AOS Interview Experience (K1)

[Phillabuster 5]

Great news today from Phoenix! We were approved for my wife's conditional green card! First off, thank you to everyone who helped us come up with creative ideas for the evidence section of our interview on the board I made a few days ago. Secondly, I thought I'd share our experience for anyone else who's going through the AOS process. I know reading some experiences really helped calm me down!

We filed about a month after we were married, if that (our wedding day was on April 1st, 2017). We got our first interview letter in July of 2018. This wait time seems to be normal for immigrants of Australia in our region, as we were lucky enough to meet an Aussie Uber driver who also came on a K1 who gave us the same timeline. Unfortunately, we lost the letter and had to re-schedule. The second letter we got came about a month later, on August 21st. We only had two weeks to prepare this time so we started scrambling. We managed to lose three pieces of paper, but had everything else.

 

Today we woke up early and got there before they opened, as our interview was scheduled for 15 minutes after opening. E-A-R-L-Y! We went through security, where they were very nice, checked in with the receptionist (also very nice), and sat and waited for about 45 minutes. Definitely bring a good book! They also let us in with our Nintendo game systems, so if you have kids, I imagine they'd let them play a game system with the sound off if they need something to do. We wound up not needing ours, though.

 

A nice woman called us and took her through the building to her office. It was warmly decorated and smelled nice. There was a webcam and fingerprint reader. She let us know we were being recorded, and asked for my wife's index fingerprints from each hand. Then she swore us in and told us everything looked good, but that she would take a look if we had anything extra to add.

I wound up handing her a wedding book I made from Shutterfly (I used to work in their design department). It's a 40+ page hardcover lay-flat book of all our wedding photos in chronological order. We also had the idea to clearly label a photo of each of our wedding party with their full names and their relationship to us. Had no intention to use it for the interview, but it worked out nicely and she complimented that point, if you're looking for ideas! We also included pieces of our vows, photos of our wedding venue, photos of us just after the wedding in our nice duds, and a bunch of wide shots of our family & friends co-mingling.

I offered her the rest of our evidence but I guess the book was enough because she said it wouldn't be necessary and she didn't need to keep anything. Here was a list of the things we'd brought as evidence. The bolded items are ones that she eventually decided to include in our file for good measure.

 

-Printed wedding photos
-Thank-you magnet for the wedding
-Full selection of wedding stationery
-Facebook photo collage proving ongoing relationship (whole year + half)
-Facebook photo collage proving shared residency (whole year + half)
-Thank-you/congratulation card from officiant
-Certified copy of marriage certificate
-Hotel reservation for latest vacation under wife's name
-Screenshot of wife's phone number on utility bill
-3 pages of IM chats featuring candid couple conversations
-Full commemorative printout of our officiant's entire ceremony, including vows

All in all, it took about 5 minutes before she let us know that we were approved. She even very kindly let us know the card was already in production. Predicting a delivery between 1-4 weeks. We were then able to ask her questions we had about lifting conditions on the card and applying for my wife's citizenship.

If I had any advice, it would be to over-prepare! If you feel over-prepared, you're probably okay. : ) We also spent a little time discussing some practice questions and getting our dates and house details correct. We wound up not needing to do so, but we felt much better. You can get a little creative with the evidence you bring, too. The goal is just to prove that you live together and genuinely care for one another. They also didn't mind that my wife and I were holding hands or leaning on each other in the interview, either. Just be yourselves, be honest, and treat it like a job interview (down to the attire).

Best of luck to anyone going for their interview soon! I hope your experience is as easy and problem-free as ours was. Thank you again to this amazing and supportive community. We couldn't have done it without you!

If you've made it through this textwall, feel free to leave your own experiences down below!

[Hello729 74]

6 minutes ago, Phillabuster said:

Great news today from Phoenix! We were approved for my wife's conditional green card! First off, thank you to everyone who helped us come up with creative ideas for the evidence section of our interview on the board I made a few days ago. Secondly, I thought I'd share our experience for anyone else who's going through the AOS process. I know reading some experiences really helped calm me down!

We filed about a month after we were married, if that (our wedding day was on April 1st, 2017). We got our first interview letter in July of 2018. This wait time seems to be normal for immigrants of Australia in our region, as we were lucky enough to meet an Aussie Uber driver who also came on a K1 who gave us the same timeline. Unfortunately, we lost the letter and had to re-schedule. The second letter we got came about a month later, on August 21st. We only had two weeks to prepare this time so we started scrambling. We managed to lose three pieces of paper, but had everything else.

 

Today we woke up early and got there before they opened, as our interview was scheduled for 15 minutes after opening. E-A-R-L-Y! We went through security, where they were very nice, checked in with the receptionist (also very nice), and sat and waited for about 45 minutes. Definitely bring a good book! They also let us in with our Nintendo game systems, so if you have kids, I imagine they'd let them play a game system with the sound off if they need something to do. We wound up not needing ours, though.

 

A nice woman called us and took her through the building to her office. It was warmly decorated and smelled nice. There was a webcam and fingerprint reader. She let us know we were being recorded, and asked for my wife's index fingerprints from each hand. Then she swore us in and told us everything looked good, but that she would take a look if we had anything extra to add.

I wound up handing her a wedding book I made from Shutterfly (I used to work in their design department). It's a 40+ page hardcover lay-flat book of all our wedding photos in chronological order. We also had the idea to clearly label a photo of each of our wedding party with their full names and their relationship to us. Had no intention to use it for the interview, but it worked out nicely and she complimented that point, if you're looking for ideas! We also included pieces of our vows, photos of our wedding venue, photos of us just after the wedding in our nice duds, and a bunch of wide shots of our family & friends co-mingling.

I offered her the rest of our evidence but I guess the book was enough because she said it wouldn't be necessary and she didn't need to keep anything. Here was a list of the things we'd brought as evidence. The bolded items are ones that she eventually decided to include in our file for good measure.

 

-Printed wedding photos
-Thank-you magnet for the wedding
-Full selection of wedding stationery
-Facebook photo collage proving ongoing relationship (whole year + half)
-Facebook photo collage proving shared residency (whole year + half)
-Thank-you/congratulation card from officiant
-Certified copy of marriage certificate
-Hotel reservation for latest vacation under wife's name
-Screenshot of wife's phone number on utility bill
-3 pages of IM chats featuring candid couple conversations
-Full commemorative printout of our officiant's entire ceremony, including vows

All in all, it took about 5 minutes before she let us know that we were approved. She even very kindly let us know the card was already in production. Predicting a delivery between 1-4 weeks. We were then able to ask her questions we had about lifting conditions on the card and applying for my wife's citizenship.

If I had any advice, it would be to over-prepare! If you feel over-prepared, you're probably okay. : ) We also spent a little time discussing some practice questions and getting our dates and house details correct. We wound up not needing to do so, but we felt much better. You can get a little creative with the evidence you bring, too. The goal is just to prove that you live together and genuinely care for one another. They also didn't mind that my wife and I were holding hands or leaning on each other in the interview, either. Just be yourselves, be honest, and treat it like a job interview (down to the attire).

Best of luck to anyone going for their interview soon! I hope your experience is as easy and problem-free as ours was. Thank you again to this amazing and supportive community. We couldn't have done it without you!

If you've made it through this textwall, feel free to leave your own experiences down below!

Congratulations 🎊🎈🍾 

[KozmicBlues 592]

Congrats!! This is great news! I love the evidence examples you gave - gives me ideas of things to keep organized while waiting for our interview date. I'm curious about the FB photo collages - did you just show screenshots of times you tagged together at specific locations? How did you evidence 'shared residency' via FB? Trying to be proactive so we can also show up with good evidence - I'd much rather be over-prepared.