Also Approved!

elyjack · August 16, 2006

Interview today was successful at the Tampa office for wife and stepson. It took 19 months. It was almost exactly one year after our first scheduled interview was canceled. We were on vacation when the latest notice of interview arrived and much to our surprise when we got home we discovered we had only one week to get ready for it. I think maybe somebody finally took notice of the fact that we had been waiting in the queue an unusually long time with no explanation for it. Even the processing times on the website showed them processing applications filed six months after ours.

They sat us in a trailer outside to wait for our names to be called. We settled in for a long wait because there were a lot of people there but we were one of the first ones called.

Very few questions were asked. Of all the paperwork I had prepared over the weekend the only thing the interviewer wanted to see was our 2005 joint tax return. Having spent the better part of the whole weekend getting "proof" documents together that was a bit frustrating but I'm not going to complain at this point. My wife did slip up when asked what date we got married. She had the date right but was off by 20 years saying it was 1984 instead of 2004. The interviewer could see she was obviously very nervous.

The whole thing lasted less than 20 minutes and that includes the wait in the trailer outside.

BTW, our case status online still says "The interview scheduled for this case has been canceled". We were glad to see that wasn't true.

One further thing to note is about our change of address. They got it right for my wife but not for my stepson even though we followed the same procedures. We even confirmed that they had both addresses right in the system during an Infopass appointment. They said they were the same. The interview notice however, went to the old address and the post office did not forward it to our new address. Fortunately I had an understanding with the current resident that they would call us. I therefore suggest that any body who changes addresses during this procedure do the same thing. I pointed this out at the interview. We'll see what happens with the green card.

Any way we're glad it's finally over. I think we'll have a green card party this weekend. Then again maybe we should wait until we have it in hand.

Leasel7 · August 16, 2006

"Only 19 months"? I'm glad you have a sense of humor about this, that is an awfully long time to wait, especially that almost one year gap between the cancelled interview and the rescheduled one. I hope you at least get the 10 yr green card out of this out of that long wait, if you've already been married two years. Congratulations, and I hope that green card shows up in the mail SOON!

elyjack · August 16, 2006

"Only 19 months"? I'm glad you have a sense of humor about this, that is an awfully long time to wait, especially that almost one year gap between the cancelled interview and the rescheduled one. I hope you at least get the 10 yr green card out of this out of that long wait, if you've already been married two years. Congratulations, and I hope that green card shows up in the mail SOON!

No, we didn't get a 10-year card. We would have been married two years in December so we missed it by 4 months. If you'd read the two letters I wrote to my congressman you wouldn't have noticed my sense of humor. They didn't do a bit of good. Neither did two infopass appointments.