My green card has been approved!!
Our experience:
We had an early appointment this morning, and we took place in the waiting room, in which about 5 people were waiting. Later, it got a bit busier, but we were called in right at our appointment time. I noticed we were a bit overdressed compared to other applicants (me in suit and hubby in business casual) but better that than the opposite situation. At least the officer was also dressed in business attire so I felt comfortable overall.
She started with taking the oath, after which we sat down. The office was small, but luckily it wasn't a cubicle as I've read in other stories. There wasn't really any small talk, but she was very nice throughout the interview. First she asked for my passport, and my husband's and my drivers license. She told me she took my I-94 since I wouldn't need that anymore.
The interview took about 20 minutes, and was going over the facts in the application, and questions about how we met. Other questions that came up: Where we met, whether my husband asked me out right away, where we went for our first date, when/where my husband proposed, where we had dinner, whether he got me a ring, where we got married, whether we had a reception, whether my family was there, etc. She wrote everything down.
As you can read in the post above, I found a mistake in the I-130. Yesterday, we found another one (more serious - a mistake in my husband's social security number). We mentioned it right away since I saw she had the I-130 in front of her. I had printed out a corrected I-130, but I didn't offer it, because she just corrected it on the application and wasn't bothered by it at all. She asked my husband all the questions of the applications. We then went over all the dates I've traveled, and I was happy I made a little overview for myself.
She then asked if we would like to submit any evidence showing financial and other co-mingling. We gave our phone bills, app lease, shared bank accounts, joint CD, medical/dental insurance, and car insurance proof. We forgot to show any pictures, but my husband did put it in front of her on her desk (we sat close by) so she must have seen we had some.
As I expected a good number of questions were about my (frequent) travels on tourist visas, and one incident with customs a while ago. She was ok with that, and told me it happens more often. She repeatedly asked me whether I've ever overstayed a tourist visa, and I was pretty happy that I never had. She took my word for it, since we only went over my arrival dates, and not over my departure dates.
Then the last questions were the standard ones (gambling, prostitution, polygamy etc) and added some more. She went over all of them word-by-word.
She then said that we were done, and told me she just had to review our case before she could approve it. My heart skipped a beat, since I've heard so many horror stories of people getting stuck in the system. I asked for clarification, since I wanted to know what the problem was. She just told that was just the way she worked - she didn't want to just say yes. I was kind of worried, but went with it anyway... what else can you do? I then asked her whether the FBI name check cleared, and she looked at it, and said that was all fine. I then offered to give her my EAD and AP, since I thought she would take that as well. She said she just needed my I-94, nothing else. Alright - we left the room, and drove home... I wasn't completely happy about the last part. Although our whole application was good, something just didn't feel right.
After being on the road for 10 minutes, I realized I left something in her office. We decided to drive back and get it. After waiting for a while in the waiting room, she came out with my stuff, and said: "while you're here, I actually have some more questions.." Ok, I thought, this can be good I suppose. She wanted to see recent evidence of my employment, and I gave it to her, as well as updated paystubs, since SEVIS' last report on me was from 2007. I then asked her again whether everything should be alright, and she responded that it should be pretty straightforward. She just needed some more time.
After that, my worst fears of getting stuck in the system started to take over my thoughts... I kept checking the USCIS website, but no update... until just now. It now says: "card production ordered" Best news of the day!! I assume she really just needed some more time; maybe she didn't have the time this morning to go over it completely..
Either way, everything turned out to be great! I am now so exhausted - can't wait to go to sleep. I'll have some nice dreams..
Good luck to everyone on upcoming interviews! I'll be thinking of you guys!