Milwaukee Oath. Is this a joke?

[WouldBeCitizen]

So I drove my wife to Oath ceremony today. They said come at 8 AM. Reading the posts here, we went there by 7.30 AM and put the car in a private garage for $6. The doors were locked and were open oNLY at 8 AM. Going through the metal detectors etc, we were asked to go to 3rd floor room and the oath would begin at 9 AM. My wife went in and we were asked to sit in the back seats reserved for families. Yeah, anyone can go in.

The room is so small hardly 80 people can sit. Judge came at 9.10 AM read something and asked everyone to stand up. Raise your hand and repeat after me, he said and read the oath. Then it is over. THAT WAS IT. I asked a couple of guys, about the time from interview to oath. Each guy has a different time frame. One guy had a month, another 4 months and so on. The guys I saw at interview are missing. My wife's total time line is now 4.5 months.

Applied - 12/29/03
PD - Jan 04
FP - Feb 04
Interview - March 04
Oath - May 13/04

For me all the above are the same except the oath. I am waiting for the oath letter still, as you are already aware.

No video, no sign language interpreter no nothing. I wonder if anyone repeated correctly or not. I asked my wife if she did. Her reply? "Yeah, but what does it matter?" Hmmm... we were out of the building by 9.30 AM.

Here are the lessons learned.
1. If your oath is at 8 am, you can go as late as 8.55 AM. Really this is a better time to go because parking would be easy on downtown streets of Milwaukee (allowed only from 8 AM onwards). And do not have to stand in line for metal detectors or picking up packets.
2. The whole ceremony will not take more than 45 minutes from start to end.
3. There is also some reception (cookies and coffee).
4. Do not have to carry ANYTHING except green card and oath letter. NO one asked for passport. Passport may be required and we carried it but it is 99% useless. It would be required ONLY if your plastic green card is missing or if you never received one.
5. There are NO passport applications. Voter registration is done before oath ceremony and you can do that right with the people who sit there.
6. This whole process looked like a joke to me because it took 10 to 20 serious minutes in the court and it is like just going to bathroom and emptying bowels.
7. You DO NOT HAVE TO SIGN your citizenship certificate there. You can bring it home and sign it later. There are instructions enclosed.

I know I am ranting because I did not get the oath letter but the whole process I have imagined (Video by Bush, speech by judge, mentioning of each country guys present in the ceremony etc etc) is different from this one. You can go liesurely in shorts (one guy came in shorts) and running shoes as well. No more than a jolly trip downtown for sight seeing - er the court house.

Now the joke part - I cannot believe I am married to an American Citizen LOL

 

[Rahul Kumar]

I cannot believe I am married to an American Citizen

Now thats some positive thinking.
Can u videotape the ceremony?

 

[WouldBeCitizen]

Videotaping, yes. Any sort of camera is allowed inside. But the catch is that, you have to sit far behind the candidates enclosure. So you can only see the back of the guys taking oath. At least in Milwaukee it is so.

I saw one lady using digital camera. And there are several others. Nobody tried videotaping it; may be because they did not think it fit. Believe me, it is NOT fit enough for videotaping. After sapping all the energy out of us for months, they will give a piece of paper and it is not worth anything like taping. A couple of pictures are fine, methinks.

I plan to grow my uneven beard from the day I get the oath letter to the day I go there and use torn jeans, t-shirt and dirty sports shoes. Also want to tape all my left hand fingers to my palm (Except the middle one to show them, like the character does in Seinfeld to George) and put a bandage over it to project it as a soft tissue injury!

You know my blood is already at 200 degrees centigrade. I can tell you why with a simple reason. I tried to ask if they have more ceremonies scheduled this month, they said it all depends on how many people are ready to take oath! These guys ought to avoid any direct answers and ought to work for the Indian Tax people. A perfect fit.