rajeevtherunner
Interview In San Jose Office
e-mail message sent by rajeevtherunner
on 09/27/01
Ciba,
Thanks a lot for all the work you have put into this excellent
Web site. The least I can do is share my experience for you
and all the others like me who have waited for so long to get
their "green" cards.
My handle is rajeevtherunner and your local interview list has
me down for interview on Sep 5, 2001. Here is what happened:
The appointment was for 12:30. My wife and I showed up at the
San Jose office at about 12:15 pm My lawyer showed up soon after.
We went in and were instructed to go up to Room 219 where we
dropped our interview letters in a tray in Window #2. We waited
for more than an hour (highly unusual as we later found out) before
being called. The officer\'s name was Robert Leigh (shades of the
Civil War) and he had been given our case because they were running
late that day since a few officers had not come in. He normally
handled marriage fraud cases but was given our that day.
We were sworn in and then he opened my file to find out why the case
had been shipped to SJ. I had had a misdemeanor sometime in 1986/87 but
had the good luck to have the charge stricken off the police records
after a year. When filing for I-485 I had included a letter from the
city\'s Police Dept that their search from 1989 to the present had not
yielded any info about me. Subsequent to the filing I received another
letter from the local Court that their records only extended back for
11 years from any date (hence the search from 1989 to 1999). My file in
front of the IIO had a letter from an IIO in Laguna Niguel asking me to
get clearance for the years 1986-1989. When I handed the IIO the second
letter he acknowledged that there was no way to get info that old and
the INS would never have known had I not owned up. He thanked me for
my honesty.
My wife had not taken a few shots (we even had an RFE in Feb about that)
but the IIO never went that far. He was about to stamp our passports (he
had already taken away our EADs and APs) when he noticed a particular
date on one of my forms. This date (July 25, 2001) was the date INS had
sent the CIA a query about me. An internal INS memo barred IIOs from
taking any action until 60 days had passed and the CIA had not replied.
He apologized saying that he could not stamp our passports until Sep 26,
2001 and he gave us a new appt for 10 am yesterday (Sep 26). We were there
at 10 am sharp and were out by 10:30 am having acquired a few stamped
lines and a few squiggles of a pen that ushered us into the world of US
Permanent Residency.
My particulars:
GC-I application PD: May 13, 1997
GC-I EDD cleared: Sep 1997
GC-I Labor cleared: May 1998
GC-I I-140 filed (req for EB2): May 1998
GC-I I-140 for EB2 refused: Mar 1999
GC-I I-140 for EB3 filed: Mar 1999
GC-II application PD: Aug 08, 1998
GC-II EDD cleared: Jan 1999
GC-II Labor cleared: Apr 23, 1999
GC-I EB3 I-140 approved: Nov 26, 1999
GC-II EB2 I-140 approved: Nov 26, 1999
I-485 RD: Jan 4, 2000
RFE (tax recs, emp letter etc.): Feb 2001
Xferred to SJ for local interview: Apr 10, 2001
Local Interview notice received: July 7, 2001
Local Interview held: Sep 5, 2001
Actual stamping in passport: Sep 26, 2001
rajeevtherunner