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|  Review on April 10, 2011: |
mishellibelli
Rating:  | Review Topic: General Review
This review is for the Embassy/Consulate in Lilongwe, Malawi. I think that I am one of the few people on this board to have gone through this embassy, so I had no information to compare our experience with. This embassy seemed to operate a little differently than many of the others I have read about. After our NOA2 petition was approved and sent to the embassy, we never received a 'Packet 3' in the post as they claimed they had sent out. After several weeks, my fiance had to go to the embassy in person to request it again and pick it up. The packet contained the forms to be filled out by him, the information needed from me, and the medical forms he needed to take with him to his doctors appointments. They wanted *everything* returned in person, and all at one time before scheduling an interview - all of the forms, affadavits of support and supporting documents, medicals, birth certificate, payment (made at the embassy), proof of relationship, etc. They then spent another few weeks reviewing this information. Once the review was complete, he was called for an interview less than a week later. At the interview he was asked 4 simple questions: 'When and where did you meet?', 'What does your fiance do for a living?', 'Do you love your fiance?' and 'What are you going to do in the US?'. He was not given a yes or no answer at that time, but he was called about a week later to bring his passport in so that they could issue the visa. In total, the process from the time they received our case to having the visa in hand was a little over 3 months.
Things to note at this consulate: They will not accept hospital birth certificates, only the official government birth certificates from the Registrar General in Blantyre. This can sometimes take a couple of weeks to acquire, so plan ahead if you want things to move more quickly. The medicals also took several weeks to complete due to the doctors schedules, so start on this early as well if you can. Everyone that I dealt with over the phone at this embassy was very friendly, though often seemed very disorganized and sometimes couldn't even locate our case. I had to call them fairly often to keep things progressing. They never contacted us or gave us information of their own accord, and every step of the way we had to prod them by calling or my fiance going in person. I think our case would have taken a LOT longer had we not checked in with them frequently. For this reason I grade this embassy as just average.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #7408