H1B Visa Stamping in Tijuana...Not ! In Guadalajara, Mexico !

Around April this year, I decided to do something about me not having traveled out for a while and the traveler inside couldn't resist the temptation to head south of the border of the USA towards tropical weather, beautiful beaches and great parties ! The only problem was that my H1B Visa had expired a few months back and leaving the USA would mean that I have to get a Visa to get back into the country. I got the usual gyaan about how I should be going to India to get my Visa stamped to be safer (not only by people around me, but that's what is recommended by the US consulates as well). Well, not being able to travel out made me feel like I'm a prisoner in the country and having to travel to the other side of the world and paying for the exorbitant flight prices in July was pure inconvenience.
  My travel destination was decided as Puerto Vallarta and I started finding out more information about this whole process. Blogs such as this one was really useful in getting a hang of the process in Mexico [although it was specific to Tijuana], but I wanted to travel further to Puerto Vallarta. Tijuana would have been really convenient had my sole purpose been to get my Visa stamped and get back immediately. I also wanted to travel and be on vacation and so I chose the Guadalajara consulate since it's a city that I always wanted to visit and is also a convenient 4 hours bus ride from Puerto Vallarta [my main destination]
  This was also the time when the US Homeland Securities Systems went down and Visas weren't being issued worldwide. I decided to take a leap of faith here and still go cos I was extremely restless to travel out. Read the Interview section to see how this didn't cause problems in my case.

I've heard that one can only get the H1B Visa stamped in the home-country or in border towns such as Tijuana, Mexico and Vancouver, Canada. Is this true ?
My experience says that it is not true. I got my visa stamped in Guadalajara, Mexico. A good friend of mine got his Visa stamped in Wellington, New Zealand while on vacation. So, the border town rule is perhaps a myth.

Pre Travel Tasks -

* First of all I had to renew my Indian passport which would've expired the next year in April 2016 and didn't make sense getting my Visa on a passport that was going to expire in a year's time. Here's a post about the process that I went through in San Francisco for this - http://mangomantravels.blogspot.com/2015/06/indian-passport-renewal-splitting-name.html

* Next, since my US Visa had expired and I had to travel to Mexico, I applied for a Mexican Visa at the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco. The process was simple & straightforward and the people at the Mexican consulate were very friendly & helpful.


* Booking the US Visa appointment in Mexico:

• Fill up online DS-160 application - https://ceac.state.gov/GenNIV/Default.aspx. Print and email the confirmation copy with the bar code.
• Before making an appointment at the consulate in Guadalajara, I called the customer care number provided in the 'Contacts' page to 
• Find out if I'm eligible to go for Visa stamping at this particular consulate. Booking an appointment requires one to pay a non-refundable fee and so I had to ensure that I was eligible to attend the visa stamping at that particular consulate. 
• Find out why the only available timings for appointment were super early in the morning. 7:00 am for ASC and 8:00 am for the consulate appointment. I was told that the early morning slots were ones reserved for the H1B category of visas.
• Book the US Visa appointment date online by paying a fee [190 USD] - https://ais.usvisa-info.com/en-MX/niv. It was also possible to have made the appointment by talking to customer service.

Note: This site gives a general purpose step by step procedure for applying for a non-immigrant visa in Mexico.



* ASC Procedure and Visa Interview:

For the ASC Procedure, I just needed the DS 160, my passport and my I797 for verification. When I got there, I spoke to the security guard and told him that I was there for the 7:00 am interview. Someone who spoke a little better english than I spoke spanish explained what I needed and what I could carry in. The person at the window took my photo, scanned my fingers and told me that I would need two 5 x 5 inch photo with a white background. I asked him where I could take my picture taken and he said at any pharmacy. When I stepped out of the center, there was someone on the street that asked me if I wanted to get photographs. I said no and walked to the Farmacia Guadalajara that I'd noticed on my walk to the consulate and had pictures taken there for very cheap. The pharmacy is pinned on the custom map found at the end of the post.

Visa Interview - The process was pretty standard for US consulates in terms of security checks, things you should carry with you and the things you shouldn't be carrying. Until you got to the interview window, you spoke to the locals who guided you with the procedure and process. Most of them spoke good enough English to help me with the process. When I got to the interview window, I was greeted in Spanish. I responded in Spanish and said that I would prefer to have the interview in English [which for some strange reason was both relieving and alarming to the interviewer]. In any case, the interview was pretty straight forward. Standard questions - where do you work, what do you do for this company, how long have you been in the US etc. He excused himself for some reason to talk to someone else. When he came back, he told me that the Visa is approved. I mentioned to him about the problems with non-issuance of Visa, and he told me to come to the US consulate a day before I was supposed to leave Mexico to come and collect the Visa. I guess the consulate was trying to clear the backlogs that were created due to the systems going down that they decided to give out the visas at the consulate itself without having to pass it on through the DHL courier location.

Where did I stay and how did I manage travel between the ASC Center, US Consulate and Stay ?
  I initially found it really difficult to simply do a google maps search of "us consulate in guadalajara" and get an exact location. Same with the ASC center. So I created this map with the locations for the consulate and the asc center and also marked the hostel in Chapultepec that I chose to stay at simply because of the walking distance to both the consulate and the ASC center.
  My earlier choice was to stay closer to the centro historico [historic downtown of Guadalajara which is a short bus ride from Chapultepec]. Both the ASC center and the US consulate were less than 15 mins walk from my hoste. For the ASC appointment I had to leave the hostel before sunrise and while it was still dark. There were a lot of office goers and students walking to their respective bus stands at the time and I didn't feel it was unsafe in any manner.

Custom Google Map with Locations mentioned in this blog can be found here.