Oath Ceremony questions

[kitty_23 0]

My ceremony is scheduled for Feb 9th 2010 at 11:15am.

It states to arrive at 11:15am for the final hearing- what is this for? What are they doing?

At 1pm the ceremony is scheduled. At what time should my husband arrive? How many guests can I bring? Should my guests be there at11.15 or 1pm?

What immigration documents should I bring?

Thanks

[Kathryn41 3,205]

Hi kitty,

Congratulations! While there will be variations between offices there are some things that are consistent for all oath ceremonies. You will need to bring your green card, your identification (DL), if you have a special travel document from USCIS you would bring that, and if you have travelled out of the country you should bring your passport showing the dates.

You were given or mailed a sheet that had a series of questions on it. You definitely need to bring that. You are asked to fill that out before you arrive, however a lot of people don't. The processing you will go through at that time is the immigration officers verifying with each person who is taking the oath at the ceremony the information on that sheet, then ensuring that they are signed, and collecting them. You will also be shown your Naturalization certificate and asked to verify that the information on it is correct, so that if it isn't correct, they can correct it by the time you receive it at the ceremony.

Unless it is a small ceremony the applicant and their guests (including spouses) are actually separated with the guests waiting in a separate area. This allows the applicants to be processed quickly and easily without having a lot of extra people to work around. The ceremony itself won't be until 1 pm but you need to be there early. It will take time to get through security and then get through the paperwork. Your husband can come with you or he can come later but it is likely that he won't be sitting with you during the ceremony but in visitor's seats separate from those taking the oath. Mine wasn't allowed to stay with me during the processing or the ceremony and was only allowed in with the rest of the guests after all of those who were taking the oath were already seated.

I know that at my ceremony in Atlanta there were over 200 people taking their oath. That meant that if every person brought 1 guest each there were at least 200 guests. Now some of the people taking the oath were whole families but I think you can expect it to be crowded. Perhaps someone here will have done their ceremony recently in Columbus and can let you know how big the venue is. I wouldn't plan on bringing a lot of guests though.

Good luck!

Edited January 25, 2010 by Kathryn41