Hello all,
Hope everything is going well. After a long 12-month period of wait, I got my interview letter, scheduled for a week from the notice date. At the end of interview, the IO approved me and stamped my passport. I'll explain my whole story here and hope it helps anyone who starts this journey. I will try to write it as complete as possible so people can get a sense of the situation in case their case is similar to mine. My apologies for the wordy post!
About me, a 4th year PhD student, did my masters here in the US as well. My number was current on October and I field my files late August. NOA and biometrics arrived just on time and received my EAD in less than three months I guess (never used them though). On Dec 2015 (no interview so far), I had an info pass and I was told they have my case and I am in queue to be scheduled for an interview. My files were requested from KCC early January. I had another info pass for Jan and one on Feb and for all of them, I heard the same response. In all those cases I was referred to the same person and she was saying me that they are working on it without any further explanation. I gave it time for March and got back to them on Apr 2016 (7th month after filing my 485). This time, I got to talk to another person and explained her my situation and the 50,000 cap. She said, she will look at my case and call me but I never got any call! Based on the help from people in this forum, I tried to contact my congress-person on April after my unproductive info pass. Ten days after that, I got a response from the congressman's office, forwarding the FO's email to me, indicating that I am scheduled for an interview for late May! wooooow! that was a good news. So, I kept waiting for the interview letter to come and nothing appeared till 5 days before the indicated interview day! Luckily, I was ready for these situations so I had reserved an infopass for such situations. A 3-hour drive to the FO with the copy of email in my hand, I talked to another person in counter and he said there was no interview scheduled for me on!! So, something has gone wrong and I was miss informed about my interview! The officer I met that day kind of changed my whole DV process and rhythm! He was very supportive and gave me his number for follow up. He said they will try to push the cases when it gets closer to the deadline. He asked me to follow up with him by mid July.
I made another info pass for late June 2016 and requested to see the same person. There, he told me that my file has moved and it should soon be scheduled for an interview. I asked about Background Check and he said it is done. Two weeks passes and I get no interview letter. I drove to the FO again, without any infopass this time. I was hoping to use the kiosks there and schedule an info pass when I get there but that was a Friday in which they literally had no info pass or interview for the day. I was about to head back but saw some of the IO going to the building and explained them the situation and the fact that I have been driving for a couple of hours to get there. Luckily, they let me in and the officer I knew met me in the lobby. He went through my file and dang! The file is redirected to another department and not the interview scheduling section. He tried to reach the corresponding person but he was off that day. The bad thing was I had no clue about the reason for this back-and-forth and they did not specify either. The good thing was that officer was trying his best of best to help me and I was seeing that. Ten days passes and I call the officer I know to remind him about the case. A couple of days later, I got a call from the same person indicating that I am ready for an interview and my interview is scheduled for 9 days from that day.
Interview:
I went for my interview and interestingly I was the only customer! in the FO. I guess it was again one of the days they were trying to catch up with their work. So, apparently my interview is scheduled manually, out of the regular process!
The interview itself was very smooth and the IO was very kind. Before interview begins, when we were on the way to her office, she apologized about my case taking that long and said they barely have any DV cases and a lot of times they are not aware of the time sensitivity of the case (well, I should say I have made at least 7 info passes and in each single one brought up the time sensitivity of the cases, so probably someone was simply ignoring all these things I was saying during info passes). She even mentioned that I did a good job to remind them about the timing issue as she said there were some similar situations before and because the people did not remind them about the case, they have run out of time! Anyway, she said she is going to approve me today if everything goes well and all she needs to check is visa availability. After taking oath, she went through some documents, which were not what I sent in my package and I assume there were what they have got from other offices. One thing she checked was my medical and because I did it on Aug 2015, she said I had just a couple of more days to have it expired (six months or a year-not sure how long medical is valid!!!!!). The yes/no questions are done and she approved the case. The interview went well and I got an update about my card being ordered.
Now, my takes from this year-long journey:
- The more it went, the more I was confident that the guys/gals here know a lot about DV cases and you can trust them. Mom knows a lot. believe me and trust her. Britsimon is doing a fantastic job on a lot of those stats. Keep an eye on his blog as well. The rest are very good as well.
- Taking info passes works a lot of time. If you feel you hit a deadlock during infopasses by seeing one person who is not giving you too much information, try to talk to other people. You can eventually find the right person like I did.
- FO's do listen to congressional inquiries so requesting help from them, at the right time- not too early or late, can help.
- I forgot to mention that I did contact the Ombudsman and they did follow up with the FO as well. I am not sure if that was effective or not but I got multiple correspondences from them indicating that they are in contact with my FO.
- If you have filed your case for more than a year or close (like me), it is worth taking another medical before you show up for the interview, as in my case, medical was specifically one thing the IO was paying attention.
At the end, I like to thank the awesome people here, who are helping the rest without expecting anything in return:
Mom, Britsimon, ShuseiQQ, and the rest I have not mentioned, keep it up! you guys rock!
Good luck.
