Stamping Experience at Newark NJ - Must Read !

DNJ

Registered Users (C)
I got my approval stampted on June 25 (yesterday).

Newark office seems to be handeling these cases on Wed between 8-12 only.

I and my wife went at 9:00 AM, they sent us to 2nd floor

There was no line at this office i was happy that may be i will be out in 10-15 min as per some post in this forum i read before. But the lady gave me a token number and sent me to 10th floor.

When i entered there there were about 300-400 people sitting there for the same thing. My initial excitment faded away. Another thought was BCIS is really working with so many approved people waiting to get GC. So i was happy that you all guys waiting will get approved soon.


I was also glad that may be this is one of the last big waiting in the green card phase.


Some intresting info
From those 300-400 people sampling this are the stats

99 % were young people under age of 35 (and must be h1b / IT related)
95 % were married
95 + % were Indian
4 % Chines
1 % others

So i got the token at 9:09 at 2nd floor and the wait time on the toke was 2hr.

We sat at the 10 fl office for about 2 hr then they started our finger printing and were asked to sit again. then in another half an hour they called us.

Asked for following docs in order:
Please seperate your and your spouses documents seperatly they process one set at a time.

Approval notice
Passport
I94 's
EAD's
Travel Doc's
Picture (2)

Officer Verbally asked our Birthdates and asked our Mothers maiden name.

She took all this info and then said, they are going to do a background check and we need to wait till its done, they will call us by name.

So we sat and waited another half an hour and finally it was done. The officer congratulated us and said the card will take 6-12 months.

Overall the stamping experience was good, except the time which was 3 hours.

We also went to SSN office and got the Authorized to work by INS authorization only or something similar clause taken out from our SSN card. Advice: Do not go the the SSN office in the same building, because all who gets approved go there, and i wasted another 3 hours to do this, and FAT OLD Ladies in this office work like a snail. I suggest go to any other local ssn office in your area it will just take 15 min to do this job.
 
Did they also demand old APs and EADs or just the current ones. Just wondering as I have 2 EADs from I-485 (one expired), and one from F-1 Practical Training (long expired).
 
skk01

you're not suppsoed to have any old cards. It is the INS's responsibility to collect all of them from you. when i had got my first H1 visa, my practical training card was confiscated and also when i had gone for special registration, my 1st EAD card was also taken away.

when i went for passport stamping, the INS officer asked for my most recent EAD card which i said i didn't bring with me because I didn't know i had to. She said I'm not supposed to keep any cards whose use is over. Instead of asking me to destroy it (which I thought would be a logical step), She asked me to mail the card back to INS.
 
hi guys,
AS i had already mentioned in my stamping experience,it is advisible to go a little late like about 10.30 am for the stamping at newark. There is no crowd at that time.We had no waiting to get the fingerprinting done. The only wait we had was for the background check. Also no one asked me for my bdate or my mothers maiden name strange !!! There is no hurry so DONT go there at 8am and unnecesarrily waste ur time in the queue. And the security guard also mentioned that everyone will be attended to as we are all here before 12.
 
I had a different story. I did PP stamped at Baltimore office on June 10. Even I took EAD, OPT cards, the officer let me keep these cards and just wanted 2 photos, a copy of approval notice. It looks like that no standard for BCIS how to treat these cards..
 
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