AOS interview with expired passport

Q

qim

Registered Users (C)
Hi, we have an interview on 8/23, but my wife foreign passport expires a couple weeks before the interview.

If interview goes fine, will the IO stamp the expired passport?

If yes, what can we do to prevent this? (in our particular situation, we DO NOT want this expired passport stamped).

If they don't stamp the passport, will they give anything (some letter, notice, etc.) that would effectively certify that my wife's I-485 approved?

Any experiences/opinions?

Thanks
 
You have about a month, can you get a new passort by then? If not the card itself is sent in a few weeks after approval, so either way I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Also, from what I've read it here it seems that they don't stamp too often, others who have been at the interview will have better answers.

I can't believe how fast your process went though, less than 3 months between RD and interview? WOW.
 
sarrebal said:
Pretty straightforward.... Have your wife go to her consulate and renew her passport.
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eddie_d said:
You have about a month, can you get a new passort by then?
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Thank you guys but... there absolutelu no way she can change her passport before the interview... normally takes several months but in our case she changed name (after marriage) and should travel to her home country & change passport there
 
qim said:
Thank you guys but... there absolutelu no way she can change her passport before the interview... normally takes several months but in our case she changed name (after marriage) and should travel to her home country & change passport there
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So I still fail to see what the issue is.

She has to get a new passport at some point. If she is approved for the GC within a few weeks she will get a card. You say there is no way she will get a new passport by the interview date. This means there is no way she will be able to travel internationally in between the time she is approved and the time she gets the card.

So when she gets the new passport, she will have the card and the stamp will be irrelevant.
 
Why?

If she goes to her consulate, they usually renew/extend passport the same day, a week the longest.

I extended mine a year before it was gonna expire because I had to get a new H1 visa stamp on it.
 
sarrebal said:
Why?

If she goes to her consulate, they usually renew/extend passport the same day, a week the longest....
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Oh, I can believe that it is usually the case for Italian and possibly many other consulates but not in my wife's country consulate - like I wrote above, it takes normally several months. In addition, in her country consulate, they never renew or extend passports - they can only replace them.
 
eddie_d said:
So I still fail to see what the issue is.

She has to get a new passport at some point. If she is approved for the GC within a few weeks she will get a card. You say there is no way she will get a new passport by the interview date. This means there is no way she will be able to travel internationally in between the time she is approved and the time she gets the card.

So when she gets the new passport, she will have the card and the stamp will be irrelevant.
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Thank you, eddie_d.

In my original post, I just asked whether or not they stamp expired passport
(and we do have reasons to want that they do not).

One other thing was that if they do not stamp (and this is what we want), do they offer any document showing that GC approved - right on the interview.

Travel is one more issue, and in fact, my wife can leave USA and go to her home country even without getting new passport (and by using some special certificate she will get from her consulate). In this case, when CG arrives by mail, I can send it to my wife so she can enter USA again.

So, going back to what I asked, there is still no any answer to this: do they stamp the expired passport? If yes, how can we avoid this?

Thanks.
 
Since you only do NOT want that they stamp her passport because some reasons...the news is that USCIS do not give you any other document showing that you are approved if they do not stamp your passport. She must will wait for the card on the mail in that case.
 
I guess that you can tell them that "I don't want my passport stamp I will wait for the card on the mail"...but I don't know how that will sound...remember you suppose that are given the right to live and work in the US so that can be taken in a negative way.

I don't know...check with people in your own DO to see if they stamp. Not all people get the stamp in their passport even they are approved.
 
I think if her passport is expired, she might some sort of trouble when returning back into her home country. Of course they will her in, but I am almoust sure, they will give her a headache (as from what you explained it really sounds like my homecountry :( )...However, I think what they will do if she has a stamp in the passport that has expired - the will punch in holes in all the pages of the expired passport and leave the page with the stamp whole, which indicated that the passport is not valid, besides the page with the stamp (they do that with visas for sure and I am sure GC stamp works the same way), and once she gets a new passport the page with the stamp the old passport will function as one of the pages of the new passport...So get them to stamp the expired passport, wait for the actual green card and you will be fine
 
Do you not want a stamp because you don't want her native country to know she is a US LPR and she applies for a new passport they will see the stamp in the old passport?

Don't answer if you don't want to, but I'm just curious why the secrecy.
 
The officer clearly asked me and checked if my passport was still valid before stamping it. I don't know if it really matter if it already expired but if the officer asked it's probably that they are not allowed to stamp an expired passport. By the way, the interview letter says we have to bring all passports we have (expired ones and new ones).

I thought that all consulates provided new passports or extend them really fast. :confused: . Never heard about several months to renew a passport, if it's the case so how long does it take to get a passport for the first time ? :eek:
Try to explain your case to the consulate.
 
Pay the extra Cash NOW and get a new passport, should not be an issue, you will need current one anyway.

From what I hear they are not stamping passports as frequently, so they might not even stamp approval on the passport.
 
Thank you all who responded... In particular, it appears from these posts:

cherr1980 said:
Since you only do NOT want that they stamp her passport because some reasons...the news is that USCIS do not give you any other document showing that you are approved if they do not stamp your passport. ...

I guess that you can tell them that "I don't want my passport stamp I will wait for the card on the mail"... but I don't know how that will sound... remember you suppose that are given the right to live and work in the US so that can be taken in a negative way.

... Not all people get the stamp in their passport even they are approved.
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Scorpyo said:
The officer clearly asked me and checked if my passport was still valid before stamping it. I don't know if it really matter if it already expired but if the officer asked it's probably that they are not allowed to stamp an expired passport...
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that it is unlikely that the expired passport will be stamped and even not always unexpired passports are stamped (which is kind of surprise for me; why wouldn't officers stamp valid passports?).

To those who surprised about very lengthy passport processing in my wife's home country consulate, I can only say that it is indeed must be real shock (to learn about something like this) for those from well developed civilized democraties, like Italy or France... Well there are very many not that well developed countries... with a broad variety of levels of civilization and democracy... among them are obviously my wife's home country and home country of pvkby.

Going back to stamping a passport, one more thing: in case my wife and I face the Name Check nightmare again (we already did in recent past when I applied for naturalization), we believe nothing will be stamped no matter expired or not. Probably, officers do not stamp passports to those with NC pending.


******************************************************
N-400 Interview:April 2005; 1447b:February 2006; Naturalized: May 2006
 
Addie_Goodvibes said:
Pay the extra Cash NOW and get a new passport, should not be an issue, you will need current one anyway.
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There is no such thing as paying extra cash to get a new passport from some consulate.
“qim” explained well, but I just feel like putting my 2 cense since I am in a same position. I went to my AOS interview with an expired passport as well, because my country’s consulate won’t renew/issue a new one unless I already have a GC in hand. However, I could just easily go back home without a passport (with an AP looking document) and renew it there.
I also know several people who, just like qim’s wife, got a GC and then went back home to renew their passports, because believe it or not – it is faster, cheaper and less complicated this way.
Needless to say – 7 month after my interview and I am still in the process of getting a new passport… :o
 
In my original post, I just asked whether or not they stamp expired passport
(and we do have reasons to want that they do not).
>>> they might or might not. It all depend on your DO rules. Do search for
the Interview experiences from other people from San Francisco to see if their passports were stamped.

One other thing was that if they do not stamp (and this is what we want), do they offer any document showing that GC approved - right on the interview.
>>> actually they do, but not to everyone. In some cases if you bring 2 extra photos they might issue you an I-94 looking document, with a stamp and your photo attached. They do it for assylees (because theirs passports usually expired) and I know one Canadian girl, who got one of those stamps because she had no passport at all.
Since your wife neither assylee, nor Canadian – I doubt they will do it for her. But – 2 extra passport size pictures don’t take much space and it doesn’t hurt to ask…

So, going back to what I asked, there is still no any answer to this: do they stamp the expired passport? If yes, how can we avoid this?
>>> after my interview the interviewer actually reached for my old expired passport to stamp it. I asked her not to, so instead she stamped my travel document, which was near the expiration date (less then 2 months). She said GC will arrive shortly, but meanwhile the stamp is my proof of LPR.
I read many posts here from people who did not get any stamps at all, because their DO doesn’t do it anymore. So, as I said above – do search on interview experiences from San Francisco’s couples.






qim said:
Thank you, eddie_d.

In my original post, I just asked whether or not they stamp expired passport
(and we do have reasons to want that they do not).

One other thing was that if they do not stamp (and this is what we want), do they offer any document showing that GC approved - right on the interview.

Travel is one more issue, and in fact, my wife can leave USA and go to her home country even without getting new passport (and by using some special certificate she will get from her consulate). In this case, when CG arrives by mail, I can send it to my wife so she can enter USA again.

So, going back to what I asked, there is still no any answer to this: do they stamp the expired passport? If yes, how can we avoid this?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
 
Actually the lenght of waiting for a passport I think has nothing to do with the development of a country or enrichment...because if you want a US passport...it's not in one day, can take weeks :)
 
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