After what has seemed like an incredibly long time, I am finally in possession of my American visa. Well, at least the photo page in my passport that allows me to enter the country and get a permanent green card. With that in hand, we can finalise plans to leave and make everything much more real. All the other stuff we need to do, such as sell the house, get my teaching qualifications, get rid of more stuff, may or may not get done, but the visa makes the whole adventure possible.
I want to document the process as part of the record of the move, as well as being able to look back on the most stressful part of the adventure from the viewpoint of the finish line.
The process started back in September (even though I told work people we decided to move over the Christmas holidays...) and my first concern was seeing the message "applicants are advised to apply 10 months before their intended move date" about a week after submitting the initial paperwork.
The initial application was actually made by my wife (as in, I filled all the paperwork on her behalf and she signed and dated where I told her too!). It's a petition to allow her non-American born spouse to enter the country and get a green card and was reasonably simple to do. It was a lot of personal details and making sure that she was a bona fide American to begin with. Interestingly, all the paperwork for this process seems to be predicated on the fact that you're an American living in America, but your spouse is still outside the country. I'm not sure how many couples applying for green cards through this route this applies to, but it seems an odd assumption to make in today's tiny world.
That was sent off to the American embassy in London, and after 8 agonising weeks of waiting (this whole process has taught me a lot of patience!) and wondering whether there was a problem or if they'd even received my application, I received an invitation to submit an application for an immigrant visa. An invitation to submit an application! The sheer number of hoops to jump through seems ridiculous even having jumped through them all successfully!
This application required me to fill in another form where I was quizzed about my education and permanent addresses since the age of 16 and to answer over 50 questions about my moral character, such as whether I've been part of human trafficking and if the president has ever personally denied me entry to the USA. Blimey. There was one sneaky question where the "right" answer was yes rather than no, I think as a way to make sure you were paying attention! I also had to get a UK police record (cue yet more passport photos!), fill in another form to show that Kelsey could support me financially when we moved over, and to go and get a medical.
I naively thought that the medical would be a simple form to run through with my GP up the road, but no. There are only 2 doctor's surgeries licensed to complete the medical, both down in London and both charging you £250 for the privilege (for the record, the cost for the total process all in has been around £1500...about the same as Kelsey's UK visa equivalent). This comprised of being prodded and poked by a doctor, showing him my privates (briefly! still incredibly awkward!), having a chest x-ray (my torso is so long it required two plates...I have the scan on CD if you want to see it!) and having all my vaccinations up to date. They were only open during the week, so I couldn't schedule this till late December, pushing the whole process back by six weeks or so.
With the medical passed, I waited patiently (ha!) for an invitation to the American embassy that seemed to take forever to come. I had counted 6 weeks from the medical and arrived at a date in early February, but with the timer on before I couldn't hand my teaching notice in (damn draconian laws that only allow me to leave at the end of a term!), I was beginning to panic. Fortunately, the letter came through with the interview date on February 8th. I discovered more by luck than skill that Kelsey and the kids weren't required (a relief as the embassy is in deepest central London and the appointment was at 8am) so booked a hotel half a mile away and started to collect paperwork/panic.
On the day itself, the "interview" lasted less than 5 minutes. I initially spoke with someone who checked that I had brought of all the required paperwork with me and paid my visa fee. I then sat and sweated whilst they checked my records, then got me back to a little window to take my fingerprints, take my photo, check my financial records (why is it so hard to get paper statements these days!) and ask me a couple of questions about where we were going to stay and why we were going. He then uttered the magical words "you're approved" and I danced out of the embassy.
I am now in possession of my passport again, complete with visa page. This allows me to enter the US some time before June and hand over an enormous white envelope, sealed by someone at the US embassy with strict instructions not to open it myself. It's absolute torture as I want to know what's in there! However, I must be patient for another 50 days to find out. I'll update this post then with what was in the envelope and what it was like going through US security on an immigrant visa.
