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At the port of entry

B

beri30ibt

Member
Dear all,

I am granted the DV visa already and planning to travel soon.Could you please tell me what happens at the port of entry.Could anyone share me some of your experiences in your very first time at the port of entry.And please advise me what I need to do as a new arrival in the US.

Thank you so much for your information
beri
 
They will check your visa at the airport and will guide you to the immigration office. There you will hand in the sealed yellow envelop (you should be given one at the embassy) and they will process your case. You will be digitally fingerprinted, pass the customs and then you are free to go :) The whole thing takes less than an hour and nothing to worry about. Just make sure that you do not put the envelop in your luggage and keep it close to yourself all the time. Have a safe trip!
 
masoud54 said:
We entered via IAD (Dulles Airport) 3 weeks ago and there was no ink! It was all digital :confused:
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Did you enter with the immigrant visa? If you enter as a tourist, they always do it electronically... If they did that electronically when you activated the greencard, then they must have changed it since I did that 6months ago.
 
I entered at Dulles and it was done with ink, at least during the actual processing. Here's how my arrival went.

The CBP officer at the first station had no experience with processing immigrant packets, so he called a colleague to help out. They opened the packet, checked out some things, handed it back to me and told me to go towards the customs area.

The person at customs redirected me towards the secondary inspection area, where a number of people were waiting. There's a family whose bags are being thoroughly checked by two officers. I started wondering if I was really supposed to be at this area, why my visa wasn't stamped, etc... :confused:

Once everybody before me was processed (mostly visitor visas), another CBP officer took my fingerprint and the packet and then stamped my visa with the date of entry. He did say it should have been done at the first gate, but it all worked out in the end.

Basically you just need to make sure that you leave the POE (a) with a date of entry stamp and (b) with the packet in their possession. I received my welcome letter about 10-12 days after the DOE, and the physical green card about 10 days after that. Still no sign of the social security card though, so I'm thinking it might be a good idea to go see their local office.
 
Tazmania said:
Would strongly advise you to do it.
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I did ask for a new card on the DS-230 form, and I remember a notice saying something about waiting for 3 weeks before contacting SS about the card. It's been more than that, so I'm thinking I should do this tomorrow. How long does this usually take? I see that you got your SS card in 10 days.
 
We also asked for a new card in DS-230, but we had known that this wont work in most cases, so we walked to the SSA Office. As you read, card was pretty quick in our mailbox :)
 
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