Hello All,
My wife had her n400 interviews at the Philly office yesterday at 11:20 and I'm describing her experience below -
I dropped her off at the doors around 11:10 and went off looking for a parking lot since the notice said it would take around 2 hrs. By the time I navigated the streets and signals and found a parking lot a few blocks away parked, and walked for around 10-15 minutes, I got a call from her saying the interview was over !!. It probably took around 20 minutes from her going in, finishing the interview and coming back.
She went inside after showing the documents, freshened up and immediately her name was called. After the customary oath taking (wont lie, under oath etc), the officer - a pleasant middle aged gentleman - went over her form details with her. Of interest was a question about failing to pay tax which we had marked yes, since she got her gc when she was a student in India for a couple of years and a teenager. The officer was satisfied with the explanation. Then he asked her a few questions like do you believe in the constitution, why do you want to be a US citizen and so on.
Then finally he printed the standard 10 out of 100 questions and asked her to write the answers while he was finishing up the paperwork. Questions she remembers were - no. of stars in the flag, no. of states in the union, 13 original colonies, current president, composer of national anthem. 13 colonies was the 3rd question and upon verifying it's answer, the officer said he does not need to check any longer and congratulated her and said they would mail her an oath letter. Then he got her to sign the photographs. Finally he collected some final details like home address, phone numbers, spouse's name, whether she intends to change her last name and so on.
All in all a pleasant experience. From this experience and a couple of other experiences, seems like philly's moving pretty smoothly and trying to get rid of their backlogs.
Once the oath is over, my long journey towards permanent residency would begin !
Hope this helps. All the best for any other interviews out there and hope they are smoother than this, if not as smooth. Thanks to everyone that spent time in volunteering their advice through my other questions in the board.
My wife had her n400 interviews at the Philly office yesterday at 11:20 and I'm describing her experience below -
I dropped her off at the doors around 11:10 and went off looking for a parking lot since the notice said it would take around 2 hrs. By the time I navigated the streets and signals and found a parking lot a few blocks away parked, and walked for around 10-15 minutes, I got a call from her saying the interview was over !!. It probably took around 20 minutes from her going in, finishing the interview and coming back.
She went inside after showing the documents, freshened up and immediately her name was called. After the customary oath taking (wont lie, under oath etc), the officer - a pleasant middle aged gentleman - went over her form details with her. Of interest was a question about failing to pay tax which we had marked yes, since she got her gc when she was a student in India for a couple of years and a teenager. The officer was satisfied with the explanation. Then he asked her a few questions like do you believe in the constitution, why do you want to be a US citizen and so on.
Then finally he printed the standard 10 out of 100 questions and asked her to write the answers while he was finishing up the paperwork. Questions she remembers were - no. of stars in the flag, no. of states in the union, 13 original colonies, current president, composer of national anthem. 13 colonies was the 3rd question and upon verifying it's answer, the officer said he does not need to check any longer and congratulated her and said they would mail her an oath letter. Then he got her to sign the photographs. Finally he collected some final details like home address, phone numbers, spouse's name, whether she intends to change her last name and so on.
All in all a pleasant experience. From this experience and a couple of other experiences, seems like philly's moving pretty smoothly and trying to get rid of their backlogs.
Once the oath is over, my long journey towards permanent residency would begin !
Hope this helps. All the best for any other interviews out there and hope they are smoother than this, if not as smooth. Thanks to everyone that spent time in volunteering their advice through my other questions in the board.