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| Amsterdam, Netherlands |  Review on February 23, 2009: |
M+L
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
The interview itself was painless. Preparing everything and picking up the visa was painful.
Preparing documents was tedious because I've lived in the UK and Hong Kong as well, and I had to apply for certificates of no criminal records from countries. This was straigtforward for the UK (although expensive) and almost impossible for Hong Kong because a) it required me to get official fingerprinting done in Holland, which would normally be impossible but luckily a local police station did it for me (and I had to go back again because HK complained my fingerprints were not in English...) and b) the US Consulate provided me with outdated information rendering my application to be delayed.
This resulted in me missing the 1 document from HK for my scheduled interview at the Consulate, yet when I called to state that they couldn't possibly have received the HK police record yet, I was still told to come for the interview.
And yes, as I had predicted, at the interview I was not given my visa because of this missing document..  But I was told as soon as they did receive it from HK, I would be able to come in with my passport again for the visa (they did not want to hold on to my passport).
After the HK police record finally arrived, I was given another date to go to the Consulate. However, unbelievably I was expected to just drop off my passport and they could not give me the visa immediately. I had planned to travel to that week and fiercely objected to this procedure. Finally after a rather heated moment or two, I was given the compromise to sit there and wait a couple hours for them to finalize the visa into my passport.
My conclusion is that the Consulate had all good intentions but not the degree of professionalism or efficiency I would have expected.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #3991