Tuesday, March 07, 2006

US Visa Process

Today I went and paid for my US Visa. I'm sorry, but the guy there was as arrogant and unhelpful as I was led to believe. I was told by others who were also applying for their visa that some of the people there were nice, and I could see that they were. I just got the aggravating one. Anyway, the process is:

  1. Choose your appointment time about 2 weeks ahead from their website.
  2. Turn up on the day, and try the elevator to level 59. It doesn't work. You actually have to go to level 10 to pass a screening process which will then let you into an elevator that goes to level 59.
  3. One minute later pass a second screening process, almost identical to the first except this time they also have an x-ray machine for whatever you were carrying.
  4. Enter the waiting room and take a number. That's right, your "appointment time" is actually "the time at which you will take a number and join the queue to have your appointment". Really sucks for the people from Brisbane who had scheduled their flights based on their supposed "appointment time".
  5. About an hour later (not sure, mobile phone had to be off) get called up to hand in your documents. The man is on the other side of a pane of glass, mumbles in an accent and hasn't turned on his microphone.
  6. Get exceptionally rude treatment because you are not able to hear his instructions, and for not answering questions on the form for which there is no answer. Then get sent away to the post office to exchange your $130 money order for the correct payment method (some obscure item that the person at my post office did not know about).
  7. Come back from the post office (traversing the 2-pass security again), and forcefully explain that you cannot answer the questions he asked because you're not going to the US now, you're going to Canada for a year and the Visa Waiver Program will not apply if you drop into the US and back to Canada. So questions like "when will you enter the US" and "who is paying for your trip" really don't have any answers.
  8. He asked that you don't leave the fields blank, but you get abused again as you've now put "-" in all the questions that were previously unanswered. Only "NA" or "Unknown" is understood apparently.
  9. Forms are now accepted. Sit down for another half-hour until a pleasant man calls you over to ask you rapid-fire questions about what you're doing in Canada (testing that you have your story straight). I'm pretty sure he has no idea what "constraint programming" is, but he was certainly the nicest guy I dealt with.
  10. Be told that your visa will be issued and your passport mailed back to you in the next couple of days. Yes they do keep your passport overnight, and it's your responsibility to provide the envelope with your address for them to post it back in.

I just hope I get Permanent Residency in Canada at some point so that the Visa Waiver Program can kick back in. It doesn't apply at the moment as I'll be a Temporary Worker and would be returning to Canada after any trip into the US.

To be honest I'm more interested in my luggage at the moment. :)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yea, you gotta love the states. Me trying to get into the country was not as horrible but still stupid. "When are you planning to return" "August" "Are you even planning to return to Canada?" "yes..." "What's your reason for travel?" "Visiting my relatives" "You're planning to visit your relatives for *FOUR MONTHS*?? What are you going to do there?" (me thinking) "Well, I see these relatives once ever 10 years, is 4 months too much?" Stupid stupid. I answered with the wrong thing and got held up in customs for 1.5 hours. They finally let me in on the condition that I do go home after 4 months... Fuuuuuuuun day. (Oh then they stole my plane tickets somewhere in the process and I walked out with nothing. Had to go get the tickets reprinted.

none said...

Why do you need a US visa if you are going to Canada?

harves said...

I'll be about 50km drive from the US border, so I figure I'll cross into the US at some point. When I do that I won't be covered by the Visa Waiver Program because I'm not a permanent resident of Canada, and not leaving US/Canada/Mexico/etc within 90 days.