not K1 interviews, but was very nice about it and even talking to their kids and being really nice while taking like 10-15 minutes for the interview but the ones I heard with her were different visa types. My fiance was glad we didn't get the females.

 

Then there were 3-4 men interviewers. The one my fiance got took her paper confirmation, then went to get her folder. When he came back he said basically OOPS I have to close my window and here go to the next window. I was thinking maybe something was wrong but I guess the guy just really needed to take his break.

 

The interview was short and simple. The male interviewer told me that I could stay there but the questions were for my fiance but he might also ask me something. He was very easy to deal with. He just asked her for her full name, birthdate, where did we meet, how long I had been in the Philippines and how many times had I visited. He asked her when did we get engaged, he was looking at our pictures. My fiance scanned 5-6 pictures together onto a plain paper copy from our printer and made 4-5 pages with different pictures. So he was able to see about 20+ pictures of us together and with her family. She wanted to bring our photo albums but that works just as well and actually that is what the GCP people looked at too. He also was asking about my divorce and wanted to see the paper but he already had it there in our folder. Nothing difficult. He said that she is approved. He also told us to call that number, which is useless. We already have our pickup place entered on the website. He said it'll take 2-4 weeks though. It better be 2 or less, not 4 lol.

 

The interviewer never asked for an I134. I was worried because I was filling out the I134 a few days earlier in our Hotel and put it somewhere but when we checked out to move to a different hotel I couldn't find it. So when we went in the Prescreener guy actually asked for it, which surprised me, and I told him I didn't have one because I lost it (my dog ate it lol) but here are all my W-2s from last year, and I also had end of year pay stubs for each of the past 3 years showing my weekly pay and total earnings for the year. Clearly I had the requirements covered even without working at all due to my military retired pay. I had a bank statement as well. He didn't want the bank statement or the end of year pay just the W2s. The interviewer never asked for anything more than he already had. I don't even know if he looked at any of that pay info.

 

We had the 830 appt. It doesn't seem to matter what time your appt is though. We showed up at 730, they were already letting the 830 people in and we were at the end of a 60 person line. I didn't want to show up too early and have to wait 2 extra hours but if we had shown up 30 minutes earlier we would have been like #20-30 in fi that line instead of at the end of it. We were out of there by 1015 anyway. Waited in line after prescreening for about 1 to 1.5 hours.

 

My fiance did the GCP yesterday and she said it was nothing like the horror stories we've been hearing. Either those people are gone or they don't act like that anymore.

[lolhahaha 6]

One more thing we found out was about the NBI Police Clearance. Since we can hear all of the other interviews going on, one person had a police clearance that says "NO CRIMINAL RECORD" and to me that sounds fine. He's not a criminal. That's what we want, right? Well the interviewer didn't like it. It's supposed to say "NO RECORD ON FILE". This is what my fiances paper says.

 

The interviewer of the guy started asking all kind of question like do you have traffic tickets or something else? Well despite him answering NO to all of that the interviewer told him that he had to submit a new Police clearance with all of the info or "NO RECORD ON FILE".