Posts Tagged ‘consulate’

I am going to postpone my post about the interview at the american consulate for even more exciting news: Our Greencards arrived! Yesterday our american friend Scott send Flo a text message with a picture of our Greencards in it. For all of you who are not familiar with the whole Greencard routine: The government won’t send your Greencard to Germany, so you have to give them a reference adress, to which you want your Greencard to be sent. If you don’t know anyone in the US, you can get a mailbox and they’ll send them there. Luckily we have our lovely friends from California, so we could have them send there.

It is a really strange feeling to see a pic of the Greencards, but don’t be able to hold them yourself. Also it is a strange feeling to see how horrible we both look on our pictures. Scott told Flo, that he thinks our pics look eerie, which is totally the truth! But I am pretty stoked to see that we got Greencards with the new design on it. I didn’t expect that!

Flo couldn’t stop to study the picture of our Greencards for hours, yesterday. Them arriving somehow makes this even more real to us! We are now officially real Greencard holders! And there might be only six months left until we make the big step to move! It feels pretty unreal that all of this is happening so fast. Just consider that only a year ago we didn’t even think about having a holiday in the US! And now we are getting ready to move there! Sometimes the best things in life are the surprises! I wonder what will come next!

Our interview date at the american consulate in Frankfurt was in October 2009. It didn’t go very good, but please don’t be scared. We talked to a lot other Greencard winners after it and it turned out that our horrible interview wasn’t like the average interview at all. But let’s start at the beginning.

Our interview was at 8.15 am. We arrived at the consulate at about 6.45 am which was a very good idea, because there already were tons of people waiting in line. You are not allowed to bring any technical devices into the consulate, so leave your mobile phones and laptops in the car or even better at home. When you enter the consulate you have to go through a security check like you do at the airport. We had a bottle of water with us (which you are allowed to), but to prove that I didn’t carry any poisonous liquids in there I had to drink some of it and wait for 30 seconds to prove that I was still alive. Then you enter the waiting room, which is a huge hall with tons of people waiting in there.

You will spend the most time waiting from that point on. So bring time! We didn’t leave the consulate until 12 pm that day! First you have to go to a window, where you have to hand over your passports (they will stay at the consulate) and your id pictures. The woman who talked to us there was a bit annoyed, because she thought Flo had only brought pictures of him wearing his glasses along. But he had ones without the glasses, too, so we were done there. Next you have to go to a window where you pay the money. We had to pay 775 dollars each (I am not sure if it is the same this year). Remember to tell that officer that you won the lottery. We didn’t know that and annoyed him by not telling him!

When you enter the consulate you get a list, in which order you have to arrange your documents. Do that immediately, because it will spare you trouble and you really shouldn’t wear out the consulate staffs nerves! At the next window you have to hand over all your documents, tell the officer how much money you will bring to the US and tell them about your education and your job. Note that you have to bring the originals and copies of all your documents!

If you are done with that, you are ready for your real interview! In our case the most horrible part of that day!

To be continued…

Many of you have won a Greencard this year. So I thought it would be nice to tell you guys what you can expect the following months to be. First you should either stay calm or begin packing your stuff. We chose the first option, because we were sure, that we would let some time pass by before moving. Than you have to wait for your American Dream package to arrive! What comes in the big brown envelope are a lot of forms you have to fill out. To be prepared you can arrange a detailed CV, make a list of all of your US visits, get a biometric passport (if you don’t already have one) and get some biometric pictures.

Some weeks (or even months) after you’ve send the forms to the Department of State in Kentucky you will receive an invitation to your interview in Frankfurt. Before that interview you should visit the doctor. You can do that afterwards, too, but this will lengthen the time till your Visa arrives. We visited the doctor a week before the interview. In our case the doctor took an X-Ray of our lungs, checked our bodys for diseases, took blood for the HIV test (I think you don’t have to do that anymore), checked our urine for drugs and asked us about our disease history. We also had to affirm that we didn’t get our tattoos at jail or some shady place. Before you go to the official doctors appointment you should get all the required immunizations. You will find a list of the required immunizations in your American Dream package. Note that you can’t get all of those immunizations at one appointment, so try to start as soon as possible!

To your interview at the consulate you have to bring along your birth certificate, all of your education certificates, a confirmation from your current employer, your criminal record, statements of account, (if needed) your marriage licence and the birth certificates of your kids, your passports, passport photos and dollars. I hope I didn’t forget anything, but you will get a complete list from The American Dream anyways.

It actually took us quite a while to get together all the certificates and all the other stuff, so I recommend that you start with that as soon as you receive your winners package!

So much for the abstract part, next time I will tell you about our interview at the consulate!