doctorbeat

I just realised that I forgot to mention something important!

I was a VWP overstayer.

I overstayed for well over a year, and this was not a problem. The IO didn't even mention it, even when I handed over my long-expired I-94.

Despite the recent scare, VWP overstay is a non issue.

I believe tattoos helped us a great deal.

Both of us are pretty heavily tattooed, and I think that's part of the reason why people say we look right together.

Yes, if there's one thing I have taken away from this, it is that the IO's really do know what they are doing.

I'd say that if you're a real couple, you really do have absolutley nothing to worry about, but by the same token, if your intention is to commit mareiage fraud, you probably haven't got a hope in hell.

Interview experience

Holtsville, NY

My wife and I had our interview last Thursday (july 21st)

We were so paranoid about being late, that we arrived an hour and a half early!

After we passed through security, we checked in at the registration desk and they took our appointment letter and told us to take a seat.

It was a pretty big waiting area, and the place was quite busy.

We were dressed smartly, but noted that very few other people were, most were dressed in jeans and tshirts.

Our appointment was for 9:00am, but we weren't called in until 9:57am.

The interviewer, Officer P., was extremely nice.

As she led us down the corridor to her office, she apologised for keeping us waiting, told us that our application seemed to be in order, and that she could see that we were a genuine couple.

She made a few jokes about me being English, and really put us at ease.

When we arrived at her office, she told us that she had already decided to approve us, (she said 'I mean, come on, you've got a baby!) and that we just had to go through some formalities.

She swore us in, told us to take a seat, and asked for copies of our birth certificates.

Then she asked how we met.

I answered that we met on Facebook, and she said 'a lot of people meet that way nowadays'.

Then she asked us if we had some photos with us, to which we replied that we had.

She told my wife that she had to ask me some questions, and asked her to use the time to select a good photo of us for the records.

While my wife was looking for a suitable photo, Officer P. and I went through the standard questions, even joking a little about the espionage one (James Bond).

When we had finished, she looked at the photo my wife had chosen, said it was lovely, and put it in the file.

Then she explained that because we had been married 22 months, we had just fallen short of the two-year requirement, so I would be issued a conditional permanent resident card.

She briefly explained the removal of conditions process, and then asked us to go back into the waiting room while she finished the paperwork.

When we got back to the waiting room, we checked the time.

It was 10:05, which meant that the interview lasted an incredibly short eight minutes!

A few minutes later, she came back out and handed me my stamped passport and a welcome letter.

She wished us good luck, and that was that!

We left the office and stood outside for a bit, a little stunned at how easy the interview was.

Officer P. had not asked to see any of our paperwork, the pile of greetings cards, the affidavits from friends, joint bank statements, or even the photographs, except for the one she asked my wife to pick out.

I put this down to the following:

We had been married for almost two years by the time of our interview.

I am only eligible for conditional permanent residency, so further checks will be made in the future.

We have a baby. 

Controversial maybe, but I am from a first world country, and thus have no real motive to commit marriage fraud.

My wife and I look like a couple. People often tell us that we go well together.

We are of similar age and background and it shows.

I think that an experienced interviewer can spot a genuine couple within seconds. 

After all of the worry for the past couple of years, we were just stunned that it was all over.

We stood outside the office waiting for a cab, and for the first time, I was able to look at my wife and know that I wasn't going to lose her.

It's weird living with that hanging over your head, the idea that at any given moment, I could have been deported and barred from the country for a decade.

What's even weirder is that after having it hanging over our heads for our entire relationship, the problem went away in an eight minute interview.

We checked the website later that evening, and saw that it had been updated to 'document production', so my card should be here soon.

I recieved my 'Welcome to the United States of America' letter today, four days after the interview.

What a relief!

We just want to say a big thank you to everybody who helped us on our journey.

We really could not have done this without you

I left my phone because I had the impression that I would have to go through a security checkpoint, but it turned out that it was just a desk. If I'd known, I could have spared my mom, sister, and baby daughter from standing around in the hot sun for ages.

Incidentally, the lady next to me having her prints taken was wearing a pair of large plastic ear rings. The cynic in me wants to say that security gave me a hard time because I'm pretty heavily tattooed, but life's too short to worry about that kind of thing too much...

Incidentally, in case anyone is laughing at the body piercer who needs to use pliers, these were 3mm x 12mm segment rings.

Anyone who knows about these things will understand what a feat it was to remove four of these without any tools...

I have been piercing for 15 years, and I honestly did not believe I'd be able to do it.

It's amazing what can be accomplished through sheer desperation

I had my biometrics done a while ago, but it just occurred to me that I meant to post a heads up to others about something that happened at my appointment.

Firstly, as an aside, my mom and sister were visiting from the UK and were with me at the time. The rules said no phones, so I left my phone with my mom and they took a walk while I was attending the appointment.

This was pretty inconvenient, as I then had no way to contact them when the appointment was over, and they ended up having to wait outside for over half an hour to ensure we could meet up after.

There were six other people in the waiting room with me, all with friends/relatives, and ALL using their phones without security batting an eyelid.

Anyway, ont o the main point:

I was wearing ear rings. I am a body piercer, and thus was wearing proper body jewelry in my ears, which requires the use of pliers to remove.

The security guards told me that I would have ro remove them because they would be taking my photo for my work permit.

I explained to them that removing them would require the use of pliers, and they told me that I would have to go home and remove them and reschedule my appointment.

I told them that it had cost me over $40 to get there in a taxi (no public transport available) and that nowhere on the letter did it say that jewelry wasn't allowed.

Eventually, I went to the bathroom and managed to get the rings out.

I did so by removing my shoelaces and threading them through the rings to get enough leverage to prise them apart. It took nearly half an hour and I think I only managed it at all because of the desperation I felt at the idea of having to reschedule.

I had my fingerprints taken, and they took the photo and stamped my appointment letters, so in the end it was ok.

So, the moral to this story is: don't wear jewelry to your bio appointment even though this (or even the fact that you will be having your photo taken) is not mentioned anywhere on the letter!

Lol definitely off topic, but basically the problem is this:

I have the iphone 3g (not 3gs) and installing ios4 slowed my phone down to a snails pace. It runs extremely slow (my wife's iphone 2g is faster) and safari crashes about every 5 minutes.

This is a known issue, and apple recommend that you restore to factory settings and start from scratch rather than restore from a backup, but I haven't gotten around to it yet because that will take hours.

It seems to be a memory problem, whenever I try to load a page that has a lot of pictures or adverts etc, safari just craps out.

I'll get it fixed when I have the time to sit down and start from scratch, but for now I just have to try to get by.

Yup, I also like photography and carry a camera.

It took most of the day today to go through around half of the several thousand that I have (not quite 30,00 but probably close to 10,000).

The other problem that I have is that my wife hates having her photo taken, and I have a lot of photos of her with her hand in front of her face...

We need as much evidence as possible really.

We have some other areas that may be a little lacking, we don't have a lease, and all utility bills are included in our rent payments.

The only bill we actually get is cable, and they won't allow us to have more than one name on our account.

We have other stuff, but we need the evidence that we do have to be strong.

Yeah that makes sense, we don't want to bog the interviewer down with too many.

But, for instance, we went to visit my wife's mom in Wisconsin. There's photos I took of my wife and her mom, and photos my wife took of me and her mom, but no photos of all three of us together.

We thought maybe a sequence of photos would tell the story, but then there's the problem of ending up with too many...

You just don't think 'hey I might need these for an immigration interview' at the time.

We've just been going through our photos to get them ready for printing.

I noticed as we were going through them that there aren't really many if my wife and me together, because one of us is usually holding the camera.

What are people's opinions of this? Are several photos in a group obviously taken at the same time good enough?

Also, we've been through about half of our photos so far, and only picking out the most suitable ones has left us with 120. This means we're going to have probably 300 suitable ones once we're done.

Is there such a thing as having too many photos?

How many is too many?

Myopia, how's everything going your end?

This stupid cut down mobile site is driving me nuts!

I broke the ethernet port on my laptop, so I can't go online properly until I manage to solder the microscopic wires

If I click 'full version', safari just crashes because of stupid ios4

BenjaminUKtoUSA,

I know you sent me a Pm, but either the mobile version of this site won't let me read it, or I'm too dumb to work out how!

Our interview date is the 21st of July

Yeah, I'll email him with a heads up, it does seem like they made a mistake.

I was pretty surprised myself, and I warned him that he might be mistaken, but he got his card out of his wallet and handed it to me.

There was nothing on it that said it was conditional, and the expiration date was ten years from the issue date.

It was in a little paper envelope, and that said nothing about the card being conditional either.

I hope he heeds my email, it would be horrible to be deported over a mistake like that....

I honestly don't know.

He'd known his (now) wife for many years before they became a couple and got married.

They both work for a large company, and they met at a convention in the UK.

After that, they attended all the conventions together, and he puts the lack of conditions down to the fact that they were able to show photos of them together at these conventions for some five years before they got married.

He entered on the VWP with every intention of getting married, after being advised to by a very expensive lawyer.

In my opinion, the photos would have pointed towards visa fraud, but he got approved and issued an unconditional GC very quickly and with no problems.

Definitely NOT the right way to go about it, but it worked for him.

I haven't spoken to him for a while, but I might shoot him an email to advise him to ask his lawyer about the lack of conditions on his GC

Oh, I thought I read somewhere that the issue date was retrospectively applied from when you got married (and thus became eligible for AOS)

I thought you only had to be married for two years before you could apply to have the conditions removed?

Does that mean we'll now have to wait until we've been married almost four years?

JimVaPhuong, I have a friend who lives in NYC who came here on the VWP, married his girlfriend, and immediately applied for AOS. He got his GC after being here for only five months, and it was the ten year unconditional one.

He had been here for less than a year when he showed it to me.

I can only assume that either they made a huge mistake, or that they do indeed have discretion.

My wife and I have our interview on July 21st, but our second wedding anniversary is on September 18th.

This means that we will have been married 22 months by the time I (hopefully!) get my GC.

Are they likely to notice this and just give me the 10 year card straight away, or will I still get the two year conditional card, presumably with only two months validity remaining on it?

I'm hoping it will be the former, because we could sure do without the extra fee for removal of conditions...

We applied in March and got our appointment letter yesterday, it's on July 21st.

However, we live on Long Island, and our interview is at the Holtsville field office, not the NYC one.

On the contrary, I understand the concerns of the OP.

Living 'under the radar', even for many years, yeilds a surprisingly small 'paper trail' of evidence of a relationship.

Luckily for us, my EAD has arrived and we're scrabbling to get my name on bills, bank accounts etc before our interview.

Without evidence like that, there isn't much you can acquire.

Sure, you can take photos and receive greetings cards, but lack of a job means it may have been impossible to take a vacation together, for instance.

Even if you can afford a vacation, many people would think it too risky to travel by air because of ID checks.

Without an SSN it's practically impossible to show evidence of co mingling of assets, even though they have probably been mingled for years.

I'm sure the interviewer will understand this though.

Hi guys, sorry I haven't been on for a while.

I am writing this from my phone because I'm having some computer issues. I can't figure out how to change my sig on the mobile version of this site, so for now I'll post my timeline here:

02/16/2011 found out about potential problem with overstayers!

03/11/2011 mailed application

03/14/2011 application delivered

03/18/2011 texts/emails received

03/25/2011 NOA1 hard copies received

04/07/2011 biometrics letters received

05/02/2011 biometrics appointment

05/14/2011 EAD card production ordered

05/18/2011 EAD card received

06/15/2011 electronic notification of appointment

06/17/2011 appointment letter received. 

As you can see, we received our appointment letter yesterday.

This is important, because we are in NY, and I understand there have been some delays for NY applicants.

Unfortunately for most of you NY people, this is probably because we aren't in the city. We live on Long Island and our interview is in Holtsville.

We're now running around trying to get things like bank accounts and utility bills in both of our names, which we weren't able to do before because I didn't have an SSN.

We have a lot going on at the moment, but I'll try to stop by and keep everyone uodated with our progress and interview experience.

Yeah, it was the calling other people part that concerned me.

As it happened, the situation turned out fine, but it could very well have opened a can of worms.

I'm certainly not the criminal type, but anyone can come to the attention of the police.

My friend who I often get rides with was pulled over for going through a stop sign the other day. If I'd been in the car, I may have had to produce ID.

I worry that a silly thing like that could cause huge problems for me during my application process.

I presume ICE or USCIS or whoever the police called about it would have some kind of record of my case, but I don't know what the details would be.

Now that I have applied for AOS, what is my legal status?

The reason I ask is that a few months ago, I was stopped by a cop.

I'd just bought a PC case and I was carrying it to my wife's place of work, which was only a few blocks away from the computer store.

A cop followed me in his car, and just as I was about to enter the building, he stopped me and asked me where I got the hard drive.

Rather than point out that it was a computer case, not a hard drive, I politely told him that I bought it from the computer store a few blocks away, and he just said 'ok' and drove off.

As you can probably imagine, it was a rather bowel-loosening experience given that I was out of status...

So, if something like this happened again, and the cop went a bit further and asked me for ID, what would I do?

I have applied for, but not yet been granted AOS.

Do I still have to 'hide', or is there some way I can prove that I have a case pending?

I looked on the AILA website and found this:

3/4/2011 - VWP Adjustment Update Coming Soon  

AILA Liaison has learned that USCIS HQ has instructed field offices on VWP adjustment eligibility. AILA Doc. No. 11030422.

Unfortunately I couldn't view the document itself because you have to be a member, but it appears that the issue under discussion is VWP adjustment eligibility.

This tells me two things:

VWP adjustment eligibility was called into question

USCIS field offices have been instructed on this eligibility or lack thereof.

We know from a lawyer that read the document that the instruction was favorable, and that it applies whether or not the application was made within the 90 day period.

It would therefore appear that they have decided that VWP overstays are eligible to adjust, and presumably that means that the application is not seen as an invalid appeal because of waived rights.

Ok, I understand that with some awkward mental gymnastics, one could interpret it in the negative way you suggest, but the general tone of the message does not seem to concur with that.

It's quite possible that the lawyer misinterpreted things, but it seems that he is passing on news from AILA, which is not open to his interpretation.

If this memo is meaningless or bad news, why did AILA liason report that a favorable conclusion had been reached?