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| Barbados |  Review on April 30, 2024: |
MCAmyway
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
For the consulate itself, my fiancé arrived at 8:15am for his 8:30am appointment. Only the person being interviewed (my fiancé) was allowed in and he could only bring his documentation and nothing else, no phones or backpacks. He was made to wait in a waiting room with various other visa applicants. After about an hour, he was summoned and a consular officer reviewed his financial documents (the I-134 that I filled out) to make sure they were properly filled out. They didn't take much of the evidence we had to prove our financial resources in addition to the I-134. Then my fiancé waited another hour until his actual interview, where he was asked some standard questions like "how long have you and your fiancé known each other," "when do you plan to get married," "what will you do in the United States once you arrive," "what does your fiancé do for work," etc. The consular officer reviewed my fiancé's documents and gave back whatever she found unnecessary. The consular officer was pretty cordial, had a good conversation with my fiancé, and told my fiancé his K1 visa was tentatively approved and that he'd get a DHL tracking link soon to pick up his passport at the DHL office by the airport in Barbados.
This consulate does not do same-day visas although my fiancé's visa was sent out to DHL the day after his interview. Since it had been 2.5 business days since his visa was officially approved but with no news from DHL, my fiancé contacted DHL and then the US Consulate for assistance. He received a tracking number from DHL about an hour after reaching out to the consulate, and was able to pick up his passport with the visa at the DHL office as soon as he got the tracking number. The US Consulate really doesn't answer their phone but they are very responsive by email, and usually reply within about an hour during normal business hours.
I'll also add that my fiancé had to do a medical exam in Barbados two days before his visa interview. He set up an appointment at the US-Consulate-designated clinic for 7am. He went in and did a preliminary physical exam, and was given additional vaccines for Hepatitis A, the flu, Chicken Pox/Varicella and a Tetanus booster even though he was up-to-date on all of those vaccines by French standards (my fiancé has French nationality and lives in Guadeloupe, which is why he was sent to a consulate in the Caribbean for visa processing). There was a bit of waiting involved between the general exam and the tests and vaccines. He had to drive to a separate facility to get bloodwork and x-rays done and had to drive back to the lab to collect his x-rays and bloodwork results the next day. The total cost for this appointment was about $500USD/$1000 Barbados, and had to be paid all in cash. We weren't anticipating it being quite that much since we didn't think he'd have to get more vaccines, and my fiancé didn't have that much cash on him, so he paid the remainder of the cost the next day when he collected his x-ray and bloodwork test results.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #33150