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Hi,
Just wanted to post this as a pointer for those going through immigrant visa interviews since some of the publicly available information is incorrect/misleading. I had a interview for a family-based green card on September 30th in the US consulate in London. The process on the day etc is covered in detail in many posts on the web so I won't go into that here. However, there are a few things to bear in mind after your green card has been approved. Some of this will be useful for those going through the process at other consulates also. Point number 3 below was not very obvious based on the publicly available information.
1. The US embassy in London has recently(summer 2013) switched to a new online system to return the passports via courier. Some of these issues could be teething troubles but as of now, the call centre that the US embassy claims to use for all visas(0203 698 6998) does not work for immigrant visas, only for non-immigrant visas. They currently have no information on anything related to immigrant visas.
2.
is the state dept website to track the progress after your interview until processing is complete.
The status said ready and call for interview even after the interview date but the status updated date will keep changing until it says issued and printed which means the passport is ready to be handed over to the courier company.
3. This was the most ridiculous part of a process that I found in general to be riddled with inefficiency and general incompetence from everyone I dealt with related to the US government. Even AFTER the embassy handed over the passport to the couriers, there was no notification to me that it was ready for pickup and no tracking number. On any calls to the US embassy to check, the answer was a generic response that if I had not been notified to pick it up, it was not ready and I should just wait until they sent me a message. Finally, after a few days of this, I just called the courier company(DX group) and asked them to look it up based on my name and delivery address. Sure enough, despite the US embassy's insistence that I "just had to wait", the passport had been ready and waiting since the day after the state dept website status changed to issued.
Lesson learned: This kind of thing seems to have happened to more than a few people so if you don't get your passport back when you expect it, check the State Dept website and call the couriers directly. Far more efficient than trying to contact the US consulate. It's 10 days later now as I write this and if I had followed the US consulate's instructions, I would still be waiting to be notified that my passport was ready.
Best of luck
Just wanted to post this as a pointer for those going through immigrant visa interviews since some of the publicly available information is incorrect/misleading. I had a interview for a family-based green card on September 30th in the US consulate in London. The process on the day etc is covered in detail in many posts on the web so I won't go into that here. However, there are a few things to bear in mind after your green card has been approved. Some of this will be useful for those going through the process at other consulates also. Point number 3 below was not very obvious based on the publicly available information.
1. The US embassy in London has recently(summer 2013) switched to a new online system to return the passports via courier. Some of these issues could be teething troubles but as of now, the call centre that the US embassy claims to use for all visas(0203 698 6998) does not work for immigrant visas, only for non-immigrant visas. They currently have no information on anything related to immigrant visas.
2.
is the state dept website to track the progress after your interview until processing is complete.
The status said ready and call for interview even after the interview date but the status updated date will keep changing until it says issued and printed which means the passport is ready to be handed over to the courier company.
3. This was the most ridiculous part of a process that I found in general to be riddled with inefficiency and general incompetence from everyone I dealt with related to the US government. Even AFTER the embassy handed over the passport to the couriers, there was no notification to me that it was ready for pickup and no tracking number. On any calls to the US embassy to check, the answer was a generic response that if I had not been notified to pick it up, it was not ready and I should just wait until they sent me a message. Finally, after a few days of this, I just called the courier company(DX group) and asked them to look it up based on my name and delivery address. Sure enough, despite the US embassy's insistence that I "just had to wait", the passport had been ready and waiting since the day after the state dept website status changed to issued.
Lesson learned: This kind of thing seems to have happened to more than a few people so if you don't get your passport back when you expect it, check the State Dept website and call the couriers directly. Far more efficient than trying to contact the US consulate. It's 10 days later now as I write this and if I had followed the US consulate's instructions, I would still be waiting to be notified that my passport was ready.
Best of luck
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