The Package...

...is a dark blue plastic bag, about A3 size, with one of the stickers from my interview letter stuck in the top right-hand corner. Below it, an address sticker (including my contact phone number).

Okay, I'm opening it...

Contents:

• Passport (a cursory glance shows the big "Welcome" sticker (from the set stuck to my interview letter) on the front of it)
• "Important Information" Letter (it's the same one that I received from the first (British) guy at the Embassy)
  
• Large Envelope (With a sheet of paper stapled to the back of it)

Okay, now we look a little closer.

The passport has something that looks a lot like this in it:

Okay, mine has a few differences, especially the fact that I'm a man (with a beard) but this is a (sufficiently blurry) example from the interwebs to be a decent illustration.

It's a (very impressive and official-looking) sticker a few pages in and it's, technically, only half of my visa.

The other half is the large envelope.
On the front it has the following:

IMPORTANT NOTICE

To be opened only by the United States Immigration or Public Health Service Officer.

This is your Visa. It must be surrendered to the United States Immigration Officer at Port of Entry into the United States.

Do not pack it - it must be hand carried.

On the back of the envelope is an "Immigrant Data Summary (this is not a visa)" sheet with lots of lovely biographical data about me on it. There is even a picture of me as well as room for a barcode and an admission stamp.

The "Important Information" Letter has details about not opening the envelope, the Green Card, conditional statuses (as I have a CR-1 visa), paying taxes (eek!) and the SSN.

The Interview Letter - in detail (part two)

The rest of page two tells you that your case has now moved beyond the NVC and, if you have any questions, you should now only communicate with the US embassy. You are given the address of the embassy and are told what details (Case number, Principal Applicant, Category & "Foreign State of Chargeability*") to include when communicating.

The third and final page is entitled "Notice to Visa Applicants".

There's a subheading "Visa Interview Requirements" that I will copy (almost) verbatim.

VLAD THE IMPALA must bring the following to the visa interview:

• Any original documents that were requested by the NVC but were not submitted to the NVC
• The medical examination results if not submitted to the Embassy/Consulate by the physician
• The correct size and number of photographs
• Valid passport for all traveling applicants

Point three is beautifully vague.

Finally there is a very scary looking table of "documents requested" that (in my case) names seventeen documents needed for the interview. Each document has a code letter by it. As most of my original documents were sent to the NVC (or the USCIS) this is a little intimidating.

Then you look up the codes. Basically you're looking for codes 'A' (to be acquired), 'I' (is incomplete) 'T' (translation needed) or 'S' (scanned document received), though a 'U' (document unavailable) is pretty scary too. My application had none of these codes - mine was full of F's, O's and Y's ("not required", "original document already submitted" and "document received and accepted").

I also had a document status of 'C' for a document called "Correspondence Instructions" - this was not explained in the notes. I have to assume that, as this was the first document named, that it's self-referential and is talking about the interview letter itself (as that has to be brought to the interview).

And that's about it...


*is that a real word? Really?

The Interview Letter - in detail (part one)

It arrived in a weird, side-opening envelope a few days after Foof received her copy. It came directly from the NVC in New Hampshire and is (according to the text) the last time that the NVC will communicate with me. It's printed on US "Letter" paper and not A4 so it will be a little too wide for those cute plastic covers that you've been storing all your other paperwork in.

Just like Foof's letter it's dated June 9th. It gives a summary of where we are in the process (i.e. just finishing with the NVC), reminds me of my case number and tells me that my petition has been forwarded to the London Embassy.

The second paragraph gives the interview date and time.

There's then a section marked "Important Information" that points you to the www.ImmigrantVisas.state.gov website and tells you to follow all its instructions carefully so that your application isn't "refused at the initial interview". You are instructed to take this letter with you to the interview (or you won't get in, obviously).

The next page lists everyone who should attend the interview (i.e. me).

There is then a list of "reminders", asking you to bring along any documents you've missed, medical results (if they've not already been sent to the embassy), a "number" of passport-sized photographs (5cm x 5cm), Foofer's income tax return (if needed) and the final "reminder" is another "refused at the initial interview" threat if you don't bring all your documents.

Part two will detail the rest of this letter including the list of what you must bring to the interview...

The best border?

This cool picture of the US border doesn't really have anything to do with this post. I was just looking at POE reviews on visajourney, trying to decide where to enter the US on my "one-way" flight to the US (yes, yes I'm still getting ahead of myself). They don't have any reviews for Vegas so I checked out the others.

POE stands for Port of Entry and it's where you officially enter the United States. My POE will be an airport and not a dusty road in California, Arizona or Texas. It's tricky to find the best POE as the reviews are mixed, though I do like the idea of entering via Dublin and having the immigration done at Dublin (yes, US immigration happens at Dublin - isn't that excellent?)

As to when I'll be entering the US, there's good news: The CSC are processing I-130s at an incredible rate - racing through the backlog. They seem to be processing a week's worth of I-130s in three working days. This is encouraging.

Counting my Chickens

This is a disgustingly self indulgent exercise but, please, humour me.

I've been considering my "one way" flight to the US, many many months from now.

Manchester (my airport of choice) will stop doing direct flights to Las Vegas (my airport of Foof) at the end of April. BMI have decided that their flights (which rarely have an empty seat on them) are not profitable enough.

This leaves me with a slight conundrum: How do I get to Las Vegas on that fantastic final flight?

I'll be carrying my visa plus other assorted documents (I hear an A3 sized x-ray of my chest may be part of the package) to hand to the lucky people at immigration. So, as I'll have to fly via somewhere, which airport do I choose to enter "The land of the free"?

I've been warned against Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia*, so I was considering New York (as it used to be the tradition to arrive there a century ago). The only thing concerning me was the connection time. The US is notorious for immigration delays for Visa Waiver folk so what would happen to a proper immigrant? Would a three-hour stopover be enough?

So I decided that I might want to travel to a UK airport that flies directly to Las Vegas. I found that Virgin Atlantic flies from London Gatwick every day. Yay!

Knowing my interview date well in advance could work to my advantage. As I'd be travelling a week or two after my interview, booking a train ticket early enough and I could get to Gatwick for £10. A hotel would cost me £50. Depending on the time of year I could get a good deal on the actual ticket too.

Of course, this is all far far in the future, but it's nice to think about it.


*Note - These are probably very lovely POE (Ports Of Entry) but bad experiences from friends and acquaintances have given then a nightmarish quality in my imagination. Sorry guys.

Processing Aliens Faster, Better?

While we're on the subject of improving US immigration (and, yes, I'll be trying not to use the word "maybe" as much as in my previous post), workpermit.com has an article which indicates that Mr. Obama's reforms may not be such an uphill struggle (which is good news as he will be watched closely on this subject).

In the final year of the Bush administration, a record one million Americans were naturalised. If you also take into consideration that the USCIS is clearing its backlog of cases at an impressive rate (from 3.6 million cases in 2004 to 1.1 million last November (and, they say, 0 by October 2009)), maybe the new guy's job won't be quite so tough in this area at least.

Hope

Now that there's a new administration in power, maybe the long, daunting task of joining a loved one in the United States will be made shorter and easier...

On the new White House website is a page about immigration that includes the following line:

Improve Our Immigration System: Fix the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy and increase the number of legal immigrants to keep families together and meet the demand for jobs that employers cannot fill.

Maybe this will help my wife and I or maybe we'll be the last to trawl through this current, frustrating, procedure. I'm just glad that someone in Washington is concerned about the thousands of people who have to live apart from their loved ones for months (maybe even years in some cases), kept apart by large amounts of paperwork and small numbers of immigration workers. Maybe I'm being naive, maybe I'm wrong - but for now I'm happy to hope...