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| Sydney, Australia |  Review on November 29, 2011: |
RainbowDucks
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
Interview date - 29th November 2011 at 9am.
Left home about 5am to drive to Sydney (I\'m in Newcastle so luckily not too far away). Had a great run with traffic and in carpark by 7am.
I parked at the Queen Victoria Building Carpark (Wilsons Parking), it\'s expensive but close to Consulate and I forgot to research parking before I left. It cost me $47 for 2-3 hours parking. javascript:emoticon(\' \')
The consulate is about 3 blocks (5-8 minutes walk) from the carpark. We came out of the QVB on George Street, and because we got there so early, we stopped at Maccas about a block up near King Street for coffee and breakfast.
Walked up to the MLC building and got there about 7.30am. Went inside from the corner entrance (where the escalators are) and checked out the elevators. The one that went to the 10th floor was around to the left as you walk in to that entrance. There are chairs inside and out in the courtyard that you can sit in while you wait.
Around 8am I thought we\'d go up early, in case there was a line at the security checkpoint. So we took the elevator up to the 10th floor, and walked around past the medical centre to the US Consulate Security room.
The guys there were really nice. Gave them our passports, they checked our names off the list for our interview. Then we had to put our bags, handbag, everything we had on the scanner so it could be checked. All electronic devices (phones, ipods etc) have to be take out of bags and put into a container to be scanned. He also asked me to take my boots off to go through the scanner, I think it was because there were metal buckles on them. My son had joggers on and he wasn\'t asked to remove his.
We went through the metal detector, picked up our stuff at the other end, and was then asked to remove anything we wished to take upstairs from the bags as we would have to carry it ourselves. You can\'t take your handbag or electronic devices upstairs with you at all. They advised me to take my wallet with me and anything else we thought we might need.
I had a bunch of cards and letters as evidence, and one of those cards was a \'musical\' card. Because of the electronic device inside the valentine\'s day card i was asked to remove it from the packet and leave it with my bags with them. They gave me a numbered ticket to pick up my things on our return, and asked us to sit in the front row of chairs and wait to be called to be taken up to the 59th floor to the consulate.
So we sat in the chairs, with our arms full of photo albums, phone records and other documentation. We waited about 3 minutes until the security guard came in and told us all (there were a few other people waiting to go up too) to get onto the elevator and off we went. That elevator is FAST! My ears popped!
Hopped out of the elevator and there was a sign directing us around to the right, so we went around there where there was a security station. We had to hand our passports over again to this security guard, they checked our names off their list, and then buzzed the door and told us to go through, go to the wooden box (it\'s a few feet infront of the door when you enter it) and take a numbered ticket for \"immigration\".
People were not joking when they said that door is heavy. I was surprised how heavy it was!
We went in, took a number (007 - felt so James Bond about that, lol) and sat down. Literally a couple a minutes later we were called to counter 1. We met a very lovely lady there who asked for our passports, our visa fee receipts, the DS-230 for my son and an original birth certificate and photocopy that we were asked to bring with our Packet 4 letter.
She then gave me back my original documents from Packet 3 submission, asked me when i was planning to leave for the USA, then asked us to take a seat just near her counter and said she would be right back. A few minutes later she returned, checked all our paperwork and previous submissions, and gave me back some more originals she\'d found in our paperwork. She took my fingerprints, and then my sons, and asked us to take a seat in the middle section and wait for our names to be called for our interview.
We took a seat in the middle section, and i checked out the three counters. There was a lady, an older man, and the younger guy I have seen mentioned in some of these reviews for Sydney.
5 minutes later we were called to counter 6 to speak to the younger guy for our interview. He was super nice!
I asked if my son needed to be there for the whole interview or if he needed to be spoken to separately, and he said no, that my son could just go and sit down and wait.
He asked both myself and my son to rescan our fingerprints on the little green box on the counter to confirm our identity.
He checked my paperwork, asked me if he was pronouncing my name correctly.
He asked the following questions:
When did you first meet your fiance?
Where did you meet?
Have you ever been the the USA?
Why did you decide to go to the US rather than him come here?
What does he do for a living?
You had your medical done in July, has anything changed healthwise since then that would disclude you from a visa?
Do you have written permission from your sons biological father for him to move to the USA?
Will your son be attending school in the USA? What school is he attending?
How many children do you have?
How many times have you been married?
Did those marriages end in divorce or death?
Has your fiance been married before?
Did that end in divorce or death?
What do you and your fiance have in common?
He tapped on the computer for a minute or so. And just when i was waiting for the hard questions to start, he smiled, handed me a piece of paper and said \"congratulations, your visa is approved\".
I didn\'t even get a chance to show any of our evidence, and he didn\'t ask to see it (even though he\'d seen the pile of it we had when we arrived at his counter).
He explained that I should receive my passports, visas and sealed envelope by mail within 7 days. He was very clear that I should NOT open the envelope that says \"do not open\" as this would need to be given to the immigration officers at my point of entry in the USA.
The interview part itself took less than 15 minutes.
We went back down the the 10th floor, collected our things from the security station there, and left.
I was back out on the street by 9.10am. All in all, just under an hour from arriving at the building to leaving it.
I called Gregory (my fiance) to let him know we\'d been approved, and he was surprised because we\'d gotten in so early and finished so quickly.
I am thankful that the process was so quick for us. Even the interviewer commented on how organized our 129F and packet 3 paperwork was. If there\'s any advice i would give anyone, it would be exactly that. Make it very easy for them to find anything they need quickly. And be confident and happy!
All in all, it was a very quick, positive and very pleasant experience for me. The people at the Sydney Consulate were extremely friendly and helpful. I was not stressed out at all during the interview process. 
(updated on November 29, 2011)
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #8785