In this post I’ll describe some facts and considerations about the visa interview for the fiancee visa for your foreign bride. Though I relate some things here that are specific to a Ukrainian fiancee, this is a generic topic and is relevant for any foreign bride whether she’s a Russian woman, or from any other foreign country.

First, about the interview.

The interview is a face to face meeting between your fiancee and the American consul (or his/her representative) conducted at the U.S. embassy in the home country of your fiancee. For example, if you have a Ukrainian fiancee her fiancee visa interview will take place in Kiev, the capitol of Ukraine.

The purpose of the interview is twofold. First and foremost, the consul must be assured through questions and documents review that a legitimate relationship exists between you and your fiancee. In other words is the visa being requested for the intent of you two creating a marriage and living together as husband and wife in America? And second, the consul will not issue a visa for “undesirables.” If your fiancee is a convicted felon or if she shows up at the interview drunk, forget it. No visa will be issued.

It’s not an interview per se as in applying for a job. It’s nowhere near that intense. Essentially your fiancee will be asked a few basic questions most of which she has already answered on the written application. If you attend the interview with your fiancee (highly recommended), you may be asked some questions also. The key point here is to make certain that all documents are filled out truthfully. That way, you won’t get tripped up. Don’t try to fool these people. They’ve seen it all.

The actual interview will be over with in 5 to 10 minutes. The process and environment are not intimidating. For a Ukrainian fiancee the process is this: you check in at the security gate where your appointment is confirmed. Then you go to a waiting room where a receptionist again confirms your appointment, collects from you any additional documents you bring with you (see item # 3 below), and then clears you to meet with the consul when it’s your turn. In the consul’s office you remain standing while you talk to him through a glass partition. He’s behind the partition sitting at a small desk (more like a work counter actually) with a computer and all of your documents.

Assuming your interview has gone well (a comfortable assumption), the consul will place a stamp on a document and instruct your fiancee to give her passport to a person near the entrance of the embassy along with an address where her passport can be given back to her personally. The embassy then delivers her passport to her by special courier within a day or two. It will have been updated with her fiancee visa stamped in it.

Some tips about the fiancee visa interview:

1. I want to state more strongly that it is highly recommended that you attend the fiancee visa interview with your fiancee. For more about this read this post: http://russianbridefacts.com/blog/2007/05/03/the-fiancee-visa-improve-your-odds/

2. The interview is no big deal. Sure it’s very important but don’t you or your fiancee work yourselves into a cold sweat worrying about it. As long as your documents and answers to questions are accurate and truthful, you’ll have no problems. RELAX.

3. You may be granted an interview date before all of your documents are available. Just make certain that when you show up for the interview, you have any missing documents available to turn in to the receptionist at the embassy. If you are missing documents, the receptionist will declare your papers are not in order and you will be denied access to the consul. While in the embassy waiting room, Alla and I saw this happen to a young woman. The look on her face was heartbreaking because she knew she had to start over with the application process and lose another few months waiting for another interview date.

4. When the embassy sends your fiancee a visa interview appointment date, she is given the option to reschedule to a time more convenient. The reschedule date is still of the embassy’s choice. My advice is to take the first date they give you to avoid delays since a new date may be several months into the future.

5. The interview will be conducted in your fiancee’s native language so don’t be concerned about translation issues.

6. When your fiancee surrenders her passport at the embassy, make certain to provide an accurate address where she can have her passport returned to her. Don’t give them a home address (unless home is close by and where she will actually be.)

7. My advice is to get an apartment close by the embassy. This simplifies getting to your appointment as well as getting her visa stamped passport returned to her.

Well that’s it for now. I’ll have more fiancee visa stuff for you in the near future.

Best of luck!

Gary.

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This may not be the “quintessential” statement of Russian culture, but it sure “rang my bell.” It’s a quote from Nikolai Gogol’s novel “Dead Souls.” It’s from Part 1, Chapter XI of the book where the hero is making a hasty retreat from an “uncomfortable” situation.

Bear in mind that Gogol was a Russian that wrote about Russian people for Russian people. As you study this quote, you may begin to wonder if even Russians don’t understand Russia. But for certain they are entranced by their homeland and prideful of its scope and potential.

So here is the quote. It speaks volumes. Hopefully, this particular translation does justice to Gogol’s intent. I’ve copied it precisely, right down to the punctuation EXCEPT that I’ve highlighted key phrases that are, to me, significant break points in the text.   

Beginning of quote:

“Ah, Russia, Russia, from my beautiful home in a strange land I can still see you! In you everything is poor and disordered and unhomely;in you the eye is neither cheered nor dismayed by temerities of nature which a yet more temerarious art has conquered; in you one beholds no cities with lofty, many-windowed mansions, lofty as crags, no picturesque trees, no ivy-clad ruins,no waterfalls with their everlasting spray and roar, no beetling precipices which confuse the brain with their stony immensity, no vistas of vines and millions of wild roses and ageless lines of blue hills which look almost unreal against the clear, silvery background of the sky. In you everything is flat and open; your towns project like points or signals from smooth levels of plain, and nothing whatsoever enchants or deludes the eye. Yet what secret, what invincible force draws me to you? Why does there ceaselessly echo and re-echo in my ears the sad song which hovers throughout the length and breadth of your borders? What is the burden of that song? Why does it wail and sob and catch at my heart? What say the notes which thus painfully caress and embrace my soul, and flit, uttering their lamentations, around me? What is it you seek of me, O Russia? What is the hidden bond which subsists between us? Why do you regard me as you do? Why does everything within you turn upon me eyes full of yearning? Even at this moment, as I stand dumbly, fixedly, perplexedly contemplating your vastness, a menacing cloud, charged with gathering rain, seems to overshadow my head. What is it that your boundless expanses presage? Do they not presage that one day there will arise in you ideas as boundless as yourself? Do they not presage that one day you too will know no limits? Do they not presage that one day, when again you shall have room for their exploits, there will spring to life the heroes of old? How the power of your immensity enfolds me, and reverberates through all my being with a wild, strange spell, and flashes in my eyes with an almost supernatural radiance! Yes, a strange, brilliant, unearthly vista do you disclose, O Russia, country of mine!” 

End of quote.

Interesting, yes? This is not a madman speaking to us. This is a man perplexed as he struggles with the grandeur, mystery, and pathos of his native land.

Do all Russians feel thusly?

That’s all for now. Next up, more about the fiancee visa.

Gary.

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