Garden City Interview Today
Apologies if I’m hijacking your thread, Vorpal, but I don’t see a point in creating one with the same title. I’ll paste this in the NYC thread as well.
I don’t own a car so I took the LIRR, a very quick ride from Jamaica station. I’m also an avid walker so I walked the rest of the way to 711 Stewart Ave. Country Life Press, rather than Garden City, is the best station to get off at if you want to do this. I recommend it, it’s a good way to clear one’s head before the interview. It’s about a 30 minute walk through a wealthy suburban neighborhood. You will feel American even before you arrive at your naturalization interview: stately homes, freshly mowed lawns, white picket fences, stars and stripes aplenty. (Rumor has it that John McCain owns 10 or 11 houses here
).
As Vorpal reports, you want the east side of 711 for USCIS. There is a large parking lot across from Ethan Allen. I arrived at 9 am, half an hour before my scheduled interview. Then I went through a typically useless USCIS procedure: people had to line up on the first floor to get a stamp on their interview letter from the lady at window 6, and then go to the second floor to drop off the interview letter at another desk. I mean, all this person does is stamp “received” on the letter, which could as easily be done upstairs when you drop it off. They could free up the salary line for window 6, hire another adjudicator, and process that many more applications. But I guess that wouldn’t make any sense by USCIS logic.
Second floor waiting area was indeed “slammed” as Vorpal says. I hadn’t expected this so early in the morning. But it actually thinned out as the morning wore on. I guess they book a lot of appointments for first thing in the morning and gradually get through them. As for cell phones, I did see signs prohibiting their use, and didn’t witness anyone using one (though security didn’t care if you brought one in). As for attire, I dressed conservatively but there were many people in blue jeans, quite a few in flip flops or sandals, even one guy in torn jeans and a studded belt and another in a tank top and a do-rag.
Second floor system works like this: you drop your letter in a box and take a seat. A clerk occasionally comes round and empties the box, then distributes the letters to the officers (or possibly hands a batch of letters to a single officer as they run low). Other clerks could be seen retrieving the files (all in brown folders) corresponding to the letters. There are many officers, I would say 25 or 30, who keep popping into the waiting area clutching letters and calling names out, which is what you’re waiting for. I waited about an hour and a half, but quite a few people who came in after me were called earlier, since the system is somewhat random. If you can, sit close to the “box”; this is where the majority of the officers appear. Some mumble, some are quiet, some are impatient, and some just can’t pronounce a non-Anglo-Saxon name to save their life. It would be very easy to miss your name if you’re sitting far away, or in the bathroom, etc. Definitely pee before you go to the second floor.
I also thought of the following trick while I was waiting: If you were to make a small mark with a colored marker on the back of your IL, you would definitely notice it when the officer comes into the waiting area. (Is this defacing government property?) Since some of the officers are holding 3 or 4 interview letters, you might even notice your letter at the back of the pile, and know who will be interviewing you an hour beforehand. It’s a way to pass the time. At Garden City, since there are so many new hires, the prize is to land a senior officer (as Vorpal did) so that you can hopefully get same day approval. It’s a little unsettling: I found that I was apprehensive every time the pretty young lady officer appeared, and rather kept hoping that the old fat white dude would call my name.
I wound up with a thirty-something African-American woman, and her office made it pretty clear that she wasn’t very senior (makeshift cubicles stuffed into a back room; it was actually difficult to hear her because there were two other interviews going on right beside me). She was polite but totally business. No small talk or personal connections were going to happen. She administered the following brief oath: “Are you going to tell the truth?” She asked for my Green Card and Passport—no other documents throughout the whole interview, even though I had the full JohnnyCash arsenal in my bag. Then immediately to the English test. I read the same paragraph that Vorpal mentioned, and then wrote:
1. I vote for good government.
2. I want to be an American citizen.
3. Today is a nice day.
(2 and 3 are in fact true, but I can’t do 1 until I get an oath letter grrrr
).
I then answered the following questions (correctly):
1. What do the stripes on the flag mean?
2. What do we celebrate on July 4th?
3. What are the first 10 amendments to the Constitution called?
4. Name one right guaranteed by the 1st amendment.
5. Who helped the Pilgrims?
rolleyes:This is such a ridiculous question. Are we in kindergarten? The Pilgrims shot the natives and gave them smallpox)
6. Name some countries that were our enemies in WWII.
7. What is the executive of a state government called?
8. How long is the President elected for?
9. Who elects the President?
10. How many members are there in the House of Representatives?
She then proceeded to literally
WHIZ through my N-400. She confirmed the occasional answer—my address, my place of employment, my marriage, my kid—but mostly just madly checked items. When she got to Part 7 (travel), although I have taken a few trips since applying, she only asked for the most recent one and jotted that down on the form. She read many but not all questions in Part 10 (she did ask all of H, of course), and oddly stressed the question, DO YOU HAVE ANY MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS?
I then signed the form with my physical details for the oath ceremony as well as my originally submitted photographs (she didn't ask for new ones). There was no margin on my photos; she had me sign vertically in the “white space” above my left shoulder, which she rubbed down with a pencil eraser. Signature was normal, not cursive.
All the above took about 7 minutes. The remainder of the time I sat there quietly while she very quickly thumbed through every page of my A-file. It’s pretty clear that these junior officers have a lot of pressure on them to adjudicate many applications and aren’t given adequate time to prepare. While I was in the waiting area, I could see into the larger offices of some senior officers, who were clearly spending time reviewing files
before stepping out and calling the applicant. This officer, who I would guess had about 15 minutes allotted per application, did the reverse: English and Civics, then review the application, then scan the A-file for any inconsistencies.
I was spared one major headache today. I’ve had no worries about my application being (eventually) approved, but I was very nervous about the “dual A-file” issue. During the course of my relationship with the INS and USCIS, I have been assigned no fewer than three A-numbers. Many people on this forum have reported finding out at their interview that a decision could not be made because their various A-files had yet to be “consolidated,” a process that seems to take anywhere from two months to two years beyond the interview. When I saw the file in front of my AO, I was worried at first: it was thick, which was reassuring, but it was a single file with my current A# as the title. But as she scanned the file, I saw how it was put together: on the left side of the file, attached by a two-hole fastener, was all the documentation pertaining to my naturalization and permanent residency applications, while on the right side of the file, attached with another two-hole fastener, was a thinner pile of documents that I recognized as old EADs, APs, etc (under the other A#s). Atop this second pile was a transcript, which appeared to show my name three times, each with a different A#. (Strangely there was a fourth row on this transcript with a name that was only marginally similar to my own: same first letters, similar consonants, but Spanish whereas mine is English??? Is this some weird namecheck match? She did ask me if I’d used any other names. Perhaps it was just an issue with the printout though.)
As you may have guessed, the end result on my N-652 was that I passed, and that my “application has been
recommended for approval.” She confirmed that she doesn’t approve applications herself. I asked for some clarification on the process, how long it would take, how I could check up on it, etc, but she just told me, “I put it in a box and then I don’t know what happens to it.”
I expressed my anxiety over being able to register to vote before Oct. 10th, but she wasn’t very interested.
Anyway, although I would have rather had instant senior AO approval, I’m happy
with the result, which is infinitely better than finding out that they couldn’t locate one or another of my A-files. No question that the interview is the biggest hurdle to clear, and now it’s over. Thanks to everybody here, especially Vorpal, Bobsmyth, JohnnyCash, and all on the NYC thread, for support, advice, commiseration, and many helpful discussions.
Oh, by the way, best of luck tomorrow, Bobsmyth (Raleigh/Durham) and zkar (Garden City)!
