Consulate Review: Montreal, Canada
Review Topic: IR-1/CR-1 Visa
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| Event |
Description |
| Review Date : |
February 1, 2019 |
| Embassy Review : |
I arrived at the US Consulate in Montreal on January 28th at 8:35 am (25 minutes before my 9 am appointment).
There was no one else waiting outside the Consulate when I arrived and the guard opened the door to let me in almost immediately. It was -27C with the wind chill so it was nice that I didn’t have to wait in the cold.
The guard told me I could talk to a woman standing at a nearby podium. I gave the Podium Lady my appointment letter and my passport. She put a sticker on the back of my passport and gave me a piece of paper that indicated what documents I should have (and in what order). The paper she gave me indicated that I’d be 16th in line.
I waited my turn to go through Security, which was uneventful. I only had my documents and my outerwear. I had stayed at a nearby hotel (Courtyard Marriott – Downtown Montreal) and had left my luggage at the hotel.
After passing through Security, I took a flight of stairs and arrived at an empty room that contain several unoccupied chairs, a photo booth (for passport pictures) and an elevator. I took the elevator to the 19th floor and when the doors opened, I saw a large room where there were more people waiting for their turn to be processed for visas and passports.
Consulate officials called people, in turn, via an intercom.
My number was called at 9:40 am. It took about 10 minutes to talk to the person who was responsible for collecting and reviewing my documents. I was asked to identify my current address in Canada and my intended address in the US. I was also asked to provide my original birth certificate, police record, marriage license, passport pictures, medical records and my husband’s divorce papers. I also brought my original Affidavit of Support and my husband’s tax returns, but the consular official didn’t spend much time looking at those documents after hearing that they were the same documents that had been submitted online. I was also asked to provide my fingerprints on a glass device that looked like a miniature photocopier machine.
After I submitted the records, I waited an hour for the interview. The interviewer told me about US laws about domestic abuse, asked me to confirm my current Canadian address and intended (US) address and asked me to sign my visa application electronically (i.e. with my fingerprints). I wasn’t asked to provide evidence of my relationship with my husband, who I had married in September 2017.
Afterwards, the interviewer gave me a couple of sheets of papers: One document explained the process for picking up my visa and the other document (“Welcome to the United States of Americaâ€) covered issues such as social security and permanent resident cards. The interviewer told me my background information is being stored electronically and that when I enter the US, all I need to do is present my passport containing my immigrant visa… and to be prepared to be taken aside for secondary processing when I get to the Point of Entry. He also suggested that I set aside at least an hour for this activity.
He congratulated me and that it was it. I was out of the Consulate Office at 11 am.
All in all, it was a positive experience. Every official I dealt with at the Consulate Office was polite and professional. The only problem I had was that I found it somewhat difficult to hear the announcements over the (muffled?) intercom system. Moving to a part of the room that was closer to the ceiling speakers was an easy fix for that problem.
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| Rating : |
Very Good |
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