HumanUnit

Thanks all!! I knew you guys would have an answer for me! It's not a huge inconvenience to wait until the oath is taken or anything, it just would have been "easier" to move home in the fall as opposed to the winter. Now I know to stay put!

Again, thank you!

Hi everyone!! Hope you're doing well!! I posted here a few months ago when we were getting a green card for my husband.

I have a kind of dumb question about citizenship that I can't seem to find the answer for on the USCIS website. If there are any sources that would answer my question, please point me there as I don't expect you all to do the work for me! But here it is: I know we have to live here continuously for three years for him to be able to apply for citizenship. But once the application is filed, is it problematic if we move back to Canada while it's processing? It just may have to happen that way because of work considerations. I can't tell if you must be living in the U.S. at the time you're applying for citizenship, even though you've met the three year residency requirement. Does anyone know?

Also, if we have to stay during processing, it seems from other people's timelines that it takes about 4-5 months from filing to the oath. Is this correct? Thanks so much!

Hi everyone!! My husband and I went through the whole immigration process in the summer of 2006 and thankfully everything went really smoothly. The only thing that's still outstanding (besides removing the conditional status at the two year mark) is that he hasn't received his Green Card yet. He has the stamp in his passport that's good for six months (I think?) but that's going to expire really soon! Shouldn't he have received the actual Green Card yet? If so, what should we do? Thanks!

Hey, thanks to both of you!!

That's right, it was an immigrant visa - a CR1. So, that's probably the source of my confusion. We should first wait and hope that it arrives within three weeks, and then go to the office if necessary! Appreciate the help very much .

We just got my husband's visa (yay!) but we hear conflicting things from this website, the visa officer and the instructions they sent along with the visa. We checked off the box asking them to assign him a SSN, but we're not clear on the next step. Is he actually supposed to go apply at the Social Security office now? Or does he go in and tell them one's already been assigned and ask for the card?? So confusing!

Thanks Cygnet! July 7th actually sounds just about right!

Just out of total curiousity, why didn't you dcf? or did I read wrong..... was it not offered yet?

Congrats on being complete with all of this, I am envious!! and good luck with everything in New York.

Thanks so much! And you're right, it wasn't offered when I filed. Incredibly, it was like literally two days after I filed that I found out you could now do the DCF. Doh! And they wouldn't let me cancel one and start the other without paying all the fees and whatnot again, and I was like okay, forget it, we'll just continue the current application. Good luck to you!!

Thanks Cygnet! July 7th actually sounds just about right!

Congrats Human Unit!. Thanks for the report

I would be interested in when your case was complete, when your case was sent to Mtl. and when you heard about your interview date. These are the things we're waiting for now. Thanks

Hi tommysgirl, and thanks .

I'm so mad at myself but I didn't note the exact date that I found out about the interview date! And now I can't find the stupid interview letter! I'm so sorry . I know I posted here when I got the notification but I can't find that either...I'm so useless! However, I'm pretty sure it was over a month ago, and it was totally out of the blue because from this forum it seemed like it was taking months and months for Montreal to see people. I'm not sure if that's because we were going for a permanent visa or if that even makes a difference. Good luck with it! Believe me, the actual interview is probably the most pleasant part of the whole process.

Hi all!! Very exciting news and I definitely had to update everyone here. I couldn't have done it without you!

Long backstory short: my husband and I live in Toronto, moving to New York City next month for my work. I'm the US citizen so we figured back when we were still engaged that the easiest route would be to get married quickly and get him a Green Card. So, done! That was in October of 2005 and I had all the papers ready to go for the CR1 visa as soon as the marriage certificate arrived in the mail! I used this site endlessly for information! Mostly my concerns were about definitions I didn't understand and also conflicting information that I was getting, for example about how many years of tax information you must provide. I was also under the impression it would take the rest of my life to get an interview but things fortuitously picked up for us this summer!

The interview was on Thursday, August 24th. From the advice on this forum, we knew to be there at like 7am and we were the first people let in at 7:30. Most people seemed to be there for the non-immigrant or temporary visas, and they go through those quicker. The actual time we spent talking to human beings probably added up to a total of five minutes - I kid you not. First you go through the scanner, and be advised that now they're also confiscating things like lip gloss. You get a little ticket and can come back for it later. You then go downstairs and wait on uncomfortable chairs until one of the officers takes you all upstairs. Like they say, go to the back of the elevator and when you get out, take a left. You go to a kiosk and get a number - we didn't know if there were any more fees to pay but apparently not if you're going the permanent visa route.

Next step - you're called into a little room where they just check over all your documents and look at your medical results. We updated our address, and even answered a couple of questions like "when did you get married". Amazingly, my husband messed up on our wedding date and my birth date. I was like, doh! But we just burst out laughing and luckily the officer thought it was pretty funny too. Then we went back to sit down for a few minutes before being called into a booth. It was not at all like I would have imagined - you're literally in a tiny booth, with a hard chair, with an officer behind a pane of glass. The gentleman officer was sooo incredibly nice - asked maybe five questions about when we were married, when we met, what we were planning to do in the US, and then told us he wouldn't waste our time and we were a straightforward case! So subject to the FBI fingerprinting, we're in!

Other random stuff - we stayed at the Hotel Tour de Centre Ville as most people recommend, just because it's close to the embassy. It was so gross - ugh! I was sooo glad we were out of there in a day. But what do you expect for $100 I guess . Other thing - if you get a chance, have a meal at the St. James' pub near the Intercontinental Hotel. Amazing food, and so reasonable. Finally, bring some darned sweaters! For some reason Montreal is always freezing to me, even in August.

Hope that's helpful!! Again, thanks to Visa Journey for all the help! I've been singing this forum's praises everywhere - I would have ripped my hair out many times if it wasn't for you all! Off to update my timeline and post this in the embassy reviews now!

Thanks all! I wanted to let everyone know that it was a really quick turnaround - something's got to have happened there because the last time I was here (a few weeks ago maybe?) people were still saying 3 months! So this is huge!

I think there is a place where I should be updating my status so other people can see it...off to check it out now.

Hey everyone!! I haven't been here for a while but I wanted to update everyone on the interview status because you've all been so helpful! This morning I just randomly called the NVC to see whether my case had been completed and they actually had an interview date for us on August 24th! I was expecting it to take months from the stuff I'd seen here! So crizzazy!

Anyhow, I'm still paranoid that it's all a mistake and I'm going to get a letter saying something totally different but for now I'm going to let myself have a couple of hours of cheer. Thanks again for all of your help!

Hey there!! I should probably give a lot more detail just in case anyone else has this issue (duh! I don't know why I didn't think of that before!).

OK - so what I thought was "six wrong things" actually ended up being that there was a perceived six month gap on the application for where Josh had lived, which triggers a problem because you're supposed to account for where you've lived for anywhere longer than six months. The person I spoke to over the phone at NVC didn't speak with the clearest accent so it could have been a miscommunication on her part or a misunderstanding on mine.

As far as what the error was: I had used the PDF form where you could enter the information on the computer before printing. If you go to Item #20 you'll see that the date format is different from the others. I think that, in error, they didn't separate the fields of "FROM" and "UNTIL", like they did with all the other columns - so what ended up happening was that I couldn't put 01-1978/06-2006 in that field like I could with the others. I didn't realize that and so what I did was (stupidly) break up the dates onto two lines, which looked really weird now that I realize that the format was supposed to be From/Until or 01-1978/06-2006. I just printed the form out and wrote that in manually this time.

Hope that makes sense! It's a little hard to explain.

UPDATE!!!

So I got the letter today...and I could totally kick myself because the mistake I made was so stupid and I didn't even notice it! I made a strange error on Item 20 with regard to the dates that made it look like there was a gap in time when there really wasn't.

I'm sending it on back tomorrow and really really hope it gets a move on now! Thanks for all of your help!

Thanks for the information! God I hope they don't ask at the embassy stage as it takes like another few months to get that done!!

I've sent pretty much all my documentation in for my husband's CR-1 visa and pending some corrections that I have to make, I'm just waiting for a case complete and then on to Montreal. Obviously I sent in the police check from Canada and based on some very helpful posters here and some links that were provided, I was able to find out that the non-fingerprint police check was sufficient. This is where they search the entire Canada-wide database and determine that there is nothing coming up under your name. From what I understand, you don't need to get the fingerprint check done (this also takes about three months!) unless something comes up when your name is checked.

However, someone I know just told me that her friend was told the exact same thing and then at her interview was told "OK, everything's great - except we need you to get some fingerprints done!" And then it took months of course before she could enter the country.

Has anyone heard of this before?? I'd call the NVC personally but to be frank, I've heard all kinds of contradictory things from them before about other pieces of documentation. I was just hoping someone would know if perhaps this was a really old policy or something?? Thanks!

Time to double check everything! At least it sounds like the point out all the errors to you and tell you to correct them instead of just saying that the form was filled out incorrectly, tossing it and telling you to submit another - which is what I would have really expected from a government agency.

I looked over my copy and can't see anything that could be wrong! I hope they do let me know precisely what's wrong with it because I don't think I'd be able to figure it out otherwise.

I can't believe this! Apparently there were six "incomplete" things on my form and so they're sending it back for me to make corrections!! I thought I'd done everything right . They can't tell me what it is that's wrong with it, only that it's not that documents are missing. I hope this means that it's just minor errors??

Anyway, this puts us back at least an extra couple of weeks...so depressing! And as far as I can tell Montreal is still taking four months or so to schedule so the best we can hope for now is the end of October.

*muffled shriek*

Maybe poke around this site first to get an idea of how long it's taking for Vancouver to schedule interviews. Don't want to get stressed if July isn't even a possibility!

But I think you should be able to get another interview date if by some chance it were scheduled for that week. I asked about this before myself and was told to just call and ask to reschedule. It might take a month or so, though, so be prepared for that!

What embassy would you be going to? July seems like an awful quick turnaround time although it would depend on where you're going. I notice you're in Canada, as am I. If you're going to Montreal I believe it's taking them like 3-4 months to schedule interviews .

I read through the post (thanks Aussiewench for the link!) about entering the US while the application is in process and we definitely know to have as much supporting documentation as possible.

Our travel situation has a bit of a wrinkle. Both of us currently live in Canada, and I'm the US citizen. I'm moving to NYC in September, which is hopefully when Josh (my husband) will have his interview. In July we're flying down to check out apartments with my broker for a couple of days. My question is - how much information should be offer up to the immigration officials when we try to get in the country? Obviously we'll be nothing less than truthful, but neither do I want to offer up a whole load of unnecessary information on the front end that will have us scrutinized if we don't have to! Random questions:

• is a trip to look for apartments "pleasure" or "business"?
  
• should he even be saying anything about looking for an apartment with me - isn't that a huge red flag?
  
• should he say that he's travelling with his wife (a US citizen) who is travelling on business? We have to go through the lines separately at the airport. I guess I'm wondering if this is too much information!
  

I think that's all. Any advice or personal experience would be helpful, thanks!

I would suggest you not wear one of those "Elect a Madman, You Get Madness" t-shirts with Bush's picture on the front...

Hehehehe!! Thanks for the giggle!

Thanks for the clarification, everyone. OK, so I suppose I'm looking at a couple of months before I get this mysterious packet! And it sounds like it's going to include a lot of stuff that I've done already - we already filled out the DS-230 and got the police check, as per their instructions for that form. I suppose the only thing left now is the medical exam (hoping, hoping, hoping!). I just hope we get an interview sometime in September because that's when I have to move back to the US anyway.

Do people filing for the CR1 visas also get the "packets" from the embassy that everyone seems to talk about so much? I thought I'd filled out all the necessary paperwork by now and that I was only waiting for the interview notification and instructions for the medical exam.

Could anyone clarify? I can't find the information from searches so far. Thanks!!

I just called the NVC and they did receive my documents yesterday! Canada Post is smoking something funny!

I know, I'm having a mini heart attack over it.

Thanks for your help, Aussiewench!