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| Amsterdam, Netherlands |  Review on February 21, 2011: |
Jen and Geert
Rating:  | Review Topic: IR-1/CR-1 Visa
We got there around 2 hours early and went to a bistro a block over to rest a bit since it was cold and raining outside, we got some soup for lunch and talked a bit about the paperwork and feeling a little nervous, but we were both pretty confident and reassuring each other that we'd do fine.
We left the restaurant about 20 min before the 1:30 interview time and waited at the gate, there were already several people there also waiting for security to let us in, they came exactly at 1:30 to open the gate. The security let those without electronic devices go first in line (me and Geert already knew about this and left everything electronic behind except our passports and paperwork.) We had an umbrella which they put aside for us to pick up later.
When we walked inside we also had to walk through a metal detector before getting into the office, but got through it quickly enough. When we finally got inside they told us to go to window number 6, we waited in line a few people were ahead of us. When we got to the window there was a nice lady who we handed Geerts passport and interview letter over to. She also gave us our original documents and medical exam stuff (it included the x-ray on CD also), she was looking at our paper work that was sent by NVC saying that it looked like everything was in order (complete) we tried to hand her 2 more passport photos, but she said they had enough =). She also had Geert sign the II part of the DS230 sworn statement and took his fingerprints on the bio-scan. After that she told us to go sit down and wait till we were called by the consular officer.
We waited awhile it was a bit too warm in the consulate so we actually sat by the door to catch a breeze with people coming in, they had a beverage machine too so we got some water. I think we waited a little over an hour when they finally called Geert's last name we got up together and walked up to the window number 7. Our consular officer swore us both in to conduct the interview, and surprisingly only asked a small amount of questions we even saw a red stamp of pre-approval on the large stack of paper work sent from NVC (I think that was the first good sign). Some of the questions asked was
Do you have any children?
Have either of you ever been arrested?
Where did you meet? (he asked a bit more in detail about this I offered to show him our game accounts that we played but he said no that was fine, we told him the name of the game Ragnarok Online and that it was a multi-player game etc, that we had been both playing the game for several years)
He asked my husbands last visit to the U.S.?
These were pretty much the main questions he asked and we saw him flipping quickly through the paperwork (probably just to reaffirm everything, I could even see copies of bonafides in the stack of papers.)
We didn't have to grab a single paper from all the stuff we brought which was fine with me it was mostly just copies of everything and some new bonafides in case something had been lost, so I guess we gave enough evidence from front loading the petition
which I feel good about, we were there around 3 hours in total I think.
As long as you come prepared and knowing what to expect it should be a positive experience.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #7188