Bloomington, MN/ USCIS District Office
My interview was on 8/20/09, Thursday 1:50pm. Interivew materials were well-prepared. Went into the interview with an officier obviously an immigrant herself. She's very tough and even rude to me since the beginning, askied me about my nationality, and wanted me to clarify why my nationality "Taiwan" is not printed on the passport, and I had to explained about that how USA identified the country as "Taiwan", instead of Republic of China on the front page of my passport. I was finally able to point out the country code on the F-1 visa US issued as "TWN", then she's ok with it. Second issue, she's going on my trips of leaving the country. Apparently she didn't read the lines between N-400 application herself. So I had to do another calculation and explained about my total trips out of US for the past 5 years and the trip I took after my permanent residency. Which there were only 2 for the past 5 years and only 1 after my permanent residency. The entire time, her strong accent made me wonder how she could pass the language test herself. I spoke pretty fluent and accent-free English myself and have always worked with people from all over the world, but I had really difficult time to understand her throughout the entire interview. Third issue she railed on me really hard was about my student visa back in 2003. Since her accent is so strong, I couldn't understand a word of what she's saying, I asked her to repeat the question a couple times. Finally I felt she just lost it, she started to treat me like I was illegal to get in the country through my student visa, which is totally not true. Finally I realized her question, she wanted to know if I had ever violated the student visa that the US government issued to me. So I repeated the wording she gave me and clearly answered: "No, I had never violated the student visa that the US goverment issued to me"...then she let go the topic. I felt she's trying to trick me into saying something very wrong. Meanwhile she was writing everything down on the copy of N-400. We went through the reading and writing test. Then she said she would ask the entire 6 questions of the civic test. So she did. I had past the tests. At the end, she said she would like to go over the application answers again, so she asked me one more time about the student visa (Obviously, she's not satisified about my answers earlier.) This time, fortunatelly, she asked the right question, and I was able to understand her correctly. She asked: "Have I ever worked in US illegally under your student visa?" So I answered: "No, I had never worked in US illegally under my student visa." Finally she smiled, and wrote the entire sentence down word by word on the copy of N-400, then she said: "This is the exact answer I was looking for." Phew~ Thank Goodness! She congratulated me, and said I had past the tests. She gave me the N-652 with the application is recommended to get approval checked (You may wonder, the N-652 was printed in it's own letterhead without the N-652 printed on it. And [X] were pre-printed. But she used her red ballpoint pen "X" out the choices one more time.) Even after my interview, I was still not very certain about the outcome of this interview since she's so tough on me. Until 8/26/09 Wed., I had received the oath notice N-445, the big stone in my mind was finally disappeared. My entire wait time is 139 days till the oath date. I was lucky no matter what. I appreciate this forum, how many reading materials had provided me. In the most luckiest date 9/9/09....I will become an U.S citizen. Timeline is attached. Hopefully that will be helpful to the new immigrants.
04/21/09 (0) N-400 sent
04/23/09 (0) RD
04/27/09 (4) ND
05/05/09 (12) FP/Bio notice
05/29/09 (36) FP/Bio
07/06/09 (74) Rec'd Interview notice
08/20/09 (119) Interview (Pass w/N-652)
08/25/09 (124) N-445 Oath ND
08/26/09 (125) N-445 RD
09/09/09 (139) Oath ceremony in MN disctrict court, Minneapolis, MN
Total Wait Time: 4 Months 19 Days
