Citizenship Interview and Oath Ceremony
Hello,
I am happy to share the good news with you that I passed the citizenship interview this morning and attended the oath ceremony in the afternoon. This board contains very useful to me and I have been reading the posts daily since I filed my citizenship application in May 2006. Thank you all for the help and support. Please find my experiences below and hope it can be helpful to future citizenship applicant that needs to be interviewed in Baltimore:
Citizenship Interview:
Scheduled Time: 11:10am. I left my home in Rockville at 7:40 am in the morning thinking that if I arrived earlier, I might get the interview earlier. I was wrong. I arrived at the Baltimore building around 8:50am and after passing through the security check, I waited in Room 103. A lot of people that arrived after me were called and for me, I got called for interview at around 11:08am...I was let in to the interview area and the officer asked me to follow him to his office room. I was asked to swear to tell the truth then he brieftly went over my applications to verify my name, address, employment history and other information was correct. He also randomly asked me some questions like whether I paid all the taxes, have I done any illegal activieis and etc. I had decleared the traffic tickets on my N-400 form and he simply asked me whether I had paid the tickets. I answered Yes and he was cool with it, he didn't ask to see any court disposition or proof of payments for the tickets even though I had them. Then he asked me to take the Civic test because I didn't take it during FP. It was a sheet of paper with 10 questions printed and he asked me the questions verbally. It was not multiple choice. He then pointed to one of the civic questions from the exam paper to ask me to read it and then he read a simple English sentense like "She is a great teacher" and asked me to write it. That was not too difficult
The entire interview process took less than 15 minutes...
He did not bring up the name check topic but I could notice that he was looking at the computer screen so I guess he was verifying whether my name check was ok. I guess it was ok because he asked me if I wanted to attend the oath ceremony in the afternoon. I was handed two piece of papers. One is the result of the interview and the other said the oath ceremony was at 3pm and the office told me that I had to bring that paper to enter the building again. The office then shook my hand and told me congratulations when he walked me out from the interview area. He did not ask me to provide any documentation except for my marriage certificate.
I then walked to inner harbor area since the Baltimore building was very near inner harbor. I refleced my life in the US since I arrived here in 1992. It was a feeling of joy and happiness that my immigration journey was finally over and how I have grown and settled down in this wonderul nation.
Oath Ceremony:
I re-entered the building at 2:20pm. I then proceeded to Room 101. The security guard said at around 3pm, we would be escorted to 7th floor for oath ceremony. One thing to note is that Room 101 happened to be the Infopass room and I felt sympathy and the pain that every immigrant was going through because while I was waiting in Room 101, other people were waiting to be called for their Infopass appointment to find out their case status.
At 3:05pm, two lady officers asked us to go to the 7th floor for oath ceremony. There were about 60 people. We were handed some documentations and they asked us to hand over our greencards. Then the officer had some opening speeches and then asked us to take the oath. After the oath, I became US Citizen, it was 3:30pm....We then watched a video recording from President Bush to congratulate the new citizens and got a chance to sing the national anthem. Then each person was called to the front one by one and was handed over his/her citizenship certificate and a small US flag. There was a kind gentleman who was very nice and helped me take several pictures. I also had some conversations with other fellow new Americans and congratulated each other. This marked the end of the ceremony....
I was out of the building at 4:15pm and went to the parking lot to get the car. The traffic in Baltimore was pretty bad so it took me a while to get on to 395/95 South to return to my home. The parking near the Baltimore building was $12 per day. The parking lot was across the street from Fedex Kinkos....Thank you all and I wish you all the best with your application...
