embassy/visa/passport

[jingleton]

We now have our interview for this Friday 3rd Dec. can anyone tell me what happens, and how long does it take for our passports to come back? Our interview is 8.15am.

Thanks
Janet

[jtijani]

A friend of mine went for an interview at the United States Embassy about two weeks ago. She said it was okay apart from the queue. She was there for the whole day. They asked the usual questions, her job, family, reason for visiting, where they will be staying. She had all the information with her, like tickets, passports of her children, details of her busbands company in UK, car rental details, villa details e.t.c. The passport was then posted back to her with the visa within a week.

By the way, the embassy is on Grosvenor Square, nearest station is Bond Street station. You can walk up Davies Street which is next to Bond Street underground station and turn right onto Grosvenor street, which leads to Grosvenor Square. Otherwise walk west of Oxford Street, the third turn from Bond Street station is Duke Street, and this leads directly to Grosvenor Square. You cannot miss it, you will see the police presence with guns, and huge slabs of concrete used to block the building.

[jingleton]

Thanks for that. It helps a little bit to know what others have done, and thanks for directions.
Janet

[esprit]

It is fairly horrible. You arrive and can see the queue is already round the building. So you queue to get in. Well frisked on entering. Take a number and sit down. They then call you to the window and take your stuff off you and sit you back down again. You sit and sit and sit. They dont seem to call the numbers in a logical order. Eventually dying for the loo or a coffee but dont dare move in case you miss your turn.
Hours go by ( take a book!!) When they call you it is to a railway station ticket kiosk like window. They look at you stoney faced and humourless. We were asked what we had bought and some questions about what the business did and why we wanted to live in Florida. Matt was 17 and they concentrated more on him going into detail on what he intended to do in Florida and how he felt about moving. If you are successful, they tell you to go and pay at another window and you escape. The whole business at the window takes less than 5 minutes though queueing can take all day. They send the passports back in the mail, ours took about 6 days. We were pre fingerprinting, not sure if they do that now.

[Frosty]

Yes we were fingerprinted this time for our B1 visa.

[Frosty]

Yes we were fingerprinted this time for our B1 visa.

[linda allen]

Don't hold your breath waiting for your passports to be returned quickly. They actually lost our friends passports. they ended up going over 2 months later than planned to Florida.

[esprit]

This is the nightmare now we all have to come back to renew our visas in the UK. Two months stuck in the UK with no passport and none of us would have a business to come back to. The immigration foruns are full of people marooned in the UK when things went wrong for whatever reason at the embassy window or later. It is all so frightening.