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| London, United Kingdom |  Review on April 30, 2011: |
OnionsJester
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
Interview date: 27 Apr 2011.
Interview time: 08:30
I left the hotel, about 10 minutes away from the Embassy, at 07:40. I got to the embassy just before 08:00. It's an extremely easy building to spot - huge, iron fenced place, with armed guards standing around it. I followed the arrows around to the front door.
I queued up in the outside queue, and an employee came to look at my payment receipt and my appointment letter. Everything was in order, so I continued to wait. I was also told to remove any belts or jewellery and put them in my bag. At the front of the queue, another employee, this one looked more like a guard, also checked the same documents. He led me to another, shorter queue, for the security building.
Inside the security building, I put my bag (a regular sized rucksack/backpack which caused no problems) into a security box, and my pocket contents in another. I stepped through a metal detector, and had to show them the large metal item in my bag (it was my belt buckle.. which I was just told to put in the bag!). Another visitor had to sip his bottle of water, I guess to prove it was water.
I then followed a path around to the visa section, and once again showed my receipt and letter to another employee, this one seated at a desk. He put a sticker on my letter, with a number code on it (lucky I-906!) and told me to go and take a seat inside.
Inside the main hall, there are 25 service windows) 12 on one side and 13 on the other), a large seating area, and large television screens. Throughout my wait, sometimes the screens updated to show which window was currently serving which number, and sometimes they didn't. Thankfully each new number was shouted out over an audible broadcast system.
And so I begun my wait at about 08:00. Nobody seemed to mind I was early.
The numbers seemed to be split into three categories: I-numbers (like mine), N-numbers and E-numbers. I-numbers were the rarest. It was already on I-900 by the time I sat down, and took about an hour to get to I-906. N-numbers were the most common, going from N-050 to N-250 by the time I left. E-numbers were somewhere in betwee, but N-numbers were the most common by far.
After a long boring hour, I got called to window 14. A sassy middlee-aged black lady served me, and most of my 5 minutes with her was spent watching her fill in some forms. I did get to see my giant file, though, that was entertaining. So much paperwork.
She asked for my passport and my birth certificate, which she placed in a see through plastic folder for later use. She asked for my police certificate and photos too, as well as copies of the birth certificate, passport and police cert. She then asked for my afadavit of support. I had been prepared for this, or so I thought - my fiancée doesn't meet poverty, so not only did I get her form, her pay stub, her tax return and a letter from her employer, I also got all of the above from her more more well-off mother. However, on explaining this to the server, she told me the afadavit was just to "prove she still wanted to marry" me, and it "doesn't matter how much she makes". So she took my fiancée's file and left me with her mother's, which I still have.
Confused, but not wanting to raise any questions, I just said thanks and was told to go wait again, and was given a new number (although it was still I-906..).
I was given a courier return form to fill in while I waited, which needed info such as address and contact number, so take a pen to fill that in. The second wait wasn't as long, and within half an hour I was told to report to window 16.
Here I talked to a white American man in his 30s, who explained this part of the process. He too had my file, and looked through all the bits and pieces inside, while asking me the interview questions. The ones I got were:
How did you two meet? (I answered online on a videogame, and he told me I wasn't the only one to say that, by far.)
Which videogame did you meet on? (Team Fortress 2!)
Is she better at it than you? (Answer: yes  !)
What do you do for a living?
What does she do?
What are your plans for the wedding?
That was it, after that he started telling me what I'd need to do next, and that my application was approved. He told me about the brown package I'd be getting in the mail, and what was in it, and what I need to do when I get to the point of entry in the US.
I then took the courier form to the courier window, paid another £30 for delivery (!!!), and walked out of the embassy. You leave the same way you come in.
I was back at the hotel just after 10:00. The whole process only took around 2 hours!
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #7536