hope74 said:
This is Forlucy,
Your friend applied under I245 and had her interview .Was she working with the sponsoring company or some one else.Could u pls post the interview too,how it went.
Thanks
Hope74 - thanks for replying to my message. I am the sponsoring employer and she is not working for met yet. Our plan was once she got her GC, she would go home to Ukraine for 3 months and then return to work for me. She has temporary work authorization (which she's had renewed 3 times while waiting for this hideous process) and is working for someone else right now. She is doing eldercare right now. I want her for child care.
Here's what I remember of the interview:
We arrived at 9 for a 10 o'clock appointment and were called about 10:45 AM. We had a lovely youngish blonde interviewer who allowed me to attend the interview. Although I had brought an affidavit of support and all of my tax returns, she was only interested in my friend's tax returns, her birth certificate, marriage license and her late husband's death certificate, and translations for all. She asked for her passport and my letter of continued employment interest.
Then, instead of accepting my friend's original (expired) visa which showed she entered the country in 1995 and never left, she wanted some other proof that she was in the country on December of 2000. Back then, my friend didn't have any credit cards or utilities in her own name and was suddenly panicked how to prove she was here. Then she remembered she had a passbook savings account. I asked the examiner if we could leave and return with the book. The examiner said "sure" and we went to Queens, retrieved the book which showed a deposit during the time frame in question and returned to lower Manhattan about 1:30. The examiner saw us through the glass doors and motioned for me to bring her the passbook savings book. She looked at it, took copies we had made on our way back, and returned my friends passport, which she had held. She wrote on the passport that her 245i application was pending. She told me it was just a waiting game now for the visa and that since my friend is domestic help (unskilled), she's in the "other workers" category and it will be a while. I said something like, "you mean it could be another year?" And she said, "no, not that long." But I'm very worried.
If you have any other questions, please ask away.
Btw, on the way back to 26 Federal Plaza, the security guy confiscated my daughter’s child’s scissors that were in my purse, which I had with me all morning when we’d been at the initial interview. I tried to get them back on my exit of the building, and they told me once they take something it cannot be returned.