jrseyshawn
Registered Users (C)
Hey boy and girls,
So the day i have been waiting for the past few months finally came last Wednesday, i was pretty nervous going in for whatever reason and come Wednesday morning i was up bright and early on a rainy day. My wife left the house at 7 in the morning to go get her license updated so it shows her new last name and i was getting ready for our 1:30 appt by playing a couple of madden 2007 games on my XBox 360. then after she came in we decided to go the the local diner to get some breakfast. anyway after all that we left home around noon to get to the Newark federal building with some time to spare. Just to give a slight back ground on myself. I first arrived in the U.S in 1990 on a G-1(both parents still work for the UN), then was on a G-4 and switched to an F-1 in 1998 and i have been out of status since 2001. this by the way was the root to all my nervousness even though i was confident about process.
on our way there my lawyer called and said that she was stuck in traffic and was running a bit late. She wanted us to tell the person at the counter that she is on our way and not to call us in until she got there. we checked in with security and was at the counter at about 12:50. We told the lady that the lawyer was on the way and she stamped our appointment letter and asked us to hand it in when the lawyer arrived. So it was almost 1:30 and my lawyer was still not there so i decided to go ahead and hand over the appointment letter. My lawyer arrived a few minutes after that. she went over all the paperwork and then we weremaking small talk. i had asked the lady at the counter when the waiting time was when i handed the paper in and she mentioned that it was at-least 3-4 hours and i was preparing myself to get bored out of my mind or have a nervous breakdown waiting for those hours to pass.
Well shortly after the time passed 230 i hear my name called on the PA system. for a minute it felt like i was at heavens gate and St. Peter had just called my name. So we walk up to the door and it was a young lady probably in her early 30's. Her name was Ms. Campbell. the Lawyer and my wife was the first in the door and they greeted her with a "good afternoon" to which her reply was pretty much similar to someone who was forced to say good afternoon under gun point.I was thought to myself that we had an a$$ for a Immig. officer.
Anyway, so we go in to her cube are which to my suprise was a pretty nice area. she asked us to raise our right hand and swore us in. So the first question to us was a general question, which was how we met and i looked at my wife and said..."you wanna answer that?", to which she answered that we had met online on E-Harmony, in my estimation the whole interview lasted about 20 minutes and was extremely plesent. there was no grilling and she did not have a condesending personality. at one point me and my wife got in to a debate about profiling at airports.(can't remember how it came about) the only thing i can remember is my lawyers face turning red. just to let you all know my wife is far left leaning liberal and i am more of a moderate liberal. after a min i realized where i was and turned to the officer and said "sorry about that" to which she replied..."no prob i love to hear these types of conversations" Other questions she had asked us were; where our first date was, My I-94, if we wanted to buy a house, proof of living together(gave our lease), copies of our ING acct, I also had printed out the benifits for 2007 from my company Intranet which has my wife on my medical starting in Jan. i had also designated her as my benificiary for the company provided life insurance and 401K, her pay stubs, my pay stubs, i also handed the last 3 of my tax forms along with the pay stubs and she said that we made a pretty good living and thats not that common.(between the 2 of us we make about 250K per year), she also asked if we had pictures and took 2 of them which we picked out. I do have to say again that the lady never asked us any direct questions. All her questions were either general in nature or were comments she made about us. After about 15 minutes she said ok i'm done and asked us to wait outside till got some stuff together. we sat outside for about 5 minutes before she opened the door and peeked out. she said "i'm not as slow as you thought now was i?" then she said "i have approved your application and stamped your passport". told us about the conditions of the approval since we have not been married for 2 years. told me that i should receive my green card within 2-3 weeks. i thin my wife was more excited than i am when the lady said that i was approved. LOL i think i was more stunned regarding the speed of the process and how smoothly everything went thru. One thing i forgot to mention was she noted that i still had not changed my tax status to married on my paystub. Actually i had done this a few days before tha interview but did not say anything since the process was moving smoothly and did not want to sound like i was lying.
So all in all it was a great day. we were out of the place and having a cigarette by 245 letting out any stres that was built in. LOL we were in such a good mood that night that we ended up going and trading in my wife's car for a new SUV. well we were actually looking in to that for a while.
So that was pretty much it. just to give you guys a timeline(i'm not good with the abbreviations some of you guys have) here goes. I even received an e-mail saying that the welcome letter was mailed on the same day.
Lawyer filed application and was received my MSC on 8/21
Confirmation notice sent to me on 8/29
had biomentics taken on 9/14
interview letter received on 10/15 (interview on 12/13)
Approval of EAD E-mail received on 11/10
11/22 EAD received
12/13 Interview Approved and passport stamped!!!
12/13 E-mail confirming Welcome letter being mailed
12/18 Waiting for Actual green card
So the day i have been waiting for the past few months finally came last Wednesday, i was pretty nervous going in for whatever reason and come Wednesday morning i was up bright and early on a rainy day. My wife left the house at 7 in the morning to go get her license updated so it shows her new last name and i was getting ready for our 1:30 appt by playing a couple of madden 2007 games on my XBox 360. then after she came in we decided to go the the local diner to get some breakfast. anyway after all that we left home around noon to get to the Newark federal building with some time to spare. Just to give a slight back ground on myself. I first arrived in the U.S in 1990 on a G-1(both parents still work for the UN), then was on a G-4 and switched to an F-1 in 1998 and i have been out of status since 2001. this by the way was the root to all my nervousness even though i was confident about process.
on our way there my lawyer called and said that she was stuck in traffic and was running a bit late. She wanted us to tell the person at the counter that she is on our way and not to call us in until she got there. we checked in with security and was at the counter at about 12:50. We told the lady that the lawyer was on the way and she stamped our appointment letter and asked us to hand it in when the lawyer arrived. So it was almost 1:30 and my lawyer was still not there so i decided to go ahead and hand over the appointment letter. My lawyer arrived a few minutes after that. she went over all the paperwork and then we weremaking small talk. i had asked the lady at the counter when the waiting time was when i handed the paper in and she mentioned that it was at-least 3-4 hours and i was preparing myself to get bored out of my mind or have a nervous breakdown waiting for those hours to pass.
Well shortly after the time passed 230 i hear my name called on the PA system. for a minute it felt like i was at heavens gate and St. Peter had just called my name. So we walk up to the door and it was a young lady probably in her early 30's. Her name was Ms. Campbell. the Lawyer and my wife was the first in the door and they greeted her with a "good afternoon" to which her reply was pretty much similar to someone who was forced to say good afternoon under gun point.I was thought to myself that we had an a$$ for a Immig. officer.
Anyway, so we go in to her cube are which to my suprise was a pretty nice area. she asked us to raise our right hand and swore us in. So the first question to us was a general question, which was how we met and i looked at my wife and said..."you wanna answer that?", to which she answered that we had met online on E-Harmony, in my estimation the whole interview lasted about 20 minutes and was extremely plesent. there was no grilling and she did not have a condesending personality. at one point me and my wife got in to a debate about profiling at airports.(can't remember how it came about) the only thing i can remember is my lawyers face turning red. just to let you all know my wife is far left leaning liberal and i am more of a moderate liberal. after a min i realized where i was and turned to the officer and said "sorry about that" to which she replied..."no prob i love to hear these types of conversations" Other questions she had asked us were; where our first date was, My I-94, if we wanted to buy a house, proof of living together(gave our lease), copies of our ING acct, I also had printed out the benifits for 2007 from my company Intranet which has my wife on my medical starting in Jan. i had also designated her as my benificiary for the company provided life insurance and 401K, her pay stubs, my pay stubs, i also handed the last 3 of my tax forms along with the pay stubs and she said that we made a pretty good living and thats not that common.(between the 2 of us we make about 250K per year), she also asked if we had pictures and took 2 of them which we picked out. I do have to say again that the lady never asked us any direct questions. All her questions were either general in nature or were comments she made about us. After about 15 minutes she said ok i'm done and asked us to wait outside till got some stuff together. we sat outside for about 5 minutes before she opened the door and peeked out. she said "i'm not as slow as you thought now was i?" then she said "i have approved your application and stamped your passport". told us about the conditions of the approval since we have not been married for 2 years. told me that i should receive my green card within 2-3 weeks. i thin my wife was more excited than i am when the lady said that i was approved. LOL i think i was more stunned regarding the speed of the process and how smoothly everything went thru. One thing i forgot to mention was she noted that i still had not changed my tax status to married on my paystub. Actually i had done this a few days before tha interview but did not say anything since the process was moving smoothly and did not want to sound like i was lying.
So all in all it was a great day. we were out of the place and having a cigarette by 245 letting out any stres that was built in. LOL we were in such a good mood that night that we ended up going and trading in my wife's car for a new SUV. well we were actually looking in to that for a while.
So that was pretty much it. just to give you guys a timeline(i'm not good with the abbreviations some of you guys have) here goes. I even received an e-mail saying that the welcome letter was mailed on the same day.
Lawyer filed application and was received my MSC on 8/21
Confirmation notice sent to me on 8/29
had biomentics taken on 9/14
interview letter received on 10/15 (interview on 12/13)
Approval of EAD E-mail received on 11/10
11/22 EAD received
12/13 Interview Approved and passport stamped!!!
12/13 E-mail confirming Welcome letter being mailed
12/18 Waiting for Actual green card