My flight from London arrived at about noon... I had a four and a half hour gap 'til my connecting flight so wasn't worried about running out of time or anything. The lines were pretty long and it took about 40 - 50 minutes for me to get to the front of the line (they were walking up and down the lines looking for people who had connecting flights at 1:30, 2pm etc and calling them to the front so they wouldn't miss their connections) - when I was about 5th in the queue they opened up the desks that had been dealing with US citizens so the queue started moving quicker after that. Anyway, I was called forward by a lovely immigration officer (I'd seen the people he dealt with before me laughing while they were at the desk, so knew he was going to be a nice one!) who was very cheerful and friendly... he saw my brown envelope and said 'oh, you have something for me!', opened it, flipped through everything, had a look at all the photos we'd sent in with our petition ('ooh, is this him? he looks like some actor from the TV, what's that guy's name, you must know the one I'm thinking of...' etc etc
), asked when we're getting married, just generally made friendly smalltalk, nothing remotely approaching even the mildest of grillings! Then he said 'tell him from me he's a lucky American' (hah, smooth-talker!), rummaged in a bag and presented me with a Hershey's Kiss, telling me 'this'll be the last time you get a kiss from another guy' (haha, I'm keeping that as my POE souvenir!)... I reckon he must have a bag of them especially for such occasions. Cheesy but sweet, I thought! Oh, I got a 'Welcome to America' too, which I was ridiculously pleased about. Anyway... blah blah blah... after that, he did some enthusiastic stamping on my passport & visa, and took me off to 'secondary'... I was thinking I'd have to wait a while in there or answer some questions or something, but I just had to sit down for about 2 minutes after Immigration Officer #1 had asked another guy to do whatever it is they have to do.... the guy did something with my papers, then called me to the desk, gave me back my passport and I was free to go. The only thing he asked me was 'you're getting married? what would you want to go and do a thing like that for!' (
), that was it... oh, I got the temporary EA stamp on the back of my I-94 - it just says 'employment authorised. date:' in red, but there isn't a date... hopefully that won't matter.So.... all in all I'd say that was a pretty successful, stress-free POE experience, much less hassle than I'd been expecting, and I wasn't expecting anything too traumatic in the first place. I've only been here since Saturday night and I'm quite amazed that I've already managed to open a bank account (even though I don't have an SSN yet), get myself put on the lease for our apartment and get the phone company to give us a landline (my fiance's only had a cellphone since moving to this apartment a few months ago) in my name... I should touch wood at this point, but am very impressed at how easy it's all been so far! I hope everyone else arriving in the near future has an experience as good as mine's been so far....
