On obtaining an E-3 visa from the US Consulate in Vancouver
I've already had one enquiry, so I guess I'd better get writing.
Despite the lawyers being really down on using this Consulate, I have to say that from my experience, it's been the easiest so far. Or I'm just getting used to the rigmarole.
The one screw up was I didn't read the instructions thoroughly enough, and we rocked up to the Scotia Bank branch to deposit the visa application fee in their bank account, and I thought the fee was quoted in Canadian dollars. Turns out, it was quoted in US dollars. It wasn't the end of the world that we didn't have cash, they could sell us US dollars on a credit card, except the bank would only accept Visa card, not Mastercard. I haven't had to deal with such bullshit since the great Cabcharge/Visa card war in Australia in the late 90's.
Moral of that story: read the instructions multiple times. Carry one of each flavour of credit card when traveling internationally, just in case.
That minor transactional hiccup aside, everything went fine. The Consulate itself does all of the pre-interview shenanigans on one floor (the bulk of the waiting around, the fingerprinting and photographing) and then they shoot you up to another floor for the "interview". Annoyingly, they run you through the metal detectors again on the higher floor.
The interview was basically "So you work for Google? How about the food?" and then he told us to come back the next day to pick up the passports. I think we were in and out in about three, three and a half hours.
I have to say, the ability to collect the passports from the Consulate later is a real boon. When you're in a foreign country, the last thing you want to deal with is any glitches in the postal system, or trying to get mail delivered to a hotel. This alone makes me like the Vancouver Consulate the best.
We went back at the 2:15pm allotted "passport pick up time", and they came down to the security checkpoint on the ground floor and you show your receipt and they give you your passports back. They tell you to step outside and check it, and come back if there's any problems, so I presume you can at least talk to a human at that point if there are any problems.
This is my third E-3 visa. They did not ask to see any of my supporting paperwork showing ties with Australia or anything else that I had in my giant wad of paperwork, just the approved Labor Condition Application, which they kept and returned with the passport the next day.