Dear all,
I have been a silent observer of this forum and benefited from it tremendously. It is my turn to give back.
A history of my case:
I-140 filed in April 2002
I-485 filed in October 2002 both at Vermont center.
There are done by myself and it is a NIW case (I was still a Ph.D candidate at that time).
I-140 approved Oct 2003. Then I moved to Philly and case was transferred to Philly local in June 2004.
Received transfer notice in June from Vermont and July from local.
Received interview notice in October and interviewed on Nov 2nd.
There is something I’d like to mention before I go into the details of my interview.
My wife received her approval notice for her EAD on June 8th 2004 and our I-485 was transferred to local on the same date. So we figure this had something to do with this. So I waited a little bit and applied for EAD(even though I didn’t need it) by myself in July. I received notice but did not schedule for EAD interview until the end of September. I scheduled on Oct 14. then one week later I received interview notice for I-485.
About my interview. My case is a straight forward case. Mine is NIW with advanced degree as individual and my wife is marriage based.
I was a little worried first because I lost some of my files (including my birth certificate, certified translation of my marriage certificate and master diploma). Pretty bad. So I did talk to a lawyer. But I think they are useless. All they tell you is that you should have every damn things (if I did then I wouldn’t have need him). But later I realize that the local office should have all the original documents (I have two copies of the translated originals from my country).
So I went. We were scheduled for 1:30 but they took us in at 1:15. It looked like that the person we got was an inexperienced one. He asked for my driver license then job letter then he kept going back to the file he had on me. Then he asked for passport, old EAD card. My Ph.D diploma. Then that is it. Didn’t ask for birth certificate, not even tax return or pay stubs. I ended up giving these to him by myself (I made copy of everything, so he just stuck them into my file). He did asked what kind of research I am doing and the usual question you heard over and over again on this forum (crime, how many kid, are you a member of communist party…..) Just say no to these.
Then we moved on to my wife’s case. He asked for my original marriage certificate. When I showed him mine (which is in Chinese), he was a little bit surprised but I have a certified translation also. Then he checked her file to see whether there is anything missing. I guess we had everything in there so he didn’t ask for anything more except repeated the same routine question to her.
I hope this will benefit some people and don’t loss hope.
I will be happy to answer some questions.
Charlie