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Ecuador US Consulate Reviews
Average Rating: 3.7
/ 5
117 Review(s)
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| Guayaquil, Ecuador |  Review #3901 on February 4, 2009: |
phoenix1
Rating: 
Click here if you found this review helpful | Review Topic: K1 Visa
We had our interview on Wednesday January 28. We called earlier in the month to set up an appointment but was told to call back because we had not completed our doctors appointment. With this done we called and was given a appointment for the interview two weeks from the call. We arrived at at 8am. It is very busy and many people are standing around as you walk in. My fiancee had her purse which caused some problems so I would not recommend taking anything but the files needed. We walked to a locked door were another guard let us in. We gave him cell phones and he gave us a ticket to retrieve them back. As we walked in we are directed to the second floor because the first was already full of people. There is a intercom system which is very hard to hear.. They called us at 10:30 am. I went with my fiancee every time she was called. We walked up to window and started giving her all the papers requested. Forms, sponsors, and proof. She commented on the amount of pictures which was 4 packets and was she was very nice. She asked my fiancee some basic question. Were she lived, did we have kids etc. After that we were directed to go back and sit and wait for the finger prints. We waited on the first floor since there was now room to sit. After the finger prints were done we were sent to a new room for the final interview. We waited for about 20 more minutes and were called to another window with a curtain. As we walked in a man greets us and asked if I was the future husband. I say Yes. He was very nice and asked us some general questions. He then asked if we wanted the interview in English or Spanish. My fiancee said English. His questions showed he was familiar with our case. He asked us about were we wanted to live. Asked me what I do for work. And made some jokes about how many pictures we had. The final interview took about 10 minutes and he said you are approved have a nice life. We were done by 12 noon. We walked to the DHL office a few blocks away and made arrangements to have the paperwork sent to us. I have to say that all the people who we came in contact with at the consulate were professional and seemed very pleasant and friendly. We had a lot of prove and I think it helped make the process easier. I was glad to be there for support and based on past experiences of other VJ members who did not have a spouse.
| | | Review #3715 on December 12, 2008: |
VivaBaños
Rating: 
Click here if you found this review helpful | Review Topic: IR-1/CR-1 Visa
Consulate-Guayaquil.
I followed the advice posted here and attended the interview in Guayaquil with my husband. We were approved, but in the process experienced some delays. All of the communication at the Consulate happened in Spanish. Here's what happened:
We waited 3 hours to be called to the first window. At this window, the Consulate folks told us that NVC had incorrectly approved us not using a joint-sponsor. The Consulate said that I needed to send the Consulate original documents from a joint-sponsor to be approved, that sometimes the NVC doesn't check every detail and it's the job of the Consulate to make sure all's in order at this last stage. The clerk helping us at this window was very patient and thorough, explaining each and every detail so that we could send correct and complete documents to not have a further delay. This was disheartening to hear!
Following the joint-sponsorship news, we had to wait to do fingerprints and then the interview. It's nerve wracking hearing other folks go up for interviews, because only little curtains divide the interviewees from those waiting to be interviewed. We had a very successful interview when it came to that stage in the day and they commented on the amount of evidence that we had. The man that interviewed us made several jokes and that helped ease our nerves somewhat and he ended up talking about Baños and the pictures of my family with my husband's family more than anything else. We were approved, pending the submission of joint-sponsorship papers. They gave us the DHL directions for mailing the paperwork with passport to the Consulate and a number to call to verify that the case had been received and was being processed.
Unfortunately, DHL Express Ecuador held up our case by a week at this point. The joint-sponsorship papers were in Ecuador within 3 days of the interview, but DHL delayed it's delivery by 8 days. I was fuming! After jumping through that hoop, we finally got the package sent off to the Consulate. As you can imagine I did not want to use DHL after their shoddy service the first time, but it's the only service the Ecuadorian Consulate uses. I called the Consulate 2 days after it arrived there and was informed that I should not call back before 2 weeks had passed. I didn't have to call back because within 8 days it was sent back to us. We knew that because of the DHL text messaging service (only to US numbers) that I signed up for online.
Yet again DHL Express Ecuador delayed us. The truck from Guayaquil arriving in Ambato was robbed. That is to say, the truck with my husband's passport, US visa, and the sealed envelope for presentation at the POE was stolen. DHL is so irresponsible they did not tell me when I called them over the course of two hours inquiring about the arrival of the package to their office--NOR did they call the Consulate to report the robbery. Upon learning about the robbery which was a full 2 hours after having spoken with them by phone that morning and many hours after the incident had occurred, I rang the Consulate to tell them. They of course had heard nothing of this and needed to confirm with DHL. And so began another tortuous process for us.
We had to travel around gathering all the necessary documents to submit a new DS-230, new I-864s and I-864a (luckily my joint sponsors had sent multiple copies all signed and ready to go), as well as secure a new Ecuadorian passport. (FYI: in Quito to get a passport there is a new requirement as of the last few months that you need the certified fingerprints that you can only get at the Registro Civil in the southern part of the city.) All the while we had to fight with DHL to get them to cover more than just the cost of replacing the visa ($400) and passport--but for them to pay for all of the legwork it takes to get the other documents in Ecuador. They were terrible, but upon mention that I mailed Día a Día (ecuadorian news outlet) an email about their mal servicio, they coughed up the very conservative estimate we'd originally proposed.
We got everything together in a week and in my steadfast refusal to ever use DHL again, we made our way back to the Consulate, exactly one month after the initial interview (more than 10 hours by bus). During the robbery fiasco I explained that I would not use DHL again and that I wanted to present the documents in person and have it printed the same day. They agreed and politely answered every phone call I made to the Consulate directly--we had our own representative after the robbery! They'd advised that I call the day before we were going to arrive and so we did. We arrived on a Friday when they don't normally schedule interviews so the place was eerily silent. One or two folks came in but it felt completely different than it had a month before being packed in like sardines. We presented the documents all over again and we had to pay the $400 again. They explained the headache we'd face at the POE because of the stolen documents and said that we could wait or return at 1:30 for the visa and other docs.
By 2:30-3 we were walking out of the door with the passport, visa, and sealed envelope to present at the POE. Oh yes, and upon starting the process with USCIS all the way through the POE my Senator's office has been involved and called the Consulate on our behalf when all of this craziness occurred with DHL. Could be a useful piece of advice for others in this process...
| | | Guayaquil, Ecuador | Review #3691 on December 8, 2008: |
Chamy and Gatita
Rating: 
· 1 person found this review helpful
Click here if you found this review helpful | Review Topic: K1 Visa
US Consulate, Guayaquil. Arrival 8:00, Appointment: 8:30, October 2008.
Outside: A guard asks to see (only to see) the DS-157, receipt from Banco de Guayaquil, the envelope from the Doctor. He asks who I am, looks at my fiance’s passport, and uses a security wand to clear us.
The guard escorts us to a locked door, and another guard opens it and takes our things. We empty our pockets and he tells us to leave our phones in boxes (similar to a wall of mailboxes) beside him. We pass through a metal detector and retrieve our documents from him. All the guards were very nice. The second one even smiled and answered our questions about where to go.
Inside the consulate is a waiting room on the left and windows and clerks on the right. This area is for tourist visas. A hallway going back leads to stairs, past that is another waiting room and more windows and clerks. This waiting area is for K and immigrant visas. Upstairs is another waiting room and bathrooms, and one more window for US Citizen services. They tell us we can wait anywhere for my fiance’s name to be called but we keep moving around due to boredom and restlessness, not being sure we could hear his name be called. They use a loudspeaker but there seemed to be more than one loudspeaker system, and one was hard to hear.
Upstairs has better chairs, more space, hardly any people, and bathrooms, but you can’t hear as well. Also upstairs is real TV, while downstairs are TVs with loops of Americans waving and saying welcome to America!
Around 10:30 my fiancé is called to a security window built into a door. We both approach. In Spanish, the man asks for all the forms, the doctor’s envelope, and Banco de Guayaquil receipt,. He is hard to understand because of the bullet-proof glass. We pass the forms under the glass in a metal tray, and then bend down to listen to what the man asked for next. Nothing is clear- what they want, what to expect, when or where. We stand there while the man undoes our original application and hands parts back to us, and integrates the new forms in. After this clerk ransacks our papers and enters a lot of information on his computer, he asks us for proof. One by one, we pass it through the window tray. We had arranged letters of support, records of trips (receipts, plane tickets), records of communications, and photos into report files with plastic sleeves. They have the kind of tabs you can feed three hole punched paper or sleeves into and close with your fingers. Anything like a 3-ring binder would not fit through the window tray. The clerk says, if you have more evidence, you can present it at your interview, but I think you have enough. Good sign! Finally he tells us to sit down again.
We stay in that room, the one to the rear on the first floor, for another hour. Another man calls us at 11:30. To the left of the first man, there are booths with curtains, and more clerks behind more bullet-proof glass. Adding to the bizarre atmosphere, looks like we are going to see the Wizard of Oz. The man behind the curtain is middle-aged, with salt and pepper hair and a goatee. His name badge is on a lanyard that sits too low to read. He speaks in English and Spanish, and this time there is a microphone to help us converse. He says to me in English, well, why are you moving so fast? You met only a little while ago. (10 months, actually.) He asks my fiancé about his occupation, and then notes that mine is very different. What is the relationship between the two [professions]? What do you have in common with [my fiance’s profession]? Do you have the same interests? Do you like kayaking? (We both kayak.) Again, to me, you like rivers? I immediately show him photos of me kayaking. Mostly he speaks to me in English. When were your trips here? When did you decide to get married? “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” he says in Spanish to my fiancé. Have you traveled to the US before, he asks twice, in different ways.
He often returns to the papers, entering things on his computer and then asks another question. “Well do you want to hear the good news or the bad news?” We look at each other, I am excited, “The good news!” He says, “well, I’ll give you the bad news first. We won’t issue this visa today. You have to go to DHL to arrange for it to be delivered.” We say thanks! And he explains, take this purple slip over there to DHL, 5-10 days for delivery, etc., etc. I ask if we could come back to the consulate and pick it up, because we have plane tickets? No, we don’t do that. We receive his visa in a few days.
Overall, the whole experience was pretty annoying, like a trip to the DMV. If I didn’t know about VisaJourney, we would not have passed this interview, because there was no way of knowing that my presence was key to passing. I am the type of person who would have wanted to be at the interview anyways, but they were explicit when I made the appointment that I would not be allowed at the interview. Obviously this is a huge pitfall, as many other couples have been denied at their first interview because the American was told not to show up, but the interviewer dismissed the Ecuadorian partner for not having the American there. Something has gone wrong at this consulate, and hopefully due to the efforts of couples who went before us, it will be cleared up soon. Take heed, be well prepared, and talk to others who went here for a K or CR visa. (Your friends who attempted to get other visas here or in Quito won’t be able to give you useful information, and may inadvertently steer you wrong, beware!) Good luck!
| | | Review #3690 on December 7, 2008: |
Chamy and Gatita
Rating:
· 1 person found this review helpful
Click here if you found this review helpful | Review Topic: K1 Visa
US Consulate, Guayaquil. Arrival 8:00, Appointment: 8:30, October 2008.
Outside: A guard asks to see (only to see) the DS-157, receipt from Banco de Guayaquil, the envelope from the Doctor. He asks who I am, looks at my fiance’s passport, and uses a security wand to clear us.
The guard escorts us to a locked door, and another guard opens it and takes our things. We empty our pockets and he tells us to leave our phones in boxes (similar to a wall of mailboxes) beside him. We pass through a metal detector and retrieve our documents from him. All the guards were very nice. The second one even smiled and answered our questions about where to go.
Inside the consulate is a waiting room on the left and windows and clerks on the right. This area is for tourist visas. A hallway going back leads to stairs, past that is another waiting room and more windows and clerks. This waiting area is for K and immigrant visas. Upstairs is another waiting room and bathrooms, and one more window for US Citizen services. They tell us we can wait anywhere for my fiance’s name to be called but we keep moving around due to boredom and restlessness, not being sure we could hear his name be called. They use a loudspeaker but there seemed to be more than one loudspeaker system, and one was hard to hear.
Upstairs has better chairs, more space, hardly any people, and bathrooms, but you can’t hear as well. Also upstairs is real TV, while downstairs are TVs with loops of Americans waving and saying welcome to America!
Around 10:30 my fiancé is called to a security window built into a door. We both approach. In Spanish, the man asks for all the forms, the doctor’s envelope, and Banco de Guayaquil receipt,. He is hard to understand because of the bullet-proof glass. We pass the forms under the glass in a metal tray, and then bend down to listen to what the man asked for next. Nothing is clear- what they want, what to expect, when or where. We stand there while the man undoes our original application and hands parts back to us, and integrates the new forms in. After this clerk ransacks our papers and enters a lot of information on his computer, he asks us for proof. One by one, we pass it through the window tray. We had arranged letters of support, records of trips (receipts, plane tickets), records of communications, and photos into report files with plastic sleeves. They have the kind of tabs you can feed three hole punched paper or sleeves into and close with your fingers. Anything like a 3-ring binder would not fit through the window tray. The clerk says, if you have more evidence, you can present it at your interview, but I think you have enough. Good sign! Finally he tells us to sit down again.
We stay in that room, the one to the rear on the first floor, for another hour. Another man calls us at 11:30. To the left of the first man, there are booths with curtains, and more clerks behind more bullet-proof glass. Adding to the bizarre atmosphere, looks like we are going to see the Wizard of Oz. The man behind the curtain is middle-aged, with salt and pepper hair and a goatee. His name badge is on a lanyard that sits too low to read. He speaks in English and Spanish, and this time there is a microphone to help us converse. He says to me in English, well, why are you moving so fast? You met only a little while ago. (10 months, actually.) He asks my fiancé about his occupation, and then notes that mine is very different. What is the relationship between the two [professions]? What do you have in common with [my fiance’s profession]? Do you have the same interests? Do you like kayaking? (We both kayak.) Again, to me, you like rivers? I immediately show him photos of me kayaking. Mostly he speaks to me in English. When were your trips here? When did you decide to get married? “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” he says in Spanish to my fiancé. Have you traveled to the US before, he asks twice, in different ways.
He often returns to the papers, entering things on his computer and then asks another question. “Well do you want to hear the good news or the bad news?” We look at each other, I am excited, “The good news!” He says, “well, I’ll give you the bad news first. We won’t issue this visa today. You have to go to DHL to arrange for it to be delivered.” We say thanks! And he explains, take this purple slip over there to DHL, 5-10 days for delivery, etc., etc. I ask if we could come back to the consulate and pick it up, because we have plane tickets? No, we don’t do that. We receive his visa in a few days.
Overall, the whole experience was pretty annoying, like a trip to the DMV. If I didn’t know about VisaJourney, we would not have passed this interview, because there was no way of knowing that my presence was key to passing. I am the type of person who would have wanted to be at the interview anyways, but they were explicit when I made the appointment that I would not be allowed at the interview. Obviously this is a huge pitfall, as many other couples have been denied at their first interview because the American was told not to show up, but the interviewer dismissed the Ecuadorian partner for not having the American there. Something has gone wrong at this consulate, and hopefully due to the efforts of couples who went before us, it will be cleared up soon. Take heed, be well prepared, and talk to others who went here for a K or CR visa. (Your friends who attempted to get other visas here or in Quito won’t be able to give you useful information, and may inadvertently steer you wrong, beware!) Good luck!
| | | Guayaquil, Ecuador | Review #3669 on December 4, 2008: |
Rating: 
Click here if you found this review helpful | Review Topic: K1 Visa
My fiance had his K-1 Visa interview in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in early September 2008. I was quite surprised by the relative ease of the interview and follow-up. The people attending us were friendly, cordial and professional, making both my fiance and I feel much more comfortable than expected. Two of the interviewers were really personable, asking us questions in a casual and friendly manner as opposed to interrogating us. I entered the interview feeling like we would immediately be put on the defensive but they had carefully reviewed the evidence of our relationship and were familiar with our case. From the point of entry to the point at which they told us we had been approved, it took three and a half hours. We were called to four windows in total; the first three windows were for interviews. My fiance was asked to read in English (cards that I had written him in English) and he was also asked to translate directly from my letters. Though he understands English, this was particularly stressful for him. They reviewed all of our documents thoroughly, especially the pictures and letters of supports we had sent in. They were very descriptive with my fiance after he was told that his Visa had been approved - his instructions were clear and easy to follow for both of us. Although lengthy, it was a positive interview and we walked away feeling good about it.
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