Despite the fact that our courtesy copies mentioned Monterey Road in SJ, we decided to go to SF for passport stamping. It just seemed smoothier over there, based on the feedback posted by many folks on this forum.
We arrived a 7AM at the 444 Washington Street entrance. There were about 50 people ahead of us. After about 20 mins of wait (in the chilly SF wind), the security guard gave us a ticket after checking our I-797 (as I said, we took the courtesy copies - no questions asked about SF vs SJ), and sent us to the appointment lane on 360 Sansome. We entered the building almost immediately and waited to go through security. At 7:30AM we entered the big room where everybody is waiting. Depending on the type of processing, one is given a different ticket. We got a D for Ajdustment of Status (D424).
We got into this large room where people are waiting for their tickets to be called at a number of counters. The different types of tickets are processed separately and therefore it is really difficult to predict when your turn will come. The bummer this morning was that they did not start processing D tickets (AOS) before 8:45AM. It then took about a couple of hours to go through the 20-ish people in front of us, the first 10 taking over an hour, the rest going more quickly.
We got called at 11AM, the agent (lady) was very amicable. She got our passports stamped and papers filled in in less than 10 minutes, and stated that we would get the plastic cards in about 2 months.
Couple of things:
- San Francisco agents seem pretty OK in general. Security guards let you in with food and beverages, but not with cameras or cell phone equipped with cameras. I saw people making phone calls on their cell phone inside the waiting room.
- They stopped issuing tickets for the day at 10:15AM.
- Bring a good book, or your laptop and two batteries, and take it easy while waiting.
- When going through security, remove ALL metallic objects from your pockets and put your bag, jacket and shoes in the damn plastic box. It was unbelievable how many people went through the X-ray machine 3 or 4 times because they had forgotten about yet another piece of metal.
Hope this helps,
J.
We arrived a 7AM at the 444 Washington Street entrance. There were about 50 people ahead of us. After about 20 mins of wait (in the chilly SF wind), the security guard gave us a ticket after checking our I-797 (as I said, we took the courtesy copies - no questions asked about SF vs SJ), and sent us to the appointment lane on 360 Sansome. We entered the building almost immediately and waited to go through security. At 7:30AM we entered the big room where everybody is waiting. Depending on the type of processing, one is given a different ticket. We got a D for Ajdustment of Status (D424).
We got into this large room where people are waiting for their tickets to be called at a number of counters. The different types of tickets are processed separately and therefore it is really difficult to predict when your turn will come. The bummer this morning was that they did not start processing D tickets (AOS) before 8:45AM. It then took about a couple of hours to go through the 20-ish people in front of us, the first 10 taking over an hour, the rest going more quickly.
We got called at 11AM, the agent (lady) was very amicable. She got our passports stamped and papers filled in in less than 10 minutes, and stated that we would get the plastic cards in about 2 months.
Couple of things:
- San Francisco agents seem pretty OK in general. Security guards let you in with food and beverages, but not with cameras or cell phone equipped with cameras. I saw people making phone calls on their cell phone inside the waiting room.
- They stopped issuing tickets for the day at 10:15AM.
- Bring a good book, or your laptop and two batteries, and take it easy while waiting.
- When going through security, remove ALL metallic objects from your pockets and put your bag, jacket and shoes in the damn plastic box. It was unbelievable how many people went through the X-ray machine 3 or 4 times because they had forgotten about yet another piece of metal.
Hope this helps,
J.