That was a good interview...thank you for the tips here ! :)

[gogojourney 1]

Hello, fellow VJ'ers....

In the commemoration of this Thanksgiving weekend, I hope those of you who are in the U.S now are celebrating the long holiday weekend with your family and loved ones. I have many things to be thankful for this year, one of those being the privilege of going through this adjustment of status process for earning my permanent residency here in the U.S. My wife and I had our interview on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, at the Detroit USCIS office, and it went much better than either of us could have imagined.

We met our attorney there, who has our case files on her, and she also met my father in law who drove us to the office for that day. After the identity verification process, it took about 30 minutes before our name was called for the interview. We were led to an office by the officer, who seemed like a genuinely nice fellow. After the swearing in and all three of us (me, my wife and our attorney) sat down, the interview began. My US Citizen wife was asked general questions about herself and her family, then I was asked the same things and then the questions from the I-485 form was asked to me and I answered every one of them clearly. After that, the officer asked us questions about how we met, how long we have known each other, how familiar are we with each other's family, and we were asked to describe the wedding and the reception to him. We brought our necessary documents as well as travel itineraries that we printed from our e-mails, brought our marriage license and bank statements and a book of new personal checks showing our names on it. Our attorney also handed the officer our case file, which had even more evidence such as letters we wrote to each other back in the late 90's and some photographs. We brought a few collections of of our wedding photos, as well as our invitations and some photos we printed from our Facebook pages and phones showing us together.

After looking at some of these evidences and having a small talk amongst the three of us about our Thanksgiving activities and how good or bad the Detroit Lions will do in this year's Thanksgiving game, the officer had us stand up and sign a piece of paper explaining as well as us verifying our signatures on our I-485 packet. He then took my passport and long expired I-94 and my EAD card, which I've only had for 2 weeks, looked at it, and gave me back the passport as he stamped the piece of paper we just signed (which was explained later that it was for understanding what a Conditional Permanent Residency is and what it entails) and he input some things on his computer. Once he's done, he had a pleasant smile on his face and said congratulations to me as he said our petition is approved, and that my conditional permanent residence card should arrive in the mail within 60 days. He also said he needs the EAD card to be destroyed. Our lawyer thank him also, and he mentioned that her organization and professionalism for the interview helped him a lot in the process, and as we were the last couple to be interviewed by him for the day, he was happy to know that he gets to go home to see his family for Thanksgiving and that he was happy to see our petition be approved.

All in all, our interview took no longer than around 25 minutes to do, and our attorney notified us that she will e-mail us any further developments in the case, and that she will remind us when my Green Card is in production and on its way to me. She wished us happy Thanksgiving as we said the same to her and her family and we parted ways at the parking lot. A pleasant experience overall,and I couldn't believe the speed at which all of this happened for us. We got married in January, started the process in the spring, sent in the I-485 packet in September, had my biometrics appointment in October, and after the interview couple of days ago, I was approved for Conditional Permanent Residency. I would like to thank the many posters on this very web site who explained to me and many other immigrants how the Adjustment of Status process works and what conditional residency means. We are very happy everything went well and faster than expected so far...can't wait to have that card in hand and start a new chapter on my life .

Thank you, VJ, and have yourselves a wonderful weekend!

[smitherton 3]

Congrats!

[Pitaya 2,576]

~Moved from WST-based AOS to WST-based AOS Progress Forum~