Oath ceremony tomorrow - what to expect?

V

vegiemite

Registered Users (C)
I have my oath ceremony tomorrow morning. I have been trying to find some info on what I should expect but haven't had much luck as yet.

I have a friend who had her ceremony a couple of years ago and she talked about a 6 hour ceremony! I am thinking they have been streamlining many other areas of the whole process so I imagine this might be true of the oath ceremony as well but not sure. Mine will be in San Diego and it seems like they are having monthly ceremonies now so will it be a little shorter?

Any input on what to expect would be appreciated and I will post my experience after tomorrow.

Thanks,
Jon
 
It really depends on the number of people and organization of the ceremony. When I was taking mine in February in LA, I was out after two hours - there were 5000 people taking oath that day. My appointment was at 1PM - I was there earlier because everybody wanted to park at the convention center where ceremony was taking place and the traffic was stuck. From 1 to 2PM they were letting people in and processing them at the desks in the venue. Then the actual ceremony started at 2PM and the whole thing was for about 30-40 min. After that, small groups of people were directed to go back to desks to get citizenship certificates. I was out of the venue and in my car by 3PM - total time there 2hours 20 minutes...

But I also heard that sometimes ceremonies take longer. Your mileage may vary...
 
Cool, thanks for the quick response. I am supposed to be there by 8:30am so hopefully it will only take a couple of hours. I was going to suggest San Diego might have less people but I don't know that that would be true necessarily. I guess I'll find out tomorrow. Did you take all your immigration paperwork with you or just your green card, license and any travel documents you have?
 
I took my paperwork just in case but I wasn't asked for it. The only things I needed was the oath letter, green card and travel document... The rest wasn't necessary.

I think San Diego probably would have less people but you never know... Prepare to spend a couple of hours and you should be fine.

Good luck tomorrow! And congratulations!!!
 
Not sure if you'll see this tonight. Did they want your passport from your prior country or citizenship? I am currently Australian and will be able to have dual citizenship as far as I understand. What are travel documents - any type of reentry permit or initial entry forms?
 
vegiemite said:
Not sure if you'll see this tonight. Did they want your passport from your prior country or citizenship? I am currently Australian and will be able to have dual citizenship as far as I understand. What are travel documents - any type of reentry permit or initial entry forms?
Click to expand...
vegiemite,
Relax, at the oath ceremony, nobody wants , needs, or cares about your current passport. All they need is to retrieve the previous documents issued by the USCIS becuase you no longer would need them as a US citizen. Usually those documents needed are the green card, the letter of oath ceremony, maybe your driver license as an ID , and if you had any advance parole documents of re-entry permits. sometimes they don't even ask for the re-entry permits. Relax , everything will be fine and you will love that great feeling of becoming a proud US citizen.
Congratulations!!
 
Sweet! Thanks for the info. I am not too stressed just don't want to get this far and then find out I don't have something they want and have to reschedule the ceremony.
 
vegiemite said:
Sweet! Thanks for the info. I am not too stressed just don't want to get this far and then find out I don't have something they want and have to reschedule the ceremony.
Click to expand...
You won't have to reschedule , i guarantee you that. they are very very nice and easy going once you reach the ceremony. the road was rigid before getting the oath letter. but once you made it that far, you are safe my friend. Please let me know how did everything go in details tomorrow.
good luck
 
Well it went great. Got there about 7:30 and the line was already long! Got in line and at about 8:15 it started moving. All up there were 1600 people and it took until 10 to get everyone in, registered and in their seats. As said above, very simple and straightforward and low stress. I guess at this point it is just the formality of getting your certificate and they've already approved you so they aren't looking for paperwork. All they wanted was my green card and my oath letter. Gave in my green card and took a seat. The ceremony itself took about an hour. The judge presiding over the event had a good sense of humor and made it enjoyable. Going through the nations represented was pretty cool, and the judge purposely skipped over both Mexico and Philippines which elicited a lot of "You forgot..." from the respective countries' people. After the ceremony, we were dismissed row by row (first in line to enter, first out the door at the end) and went to a desk to receive our certificate, check for accuracy and sign it. And that was it. Needless to say, a great day and very glad to be a citizen.

Jon
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top