The Swedish Sambo Visa in 2015 Part 4: The Interview

EDIT: Another reminder that the following information is for NON-EU CITIZEN APPLICANTS.  EU citizens have a whole different process (including not needing to do an interview).  Read more about it on MV's website here. 

Johan and I commenced the second leg of The Great Wait the day after I arrived back in Los Angeles after visiting him in Sweden in June.  Fresh off the plane and full of both sadness and anticipation, I tried to enjoy the nervous feelings of this moment we had waited so long for.  I believe they call it, "living in the moment".... which was hard, knowing we had so long to go before being able to be together again.

I studied my application to make sure I remembered all the dates and details we were required to give in our original application. I brought a binder full of photos, call logs, original flight stubs, my original Single Status paperwork, and made sure I had my passport in hand.  Johan and I also had a couple friends and family write personal statements confirming our relationship, as we had read everywhere that you should bring absolutely everything you possibly can to your interview in case they had specific questions - better to be safe than sorry!

The building where the Swedish Consulate's office in San Diego is

I arrived at the consulate a little early, and was eventually ushered back into a cute little room with Swedish books, tourism pamphlets and other propaganda.  Wall-to-wall windows opened up the space, and made one feel relaxed.  

The Vice Consul, Katarina, was very kind and made me feel at ease.  I had my binder there with me, and she asked me what I had brought for her.  I was so excited to go through all the content Johan and I had spent months collecting, but I could tell by her facial expression that it was not at all what she was interested in.  So instead, I pulled out my passport and the originals of my Single Status documentation.  She made some marks in her notebook and made sure the information all matched up, and she handed the originals back to me.  She didn't physically keep a single item I brought with me.

Once again, I offered to show all the other content I had so proudly organized, but she simply told me that Migrationsverket was satisfied with what we had already provided, and she just had to ask me some standard questions which she had to ask everyone.  I was actually quite disappointed that I couldn't share more of my pictures to someone!

She asked me to tell in my own words the story of how we met.  She paid specific attention to the exact dates we had visited each other.  She asked about his family, what his siblings did for work, what his parents did.  She asked me to expand on our future plans, which was good because what we had written in our application originally had changed a million times over by the time of our interview.

The whole thing took about 15-20 minutes.  She asked for a few moments to type her notes into a formal questionnaire template.  When she was done, she let me read over the questions and answers to make sure I agreed.  I corrected a few items, she changed them in the document, I re-read it, I signed it, and that was it.

She told me to consider calling MV in a couple weeks "if we didn't hear back from them by then".  It elated me to hear that, because I for a fleeting moment believed we could actually have our decision so soon!  But she also told me to consider it was summer time, and the offices essentially shut down for people to go on vacation.

The whole interview took about 35 minutes from start to finish.  I remember feeling so shy about talking about my love with a stranger who could probably care less about our story (and who had to deal with these things all the day long).  I wish I had approached my interview as if I was speaking to someone who was terribly interested in every detail, and didn't try to generalize things for the sake of keeping things short and sweet.  Still, everything went perfectly fine, Katarina was pleased with the results, and so I walked out of her office and directly into the very beginning of the second leg of the Great Wait.

As mentioned at the end of Part 2 - The Process, when Johan called to follow up with our application after a couple weeks, we were basically laughed at.  They told us they would contact us if our application was missing anything, but to expect to wait 12 months.