Getting a U.S. Visa in Peru 2024

Stayed across from the embassy at a guest house the day before the interview. People start lining up well before the appointment times outside the embassy. The line was quite long but moved relatively quickly. I don't think they had processed many E3s before because they did mine as the last visa for the day so I waited longer than most. Total time in line until leaving was about 2 hours. The embassy staff didn't ask too many questions and were fairly friendly. They asked when I was flying out, and when I told them it was the following week, they said they'd process my visa express, and that I had to come back to the embassy to pick up my passport in 4 days (this included a weekend). They seemed quite happy to do it, but said if I didn't get express processing, it would take three weeks and be delivered by courier, so don't pay the express courier fee online. I had to leave everything, including my hotel key outside at a small table for a fee and picked it up when I was done. This service doesn't appear to be run by the embassy. Don't bring valuables. Until getting inside, very few people spoke English. I don't speak Spanish and was OK, but you can't bring your phone to use Google Translate. If you've made it to Peru, you'll work it out.
- Ben (about 3 years ago)

The appointment was on a Monday at 9:30 am. Our passport pictures did not meet the requirements. Fortunately, they do have a photographer inside the US Embassy but since we were 3 people and not the only ones in line, this took around 30 minutes. Then there was some additional delay as we were called a couple of times to provide additional documentation or information. It seems that they are not very familiar with the E-3/E-3Ds visas. At the end, the officer asked if we had return tickets to the US and kindly offered to have the passports and visas ready for Friday of the same week at the Embassy. I explained we were doing some traveling in Peru and planned to be back in Lima the next Monday so she gave us the green paper for pick up on Monday between 2:30 pm and 3:30 pm.
- Karla (about 1 year ago)

The Lima US Embassy got us processed relatively quickly and smoothly. I would recommend this for E3 renewals. We had multiple notification emails from the embassy about our appointment, and the lines and general movement of the visa appointment were fairly understandable. Our spanish isn't great, and a lot of the staff do not speak english, but they will endeavour to find you somebody to help you understand what they are saying. Just ask. They did have a little hiccup where they couldn't find our appointment in their system (cue a little sweat) but they solved that in 20 mins and we were on our way to the back of the line. Ensure you have enough time to spend at the embassy. I.e. our appointment time was 11am - but we actually had our appointment at 1:30/2pm. The cool thing is in this embassy they pre-check your docs before the appointment so the appointment goes fairly quickly and they will ask you to show your docs and work through that a long time before you are called to the window for your actual appointment. At my interview, the officer did say he didn't do the E3s a lot - but as a renewal it appeared a little easier. We talked him through it, and he was lovely about it. We did have a snafu with the fact that there is no place in their system to denominate it as the new E3S instead of E3D. However when we picked up our visa a few days later it says - "Spouse of" on the visa. So now we just have to make sure our I-94 gets processed correctly. The pickup of the visas is easy - you take your driving license and it is on the other side of the road to the embassy. Ensure you check your visa before leaving the window very carefully.
- Samantha (about 3 months ago)