Going to the USA requires procedures. Strict, non-bendable procedures. We're talking sniffer dogs and motion sensors.
A US visa application is quite similar to a first job interview-You're sweaty with shaking limbs, constantly rifling through your documents making sure you've got them all right.
However I assure you no normal job applicant has ever been subjected to frisking and will not be jabbed by those annoying beeping probes. Nor will they have to produce their CPR for inspection or require to walk through a metal detector barrier.
We made it to the American Embassy at 8- scurrying, for they are very punctual and irritable.(Plus we didn't know what other weapons they had up their sleeve)
We shuffled through the numerous safety checks and were forced to turn out our pockets when the probe bleeped like an insolent whining siren at the magnetic stir of metal coins, watches and jewellery.
Then, clipping on our visitor badges, we strolled through the heavy, thickly reinforced doors, escorted by a security guard in a murky green uniform and matching, no to mention ridiculous, straw hat.
The path through the luscious garden soon melded into cement and tile and before we knew it, we were walking into an angular, silent waiting room.
The visa hopefuls sat themselves down, anxiously on the edge of the comfy chairs. They drummed their fingers, read the boring year old magazines ,lined on a shelf, front-to-back twice and looked around the room restless, wondering how the walls seemed so much more crowded together than the last time they had stared at them.
An intercom buzzed every seven minutes or so, calling upon applicants to submit their documents with their id-photographs.
So here's Lesson #1 of How to Apply for an American Visit Visa:
Always bring Passport-id photographs with a white backdrop and ensure the dimensions of the photograph(length of head-to-chin, length of ear-to-ear, length of left nostril-to-second-last-shirt-button. Okay, except the last one) is EXACTLY as specified. Ground Rule is that each photograph MUST be 2x2 inches. Exactly. Not a centimeter more, not one less.
Moving on...
After the verification of documents, applicants then sit their aching bottoms down once more to wait long and hard to be called for finger-printing.
After making our way back to the counter through the security checks(we needed to head back home to get pictures exactly 2x2 inches as ours were a few centimeters off) we placed our fingers- first left hand four fingers, right hand four fingers, two thumbs together- on an intriguing electronic device with a glass screen which emitted a startling green light that scanned the surface.
And back to the seats again before being called upon for the last- oh thank heavens- stage of the Visa Application Process. The Interview. The most dreaded, risky hurdle in visa procurement.
You can get shot down, straight there and cruel, and drag your sorry self back home with a rejected application, no hope of ever going to the US and the guilt of a massacre of five good whole morning hours of summer.
It took an incredibly long time for us to get our interview over with.
There was one lady who had brought what looked like a haystack of papers and she was rifling threw them, organising and sorting it- Police papers, most likely.
One horrible thing about the US Visa application process is that you have to confess all your details to the interviewer; be honest and truthful about your personal life in front of all the other applicants or rather strangers in that room.
Lesson #2 of How to Apply for an American Visit Visa:
Do not, under any circumstances, fight with the interviewer or slip her twenty dollars through the slit in the window.
Beads of perspiration began to dot my forehead as I nervously witnessed two women ahead of us be brutally rejected and sent home. It was harsh considering that usually when people are not permitted to attain the visa once, they are hardly ever likely to do so in the future.
We walked up to the sealed, reinforced glass and began what turned to be a rather short interview.(I must confess disappointment as I had imagined a lengthy questioning and had come up with ridiculous answers to various probable questions in many such hypothetical scenarios. Also we had waited for what seemed forever.)
And we did it.
Yes, we got through.
The lady behind the counter whose expressions were a give-away whether you were likely to get a visa or not, smiled at us- and our hearts leaped- her blue eyes twinkling and said,
"Right then. Enjoy your trip."
Blog Bubble: Randomly, there was also a rather interesting poster depicting a man with a morbidly sad expression behind bars for not having told the truth during his visa interview. And for most part of the long wait, I was staring up at a curious device positioned on the ceiling which looked like a hybrid of a megaphone and a thermal scanner/laser gun, wondering what it does.
I still haven't figured it out.
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