Whew! It's over. It went relatively well, I think, though we haven't been given final approval. I was hoping to be approved right away, though that was not to be, alas!
All said, the whole thing didn't take too much time. Our interview was scheduled for 1:45; we got there at 1:15 and were called at around 2:10. The interview was for about 35 or 40 minutes (which, if you think about it, is a fairly long time). We must have left around 2:45 and were at the BART station at 3:00 and managed to get back home and make it to our neighborhood bar around 3:45 -- just in time for Happy Hour!
There weren't too many people at the USCIS office when we got there -- a few couples, some families, some older people with their adult children, and a whole bunch of lawyers. Several of the Immigration officers came out calling various people in for interviews, and many of them seemed very friendly, joking around with the interviewees and so on. We waited for what seemed like the longest time. We were both a little nervous, sort of like we were waiting for the dentist. I get very chatty when I'm nervous and my husband (apparently) gets silent and snappish -- so we weren't the most harmonious couple out there.
We were finally called in by a young Immigration Officer named Fong. He seemed to be in his mid- to late- 20's. He was professional and courteous, but seemed almost as nervous as we were. He directed us to his office, introduced himself, and asked us to take specific seats. ("Wife in the middle, husband to the right.") Then he asked us to stand up and swore us in.
There was a poster on his desk with a list of documents that we were supposed to turn in to him -- I think it included our passports, any EADs, latest tax returns, drivers licenses, SS cards. My husband didn't have his SS card with him and mine has been lost for a while, so we didn't put those on his desk, but he didn't specifically ask us for them.
He then started asking me (the foreign spouse) questions based on what I had said in my I-485 -- name, address, home phone number, DOB, city of birth, the last time I had entered the US, the various places I had attended school and the dates, whether I had had an OPT, whether I had been married before, whether I had any children -- "including illegitimate children, adopted children or step children." He was making notes of the answers I gave. He then asked me the long list of questions about whether I was a terrorist etc. to all of which I answered no. He made notes of these too, and then showed me the notes he had made, which appeared to be on a photocopy of the I-485 I had turned in, and went over my answers with me and asked me to sign and date the document again. (Weird!)
He then started asking my husband questions that appeared to be based on the I-130 he had turned in -- similar questions to the ones I was asked, except the ones having to do with his previous marriage. He asked my husband his ex-wife's name, DOB etc. and the date of their divorce. He seemed very particular about establishing that my husband hadn't gained his citizenship through his ex or she through him. (Luckily, they were both US citizens independently of each other.) He then asked my husband about how he had obtained his citizenship, and my husband had to give a long story about how he and his parents had come to the US as refugees from the Soviet Union in 1980 and how his parents had naturalized and he had eventually gotten his citizenship through them.
The next set of questions had to do with our relationship. Pretty much all of these were directed at my husband even though I occasionally chimed in. (He didn't seem to mind that.) He asked my husband when we met; my husband said 1996. He seemed puzzled by that, so we had to explain that we met in graduate school and were friends and colleagues long before we started dating. He wanted to know when we had "become boyfriend and girlfriend." We said 2003. He seemed to expect my husband to give him a detailed account of everything: when we moved in together, whether he moved in with me or I with him, when we moved to California together, when we decided to get married etc. etc.
He then asked us what documentary proof of our relationship we had brought with us. I gave him copies of our apartment lease, car insurance, renters' insurance, utility bill, letter from bank about joint accounts, latest joint account statements, receipts from our wedding reception and from our honeymoon. He then asked us if we had photos (I think my husband had alluded to this before), so we gave him about 30 photos that we had selected to bring with us. He looked through all of them, now and then asking who someone was, or what was going on in the picture. He selected a few pictures (5 or 6), mostly ones with our parents in them, and asked us if he could keep them. He asked us if we had any other photos of us together from before we moved to CA, and we had to let him know that all of those photos were lost in a major hard-drive crash a few months ago. I thought all this would have been enough, but he asked us if we had any more evidence. So I said we had a bunch of letters and greetings we had received from friends. We showed him these and I gave him some photocopies I had made of these for him to put in his folder.
Then we moved on to the Affidavit of Support. My husband is in law school and I'm not employed either. So we'd used assets to qualify. He said we needed 5x 125% the poverty line to qualify. I told him that the instructions said 3x was enough in the case of a spouse. (We had a little under 5x -- so this was a crucial point.) He said I was probably right, and he would check. He made a joke about how it was always the Immigration Officers who were the last to find out about any changes in the rules. We laughed politely, but I was a little annoyed (though I suppose it would have been much worse had he insisted he was right).
Finally.... he told us he thought he had everything he needed. He thought we would be approved, but he needed to go over everything just to make sure. He said he would let us know if they needed anything else, but he thought it was unlikely. We would most likely be approved, he said, and would get a welcome letter in the mail in the next couple of weeks. (I don't know why, but I somehow got the feeling that things weren't upto him, and that someone else had to approve the petition.) He asked us if there was anything else we wanted to give him. We thought this was the time to mention that we also had an affidavit of support from a joint sponsor (my MIL) just in case. I didn't want to complicate things any more than necessary -- because I was 100% sure that the affidavit of support required only 3x in assets -- but my husband insisted that we leave my MIL's affidavit with the officer just in case it was needed. The officer then asked my husband where my MIL worked, and upon being told that she worked at USC, joked with him about the latest football game between Cal (where my husband goes to school) and USC.
That was all, I think. We shook hands with him, and he showed us out, telling us the fastest way to the elevator.
I'm sure I'm missing a few things (like the discussions about my birth certificate, which didn't have my name on it, my various I-20s), but I think I got the main things covered. All in all, not a bad experience, but I still wish things had been resolved once and for all today.
Good luck, everyone. I hope you all have good interview experiences, and hopefully ones that are less strenuous than ours!
All said, the whole thing didn't take too much time. Our interview was scheduled for 1:45; we got there at 1:15 and were called at around 2:10. The interview was for about 35 or 40 minutes (which, if you think about it, is a fairly long time). We must have left around 2:45 and were at the BART station at 3:00 and managed to get back home and make it to our neighborhood bar around 3:45 -- just in time for Happy Hour!
There weren't too many people at the USCIS office when we got there -- a few couples, some families, some older people with their adult children, and a whole bunch of lawyers. Several of the Immigration officers came out calling various people in for interviews, and many of them seemed very friendly, joking around with the interviewees and so on. We waited for what seemed like the longest time. We were both a little nervous, sort of like we were waiting for the dentist. I get very chatty when I'm nervous and my husband (apparently) gets silent and snappish -- so we weren't the most harmonious couple out there.
We were finally called in by a young Immigration Officer named Fong. He seemed to be in his mid- to late- 20's. He was professional and courteous, but seemed almost as nervous as we were. He directed us to his office, introduced himself, and asked us to take specific seats. ("Wife in the middle, husband to the right.") Then he asked us to stand up and swore us in.
There was a poster on his desk with a list of documents that we were supposed to turn in to him -- I think it included our passports, any EADs, latest tax returns, drivers licenses, SS cards. My husband didn't have his SS card with him and mine has been lost for a while, so we didn't put those on his desk, but he didn't specifically ask us for them.
He then started asking me (the foreign spouse) questions based on what I had said in my I-485 -- name, address, home phone number, DOB, city of birth, the last time I had entered the US, the various places I had attended school and the dates, whether I had had an OPT, whether I had been married before, whether I had any children -- "including illegitimate children, adopted children or step children." He was making notes of the answers I gave. He then asked me the long list of questions about whether I was a terrorist etc. to all of which I answered no. He made notes of these too, and then showed me the notes he had made, which appeared to be on a photocopy of the I-485 I had turned in, and went over my answers with me and asked me to sign and date the document again. (Weird!)
He then started asking my husband questions that appeared to be based on the I-130 he had turned in -- similar questions to the ones I was asked, except the ones having to do with his previous marriage. He asked my husband his ex-wife's name, DOB etc. and the date of their divorce. He seemed very particular about establishing that my husband hadn't gained his citizenship through his ex or she through him. (Luckily, they were both US citizens independently of each other.) He then asked my husband about how he had obtained his citizenship, and my husband had to give a long story about how he and his parents had come to the US as refugees from the Soviet Union in 1980 and how his parents had naturalized and he had eventually gotten his citizenship through them.
The next set of questions had to do with our relationship. Pretty much all of these were directed at my husband even though I occasionally chimed in. (He didn't seem to mind that.) He asked my husband when we met; my husband said 1996. He seemed puzzled by that, so we had to explain that we met in graduate school and were friends and colleagues long before we started dating. He wanted to know when we had "become boyfriend and girlfriend." We said 2003. He seemed to expect my husband to give him a detailed account of everything: when we moved in together, whether he moved in with me or I with him, when we moved to California together, when we decided to get married etc. etc.
He then asked us what documentary proof of our relationship we had brought with us. I gave him copies of our apartment lease, car insurance, renters' insurance, utility bill, letter from bank about joint accounts, latest joint account statements, receipts from our wedding reception and from our honeymoon. He then asked us if we had photos (I think my husband had alluded to this before), so we gave him about 30 photos that we had selected to bring with us. He looked through all of them, now and then asking who someone was, or what was going on in the picture. He selected a few pictures (5 or 6), mostly ones with our parents in them, and asked us if he could keep them. He asked us if we had any other photos of us together from before we moved to CA, and we had to let him know that all of those photos were lost in a major hard-drive crash a few months ago. I thought all this would have been enough, but he asked us if we had any more evidence. So I said we had a bunch of letters and greetings we had received from friends. We showed him these and I gave him some photocopies I had made of these for him to put in his folder.
Then we moved on to the Affidavit of Support. My husband is in law school and I'm not employed either. So we'd used assets to qualify. He said we needed 5x 125% the poverty line to qualify. I told him that the instructions said 3x was enough in the case of a spouse. (We had a little under 5x -- so this was a crucial point.) He said I was probably right, and he would check. He made a joke about how it was always the Immigration Officers who were the last to find out about any changes in the rules. We laughed politely, but I was a little annoyed (though I suppose it would have been much worse had he insisted he was right).
Finally.... he told us he thought he had everything he needed. He thought we would be approved, but he needed to go over everything just to make sure. He said he would let us know if they needed anything else, but he thought it was unlikely. We would most likely be approved, he said, and would get a welcome letter in the mail in the next couple of weeks. (I don't know why, but I somehow got the feeling that things weren't upto him, and that someone else had to approve the petition.) He asked us if there was anything else we wanted to give him. We thought this was the time to mention that we also had an affidavit of support from a joint sponsor (my MIL) just in case. I didn't want to complicate things any more than necessary -- because I was 100% sure that the affidavit of support required only 3x in assets -- but my husband insisted that we leave my MIL's affidavit with the officer just in case it was needed. The officer then asked my husband where my MIL worked, and upon being told that she worked at USC, joked with him about the latest football game between Cal (where my husband goes to school) and USC.
That was all, I think. We shook hands with him, and he showed us out, telling us the fastest way to the elevator.
I'm sure I'm missing a few things (like the discussions about my birth certificate, which didn't have my name on it, my various I-20s), but I think I got the main things covered. All in all, not a bad experience, but I still wish things had been resolved once and for all today.
Good luck, everyone. I hope you all have good interview experiences, and hopefully ones that are less strenuous than ours!