L1, L2 Visa

So we had our appointments on 4th Feb / 5th Feb for biometrics and visa interview.

DAY 1 : Ended up early due to my mis-reading of the traffic situation. Was waiting in the sidewalk for more than an hour. Tip : If you have a child and you are able to leave the child with somebody please do so. Will help you a lot. The day 1 was pretty straightforward... Sidewalk queue -> Enter building. DS 160 checked -> Security check -> Bar code affixed -> Token given -> Give your bio metrics -> Exit. 15mins from entry to exit.

- Dress comfortably. Formals / Casuals. Depending on your comfort. Chennai VFS office does not have Air Conditioning. So you will be sweating it out.. literally.

DAY 2 : Day 1 made me wiser and landed up 5mins prior to appointment time. Bingo.. you just walk in. Fairly painful security check process. Again if you can leave the child with somebody please do so.The steps goes something like this in Chennai

- Wait on side walk well before the consulate building and get passport checked before allowed through the barricade
- Depoisit your personal belongings. Note : No bagds allowed.. carry all your documents in transparent plastic bags. Infant / child food allowed, Wallet allowed. Dont carry things like mobile, CD, USB, Car key chains etc. You can depoisit most / all of these in the depoisit counter. Nominal charge of Rs 10.
- Cross over the consulate entrance and come back to get your DS160 stamped. Beats me on why this is required.
- Get frisked and enter the building
- Documents / belongings scanned. The literally rip apart the covers and destroy your document organization. So be careful and recheck your docs once more here.
- Enter another door and move to another building where the actual visa counters are situated
- Counter 1 - Your passport scanned [barcode affixed on Day 1] and token given. Ensure the visa category is appropriately captured by the person in the counter
- Move to Counter 2 : Verify your finger prints and wait in the 1st waiting area. Here the VFS staff are there to help you. Get your documents organized. They just need your passport, DS160 and petition / 1st page of notice of action in the pack to be handed over to VO. Nothing else... so you can save time if you have just these already done. If you have to pay any additional fee you can do so now. DD / Cash / Credit cards only. No debit cards. All done and now you are officially in the queue for interview. 30 to 40mins till here. It was insanely crowded. If you have a infant with you they try to prioritize you immediately into the next step.
- Counter 3 : Interview and you are out the same way as you came in

Tips
- Again, dress comfortably. Dont go as if you are heading to a beach or party. Formals / no formals is your state of mind. I saw people with formals getting rejected and people in Jeans / T- shirt getting through.
- Relax. Do whatever makes you comfortable (ofcourse within the boundaries of what is allowed in the consulate walls :-) ).
- Preparation helps. Make sure that you are able to substantiate your case. L1A is managerial / executive.. dont make it sound like a individual contributor role. Remember the theme is you are managing a team, managing budget and you have the authority to hire / performance ratings etc. If the opportunity / assignment is important for you spend the time to prep for it. Be consistent with what is written in petition and the visa type.
- Organize your documents so that it is easy for you to retrieve when asked. You dont want to spend 1 minute of the 3 minutes interview in searching for the documents. Labelling them as primary support and secondary support helps.
- Takes generally 2 to 3 working days for the status to change from "Administrative Processing" to "Issued" and maybe another couple of days for passport in hand.

Good luck and all the best.

Thanks
Anand