Hi again from Gary and welcome to part 2 of our “visa problems” series of posts.

In my last post I described a potential visa problem that you could deal with early in the process and thereby stand a good chance of avoiding a problem altogether. Here I’ll describe a problem whose potential you can be aware of but can do nothing about unless and until the problem actually occurs.

This potential problem has to do with the embassy required background check process.

In order to be issued a visa, your fiancee must provide certified documents from the police authority of each city she has lived in since the age of 16 years old. Hopefully, and most likely, your fiancee has no prior criminal history. (If she does, she’ll probably not be granted a visa.) Whatever the facts are will be documented in the police reports provided to the embassy.

Getting the reports is a “simple” matter of sending a request form to the police department in each city she has lived in. This will most probably be not too many cities since Russian people are not nearly as mobile as Americans (think economics and government regulations discouraging movement. As well Russians have stronger cultural ties to family and are thus more prone to stay close to their roots.)

But multiple cities to request from is a possibility and now, with the breakup of the old Soviet Union, we’re also talking about multiple countries, each with their own bureaucracies and standards of support quality for responding to such requests.

In Alla’s case it was somewhat more complex. She needed reports from 3 Russian cities and a Ukrainian city. Those were no problem - - fast and efficient response. But because she had also lived in Poland as part of family military service with the Soviet Army, she needed a police report from Warsaw. She sent her request to Warsaw and then waited. And she waited yet more, for several weeks.

In the meantime, the clock is ticking. She had been granted a visa interview date by the U.S. Embassy in Kiev. But she could not go to the interview without this report. And we didn’t want to reschedule the interview since that would possibly mean several months of delay. (Hint - - When the embassy gives you a date, take it. Don’t try to change it to something more convenient for you. Sure they can change the date but they don’t like to. It interrupts their “flow”.)

Fortunately, through a connection in Moscow, we learned exactly where the, by now, long completed police report was stuck (it had been mis-routed). We also learned that $300 (for courier expenses) would “liberate” it. Gladly, a mere 3 or 4 days after my rescue payment, the report was in Alla’s hands, just barely in time for her interview date.

So like I said in the beginning of this post, this is a problem you can be aware of but cannot do anything about unless and until it happens. But, “stuff” happens. I’m not saying to expect it to happen. Keep a positive attitude. But be willing to seek creative solutions and to bust your budget to make things happen.

O.K., I close for now. I have a couple more “visa problems” to write about that are much easier to deal with than the one in this post. I’ll post them soon. Until then (and after), may all your problems not be,

Gary

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