My Interview experience
I had my interview today and here are the details:
The interview was scheduled for 7:15 am at the LA downtown Field Office (300 N. Los Angeles st.), I went and scoped the area last week for parking etc., there is a parking garage right across from the USCIS building, it opens at 4:00 am and closes at 5:00 pm, this is the closest public parking available. Note that the Parking garage is closed on all federal holidays and probably weekends as well. This garage is located in the basement of the mall called Los Angeles Mall and the parking garage only accepts cash, no checks or credit cards.
I reached the building after parking the car at 6:45 am and there was already a line of about 30-40 people in front of the building, note that there are two separate lines, one for infopass appointments and the other for interviews. The line for the infopass appeared much shorter, I got in the interview line and the line was not moving much, I was getting worried about whether I was going to be in time for the 7:15 appt, I went to the guard to say that my appt. was at 7:15 am and the line was pretty long, he said go back and stand in the line, I went back hoping that it moves, by about 7:00 am there were about another 30 people behind me. The line started moving really quickly at 7:00 am and that is when I realized that they did not open the doors for public until 7:00 am, so there is not point getting there much before 7:00 am unless you enjoy the morning chill in the open air with traffic buzzing by.
I went through security and I put the backpack in the scanner, I had all my files in the backpack. They did allow the cellphone to be carried into the building and into USCIS office. I went up to the 6th floor where the citizenship office is located and the guard looked at my IL and asked me to drop it in a tray in front of window 1 and I did that and settled into a chair, I noticed that the guard was not allowing people in even those who had appt at 7:30, he was asking them to come back at 7:15 and he was very tough with people that wanted to come in and wait for the interview, he said to couple of people "you heard me!". There were about 20 people waiting in the room by the time I was called in and some of them were there for infopass appts.
I was called in at about 7:20 a.m by the IO and he did not even say "hi" and I was thinking he is going to be tough but he turned out be the opposite, he was very pleasant and jovial by the end of the interview, I followed him to his office, he asked my for my green card and drivers license and these were the only two things he asked me during the whole process, he went and made copies of them and returned them to me. He put me under oath, after filling in some paperwork and browsing through the file, his first question was about my name in the app and asked if I used any other names, I said I never changed my last name but my first name was listed in couple of ways in the immigration documents with the format "Firstname Middlename Lastname" and I only listed "FirstnameMiddlename Lastname" in the app., he nodded and he was ok with that, he started going through my app. really quickly, he confirmed that I was still at the same address, work for the employer I listed in the app., he confirmed that I was still married and that was my only marriage, he asked the same about my wife and he asked whether I have any kids, I said no and that is when he started joking, why not?, you should have them soon etc. and I said I need my wife's health to get better etc,. and this led into discussions about Indians being vegetarians and how he thought they were healthy in general etc., we had some more discussion about vegetarianism at the end of the interview as well. He continued with the app. and asked if I had any drunk driving tickets and he also asked if I have any pending traffic tickets and I said no but I got one after I applied for citizenship and he confirmed if I got that resolved, I said I took traffic school and paid the fine, he said that is fine, FYI, I did not list any my other traffic tickets on the app. After this he started asking me the civics question, here are some of the questions
What colors are the stripes on the flag?
What is the capital of United States?
What is the capital of Caliornia?
Who nominates the supreme court justices?
When was the constitution written?
Who is the head of a state government?
What was the 49th state to be added to the Union?
Name some countries that were enemies of US in world war II?
What is the minimum voting age in United States?
How many branches are there in the government or what are the three branches of the government? I cannot recall the exact question
After I answered these questions, he asked me to write "They came to the United States to live" on the paper, after that he browsed through my file again and he asked me to sign the photos with pen and also asked me to sign the app. he completed his paperwork and marked the app. approved and he filled in some other paperwork and he gave me form N-652(Naturalization Interview Results) and marked the box that said "You passed the tests of English and U.S. history and government" and marked the space which said, Congratulations!, your application has been recommended for approval. He said congratulations you passed and should be getting the oath letter in 90 days but possibly sooner and that was it and I was in and out of his office in 20 mins.
I think a lot depends on the attitude of the IO, I heard another IO in the room across where I was having the interview, he was talking pretty tough(almost rude) with an Indian lady and her English was pretty good but not 100% fluent, he was almost yelling at her for every question and repeating the questions impatiently while the lady was trying to answer him, he should not be working at a job that needs interaction with people all day, I felt bad for the lady and I hope she passed the interview.
As far as the documentation, I took most of the documents that I could gather, refer to the "Sticky" thread that lists what documents to take for the interview, thanks to JohnnyCash for the comprehensive list of documents that are needed for the interview. I did not have the I-140 copy, employers letter(I took last 4 paychecks from the employer) or old traffic ticket dispositions.
I owe a big thanks to the contributors of this forum and Mr. Khanna for having this forum. Also, thanks to Pump for posting his LA downtown interview experience and that helped me a lot as well.
