WaitForever

We can leave that to the criteria of the Secret Service when they investigate, not to what one message board poster decides what is perceived.

Too late for that. Plenty of other posters in OT already see perceived threats but I'd leave to the Secret Service, too.

Well, when you say something like "he's going to die on a hospital floor" out of sheer stupidity, it doesn't leave much to the imagination and puts yet another loonie pin on the map for them to check out. Then again, if plenty of others in OT see things, then they see things. No business of yours to massage the obvious.

Uh I think she meant "leaving babies to die on the hospital floor" consider the context....

Cool! I'm planning to be there around 7 a.m. as well so we'll probably get the chance to chat while waiting

Happy to report that Mary got approved. She said it was pretty fast and easy. She's driving back home now and I should have a review from her to post in the embassy reviews later tonight.

Next milestone: I fly up there and we drive to California. In November! Hope the weather holds out...

Obama: win at all costs. His ACORN is already breaking the law with voter and registration fraud, his supporters are throwing Molotov cocktails, spraying graffiti and vandalizing GOP offices. How much of a stretch is it to think he would plant people at McCain/Palin rallies to attempt to incite racism? Nothing is beyond this guys actions.

So, Mary got 4 passport pictures done and sent 3 of them in with the medical.

She reads the instructions now and it says 5 identical photos, not 4. She is freaking out and wondering what to do now...

I thought you guys could enlighten us on what you thought would work better. Those of you who have been through the interview and can let know what they are looking for.

What should she do:

1: Get 5 new identical photos done and bring those to the interview

2: Scan and print a 5th copy of that last photo and bring that and the 4th photo to the interview

Thanks...Carl

We are looking at several hotels nearby:

- Sheraton Hotel - only 1.3 K walk. Very nice rooms.

- Square Phillips - Has kitchens in all the rooms and is 4.5 stars. VERY close to the embassy.

- Fairmont Queen Elizabeth hotel - also nearby, but the website is down so I can't get a good description of it.

We're making sort of a nice mini vacation out of this. So if any of you have any recommendations on where to stay and what to do and see please let me know. It's been quite a while since I've been to Montreal, so I am not really familiar with it.

Mary's just booked at the La Tour. http://www.booking.com/hotel/ca/la-tour-ce...ontreal.en.html

Looks like its right there. Well, really close at least. Now to get the paperwork all lined up.

I need to get her a new letter of intent. Do I need to mail an original or do you think they will accept a scan and email and print?

So what do y'all think? Interview is October 14th...should I solidify the wedding date according to the interview date or wait till after the interview and I have the K1 in my hand to solidify the wedding date? We are aiming for Dec 27th but have family coming from Canada down to Texas for the wedding. It's tricky timing.

I am at home sick today but haven't felt this good in a looong time. That letter is so simple and yet made me smile so much. Hands were shaking while opening it. lol

CONGRATS! Mary and her son will see you there.

I say go for it. You still have time to change plans if anything does happen. We are looking to come down 11/5 and get married 11/18, but we are having a civil ceremony to start with and then a "realer" wedding in Vegas later. If you can call getting married by Elvis "real". Its the Blue Hawaii package, BTW

LOL. Is there such a thing as Murphy's Law in reverse? Here I was just about to post another post thanking you all for your support and talking about how frustrated we felt and BOOM - Mary checked the mail and there it was. Interview is set for October 14th. YeeeHAH!

So thank you all for your support - we can finally see ourselves moving forward!!!!

WOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

WE GOT IT!

Mary just checked the mail and the letter was there:

Postmarked: Sept 16th, 2008

Received: Sept 18th, 2008

Interview Date: Oct 14, 2008

I guess the prediction that they book and send mid month is accurate. And that Sept is a light month for interviews.

OK: So everyone who filed P3 after mid-July should start getting their letters around now. Please report your good news as it comes in!

Thanks...Carl

Hello Everyone. I'm now in the group waiting on the elusive interview letter from Montreal, lol. Glad to be on to this phase...but it seems from what I'm reading I'm in for almost a NOA2-like waiting period =(

I have a question for those of you that have already done your medicals...I thought that you had to have the interview letter with you when you go, but since some of you that are still waiting for one have already done your medicals, can I ask what they accepted in lieu of it?.

Thanks in advance =)

Welcome to the Club! Sorry to say that it looks like it might be a while. Better get comfy.

Just FYI, I did a quick sort of the average wait to interview dates of every consulate in the world (there are 132 of them which track interviews according to VJ) and guess what, Montreal comes in near dead last - around 121. We surely lucked out. And not in a good way.

Maybe we can talk about what you guys do in order to try and make the wait more bearable. This is driving us crazy and maybe sharing tips might help. We used to visit each other every other month or so but with this looming over us we dare not travel in case it comes through and we have to jet.

Planning is becoming impossible. Mary doesn't even have the will to pack in earnest until we know more. How can you plan when you have no idea when things will start happening?

Just and FYI, I had my interview the same day as The Whites. They had 3 days notice because they had an expedited interview. The consulate called them to discuss this. This was by no means standard operating procedure - Montreal was kind enough to get their interview scheduled at the earliest convenience for this couple - for which they seemed most grateful.

Wow. Some people get personal phone calls from the consulate and expedited interviews. The rest of us get brusque one line emails saying that we would have to wait at least another 6 months for an interview date, or none at all. Either you've got a bi-polar workforce over there or the rest of us are dealing with the wrong operators

I hope that when the letters finally do come, the interview won't be set to, like, next week. Cause then that will make it difficult to get everything (including fiancee's plane ticket, hotel booking, etc.) together. So I'm hoping that they still give atleast a month between letter and appointment.

It's been like that - but the last folks on VJ having a K1 interview (The Whites) got notified via email 3 days(!) before the interview. While we can scramble and make it in 3 days, others can't. I have no idea whats going on over there and its getting pretty frustrating. Its almost like they have just decided to stop having interviews, period. I hope not. I hope they haven't decided to stop doing them in Montreal and are in the process of moving them to some other consulate. Be just our luck.

If they don't get here this week, I'm losing hope that it will be October after all :(

Been away from the group for a while. While I don't begrudge all of your happinesses, its depressing for us to read sometimes.

It's been great that most people who filed in January are getting their interviews, but there are still a few of us stragglers who were fated with the slowest center and now the slowest consulate. To make matters worse, they sped up like crazy through the summer, sending interview letters out in 20-35 days. We are at 60+ days and counting. They seem to have ground to a complete halt. Actually, there are a number of us waiting at Montreal for all kinds of interviews, and they are trickling out extremely slowly, if at all. Some people are getting letters now for IR/CR-1 interviews LATE October. It's almost like they have decided to stop doing K1 interviews as of August 2008. There have been none in September, and considering its already middle of September, and none of us have seen any appointment letters for October yet, we are wondering if they have decided to close down the processing of K1s through Montreal or something, kind of like what they did with TSC etc. So we are incredibly frustrated and have no idea what is going on over there.

So to those of you who said that the NOA2 approval was the longest stretch, and after the NOA2 things would be really fast, you were lucky enough to not have to go through the Montreal consulate. For us it was 130 days from NOA1 to NOA2, and as of today we are at 102 days from NOA2, and I doubt that we will have an interview within the next 30 days. So for us, our second half may turn out to be longer than our first half.

Sorry to vent but its depressing. I saw that there are others out there as well in the same boat.

Burnsis (IR/CR-1) got an interview letter for an end of October interview date. ####### is up with Montreal? Where are OUR letters!?! GRRRRRRRRRR. This is driving us crazy over here.

Congrats! A number of us are waiting for Montreal interviews - may I ask what date yours is and when you got the appointment letter, and maybe when the letter was dated?

How does one plan a wedding for December when they don't even know if they will have access to the country before then? This is stressing us out. Family can't book time off work or schedule flights with only a couple weeks notice. Crazy.

Glad you liked it! Have to try and keep our spirits up somehow! Seems like they are stuck in concrete now, whereas in the summer there was a oil spill and appointment letters were flying outta there in 20-35 days! So, we wait. And Wait. We are trying to hit 11/18 for our wedding date, so cross fingers. I mean someone said on some other forum there is a backlog for interviews? What, in typical government style, they were being TOO efficient and making others look bad so they had to ratchet it back? Who knows?!

I know the flight feeling. Mary is in Toronto, and will probably drive or train to Montreal. But there's others who have to fly. And the Whites only had 3 days notice via email. Syphyre's letter got lost in the mail. Us Montrealers don't seem to be having much luck lately. Mary and I joke that the only reason they are in concrete now is because WE are on the list. Its our luck. Once we get on a list, it slows down. I'm planning to fly to Buffalo and she's going to pick me up in Ft. Erie before we drive down. It would be nice to have some notice so we can plan movers, flights etc.

ACCIDENT MIRES MONTREAL CONSULATE

Special To The Montreal Gazette: (Montreal, Quebec, Canada - Sep 15th, 2008) - A concrete truck crashed into the US consulate here in Montreal at 1155 rue St-Alexandré, spilling its contents. The amount of concrete, which was substantial, flooded all three floors of the consulate, but hardest hit was the Visa Processing Center, where hard working processors were actually frozen in place by the fast flowing and fast setting concrete. Operator 5, one of the hardest working processors, was actually walking towards the mail room with a huge stack of interview letters when she was literally frozen in place by the concrete. "It happened so quickly, we barely had time to react" she said, still clutching the stack of letters for visa applicants interviews in her hand. Workers will be toiling day and night to free the trapped consulate workers. "This is almost as bad as the molasses spill last year, and the Super Glue spill the year before" recounted Operator 4. While another consulate worker who was on a smoke break offered to take the letters out of Operator 5's hand and mail them, she demurred "Once I'm free, I'll mail them" she said. Such dedication! The Montreal Search and Rescue Team hopes to have the workers freed by the end of this week. And possibly have those letters in the mail by then.

...jk

Bump. Just making sure that if you do have an interview letter from Montreal for Sept/October that you a. report it here as soon as you get it and b. update your time line. Our sanity depends on it!

Mary has a son and recent court activity ruled that he was free to travel with her to California - does she still need a letter from his father, or is a certified copy of the court order enough?

CONGRATULATIONS! Understand its totally anecdotal but it sounds like there weren't a lot of others there for any interview. I'll need to go over other peoples accounts on other months to see if there is anything to my theory. Thanks for the update!

Hi Chululu: I've done an analysis of all of the K1 MTL time lines and have found that as of the middle of July, there have been no interviews booked, except for one in which that letter was lost. Based on the fact that over the last two years, there seem to be a lot fewer interviews in September than usual, I've come to the conclusion that any P3s returned after the middle of July will probably have an October interview date. It looks like what usually happens is that letters are sent out mid month for interviews in the next month. So normally, if you sent your p3 back early August you should have gotten an interview in September, but like a number of us, you probably missed the cutoff for August interviews.

BTW, if you fill out your time line, it might help us get a better handle on when you might see the letter.

Oops...sorry but my sheet is only accurate for K1s. You should probably be on Liz Legends sheet....

That's great! Congratulations! Looks like they are starting to book October up. The rest of us should start seeing letters arriving shortly. Thank God we are getting to the end of this part of the process - at least we will be with our SOs for the rest of it!

New theory: the medical folks say that they do things in batches. So this is my theory:They book interviews mid month for the next month. Therefore we missed the mid July cut off for interviews in August, and since they don't do many interviews in September, there was no mid-August cut off for September interviews. Therefore, this tells me that they are preparing - or have already prepared to send a batch of letters out this week for interviews starting in October. Cross fingers, but if I'm right, we all should be seeing a flood of letters next week for October interviews.

Cool. Hope you get your letter soon. BTW, in case anyone is interested, here is my spreadsheet with the analysis of timelines.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=ptQ...0ZHVPtuQDlFV_Vw

Bump. Still no appointment letter. Also, no one on VJ reports any interviews in October yet. Still only 3 interviews at MTL this month listed. 2 interviews in VAN as well. Maybe September is a quiet month all around.