Visitor Visa - B2

Hi

I got a lot of help from this site, so I decided to help others....

the visa was for 3 of our family, me, my mother and father.

my wife had no passport yet, so we did not apply for her visa

my sister is in USA as she is married since 1 year.

I read a lot of pages in this site and prepared all the documents for 2 weeks daily 2 hours!

I bought transparent files and folders, and stickers, i kept all Original certificates in the folders and applied the stickers mentioning what certificate is of Job, Education, Work, Property, Income tax, Marriage certificate.

The same was done for my parents files too, so we had bulky 3 files with us, they looked really neat and clean, it took a lot of effort to make those files, I mean that in my life i had not worked so intense on something

Then came the interview time, well I must say that there are 2 centers, the first one is on first day at OFC at which your finger prints and a photo from their webcam will be taken on the first day. there is no need of 2x2 physical or digital photos to be carried at all, so do not go to photographer for it

the OFC was the most hectic as there was a mistake in my DS 160 form, It was a common mistake, so I am mentioning it here, its that in the passport the GIVEN NAME: VIVEK KRISHNAJI is having my and fathers name, while surname is ok

in DS 160 i should had put GIVEN NAME as mine and fathers, but i kept only VIVEK and surname was ok

so always check the name in passport and ds 160

the guard lady at OFC told me to do the changes at a cyber cafe in the DS 160 form and then resubmit it (you need to go to the DS 160 form page and retrieve your application, it will ask you to fill new form, then click ok, then it will fill the most of the form automatically for you, rest of some fields you must fill up manually and then submit it, take new print out of the confirmation page and throw away the old confirmation page) tell the lady about the changes, she will put another bar code on your passport and will send you to OFC

the most of my time went in finding the cyber cafe, i went 15 kms all the bandra kurla complex but there is no cafe, i found 1 cafe somewhere and got the print, later on my father and mother who were standing in scorching sun heat on the road told me that the cafe was behind the ofc within 10 feets. But the OFC guards did not help me well about it.

anyways the OFC was done and the second day at the american consulate was again in scorching sun heat, at that time i felt as if we are beggars and are asking for some money to american people by standing in line. There is NO locker system at all for tourist visa applicants, for other visa applicants there is locker system.

I was lucky that i brought car, I kept mobile purse and the cars digital locking keychain in the car, I kept only the car keys with me. Then I was allowed to enter the consulate after 30 minutes of sun heat, also all the line was treated as if we had done some crime, they were instructing us to stand here, then sit there, then move here, then stand here again move there, oh my god!

Then the entrance to the fully Air conditioned and secure consulate came, we went inside and after more lines we were taken for interview, I selected marathi as interview language as my mom cant understand the way the americans speek english. So the interview started, the consulate lady was the youngest lady interviewer, she saw me from top to bottom and then started reading the DS 160 form and told us 3 to come in front of the window, then....

Question: in marathi the interpreter asked why do you want to go to usa

it was asked to father

Father: to visit daughter and son in law (maybe he forgot to tell them tourist places, i dont recall that)

Question to father: How many years since your daughter is in usa

Answer: (wrongly father told son in law's usa years) 6 years

Answer by mom: 1 year of daughter, son in law 6 years

Question to father: where do you work?

Answer: MSFC

Question again: Where?

Answer: the answered the full form very fast

Question again: Which corporation?

Answer: finance corporation

(this all the consulate did not like much, as they never like the very short answers)

then she asked me

Question to me: Where do you work?

Answer: I do business........ a big pause then i remembered that on immihelp they have said that do not answer very short, always answer the most, but not too lengthy.....so i told them i do website designing business. She was typing something on her pc, I know it that she is typing the reason for my disapproval, so i Spoke that i was a government employee in Industrial training institute before this.

Answer by father: wife is LIC agent

then the the interviewer (without checking a single document, but she oversaw the huge files) said : Visa for all of you are approved, you will get them in 4 days

we said thank you, and moved on!.... I had told my parents not to thank them a lot, as the process was hectic for us all, and just 1 min before a couple said so many thank you to the american interviewers and also the couple hugged each other and their eyes were wet. I thought what? why so much? it was too much by that couple....

Always keep in mind that if you are tourist then never be in tension, as we Indians give ON ARRIVAL visa for the USA tourists, so the USA tourists should also do the same to us, but they DO NOT!, and they take the visa fee $160 dollars from us even if the visa is rejected, while we take fee from USA tourists only if we grant them visa.

we came out of the consulate as no one was telling what is next step and if we will get the passports with the visa stamping by courier or we have to wait. no one said nothing at all except for the security guard who said to call the call center which is closed on weekends

then we came home, a bit rude experience, I think the USA people should put some tenement for the huge Indians line in the scorching sun heat, and put some umbrellas at the OFC too, because by my calculation they are making a $160 per person and daily atleast 1500 people visit them, so it is 1.5 crore INR or a quarter million USD per day, and they are not even providing water or shades!

This made me a bit less enthusiastic of the USA tour now, my father says I wont be coming to USA.....you and your mom can go ahead....