Immigration Type Thoughts
Last Tuesday, Guli and I traipsed on down to the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi, which is about an hour or so away from Dubai. As my tenure here is ending, it was about past time to put in for her residency for the USA. As a side note, I’d like to point out that the embassy is a really bizarre semi-triangular shape that looks like the bow of a sinking ship poking out over the water. It’s very strange. After several rounds of showing paperwork and waiting again, they told us that it’d have to go to USCIS for approval, which is going to be around 4 weeks probably, but if we haven’t heard from them in 6 weeks to check in. That sounded quite doable.
Thursday morning we both missed a call from the Embassy. I figured there was some kind of paperwork that had been missed. I was very thorough, so I figured it was unlikely, but it made me rather paranoid. Of course, they must have called right before they left for the day, and consequently the weekend, since I never got past voicemail.
Sunday morning, before I could call them, they called me. They said it’d been approved, or something crazy like that. I figured I couldn’t possibly have heard what I thought I heard, so I asked her to start over because I thought I misunderstood her. Oddly enough, she used all the same words and I was just floored. We got the approval in 2, I say again 2…I spell..Tango Whiskey Oscar days.:shock:
We’d have gone in the next morning, but the French consulate had her passport through Tuesday afternoon. So we made plans to go in on Wednesday. I still couldn’t quite believe it, and was deathly afraid some mistake had been made somewhere.
As it turns out, a mistake had been made.
…and it was me that made it.
They’re not open on Wednesdays. Luckily I double checked before we drove down there. I went in to work as normal. We’d go down Thursday instead. We did the whole paperwork thing several times again, only it all took longer this time, which is kind of interesting, since all we had to do was hand them a blue paper one time, give them her passport the second time, and then be called up again to get a receipt so we could come back in 3 hours and pick her passport back up.
Well, to make a long story sho…oops. Too late.
At any rate, it was no mistake, and she got her visa and we got a huge packet of paperwork to give the immigration folks at our Point of Entry back into the USA, which is tentatively scheduled for 15 June. Yaay! Now don’t get me wrong, we’re looking at employment opportunities that will take us right back out again for up to year and a half or two years tops, but it’s a huge step and we’re very happy about it. I’ve looked at some visa bulletin boards, as well as talking with one co-worker, and a lot of those folks were on the 2 year plan, not the 2 day plan. Let’s hear it for filing at the embassy all in one shot instead of 5-6 steps through service centers that take months each!
May 17th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Congrats on the swift processing of paperwork. I’m going to recommend that all my expat friend use the embassy in Dubai…they can crash on your couch right?
May 17th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Sure, but they won’t take the applications if they haven’t been resident here for 6 months already, in which case they don’t need a place to stay.
May 18th, 2007 at 9:10 am
We look forward to any opporunity to spend more time with the two of you so we hope you land in the US eventually! We are glad they have not found out about Gluli’s criminal record yet :-).