ptm897

You do not need to bring your husband's U.S. Passport, if you obtained your residency based on your marriage to your U.S. citizen husband then we already have all the information we need about your husband in your alien file. There is no need to bring that information again, same thing with your marriage certificate, we already know you are married if you obtained your residency on that marriage.  When we interview you for your naturalization we have your entire alien file in front of us for the majority of the N-400 cases.  If you feel more comfortable go ahead and bring a copy of his passport page but there is absolutely no reason at all to bring his actual passport.  I hope this information is helpful.  I interviewed N-400 applications for 10 years.  Also I have no idea how long the wait is for the Oath ceremony in our Ft. Myers office, it is a brand new office though, they just opened it up a few months ago. I almost put in for a transfer when they were staffing the place but decided it was too costly to move to Florida.  Good luck and don't be nervous...   

1 hour ago, Stevephoto said:

First I want to thank ptm897 for the input. Very helpful. I would like to piggyback on Yuda's question and ask a similar one: Minor grammatical errors are OK wen answering the questions, correct? For example "The War IN 1812" instead of "The War OF 1812"

Hi Stevephoto, minor spelling/grammatical errors are OK as long as it doesn't change the meaning of the sentence and for spelling mistakes, they are also OK as long as when the Officer looks at the sentence it looks like English and they are able to make out what the sentence says, so minor spelling mistakes are not supposed to count against the applicant.    For the example that you have shown here, that would be acceptable because the spelling/grammar error does not change the meaning of the sentence.  

37 minutes ago, Yuda1718 said:

It is insane that every IO does whatever they want I think they should have a same policy on the civic questions 

 

They do have the same policy on the civics questions across the board across all of the offices, that is why I am so frustrated to hear this info because the policy is the same at all of our offices :-(  The Officers are NOT allowed to ask for someone to elaborate on any of the questions if they give an answer that is listed in the choices.

If your friends want's to change his son's name he must do a legal name change with his State of residence prior to filing the N-600.  Because name changes must be approved by a judge, and the issuance of the certificate of citizenship is an administrative function, because the person is already a derivative U.S. citizen we are not allowed to do any name changes on the N-600 applications and the certificates of citizenship MUST be issued in the person's legal name.  So he should officially do a name change for his son in the county/state court system where he lives, then when the name change is official and he has a certified copy of the name change he needs to submit a copy of that name change document with the N-600 and he would then be allowed to fill out the N-600 application with the child's new legal name.   We are allowed to put one AKA (also known as) on the certificate if the parents indicate that the child is known by another name, but it will not be the only name on the certificate so for instance if the child's legal name is  

Ramesh Kumar Patel and the father wants to change the name to Richard Kumar Patel and does not do a legal name change before filing the N-600 our office would be allowed to issue the certificate with the AKA name as well as the legal name, so the certificate would  have both names on it.

Ramesh Kumar Patel  AKA  Richard Kumar Patel   

So my strong suggestion is to tell your friend to start the legal name change process now for his son, then as soon as that is finished then he can file the N-600 once he is naturalized and provide a copy of the child's name change with the N-600 application.  

You can file now, no need to wait at all

Matt in the lines provided on question 34a they are looking for a very brief description of how you met.  Just a few sentences is adequate in that section. You may use a sheet of paper to elaborate and explain everything if you wish too and you still have to give them evidence that you have met in person within 2 years of the filing of the application, so the fact that you don't have a lot of actual paper evidence from the very first meeting more than 2 years ago is OK, they want to see the actual evidence of your most recent meeting in person, like photos together, proof that you where with your Fiance in person.  

29 minutes ago, NuestraUnion said:

 

 

Why was the IO not allowed to ask to elaborate? Seems like a legitimate request. 

We can not ask them to elaborate on an answer if they give one of the answers that are on the list, so for that applicant's question, where is the Statue of Liberty, the 3 choices can be either,  New York, New York Harbor, or Liberty Island.  If you say any of those three answers that is sufficient to answer the questions correctly.  We are specifically told during our training that we cannot ask an applicant to elaborate if they provide one of the answers from the list of choices, unless the question asks them to name 2 and they only named one, or if one of their answers was not in the choices provided.  That training is grilled into us and we are to abide it exactly the same across the board. All offices are instructed to follow these directives.  So since the Applicant clearly said "New York" that answer was sufficient and there was no need to elaborate and the Officer should NOT have asked her to elaborate since New York was one of the choices.  

13 hours ago, prettypass2000 said:

For questions that all the answers have similar meaning, you can remember just 1. You will have to remember some questions with different answers, e.g. why did the colonist fight the British question. Some questions that have different answer but you can pick one, I do recommend you to remember all. Here is my experience. 

 

The IO asked me "where is the Statue of Liberty?" during the interview. When I studied, I could answered New York, New York Harbor, Liberty island, and so on that list on there. I answered New York. To my surprise, he said I had to be more specific. Thankfully, I remember all of the answers so I gave him a new answer and he said correct! 

 

I'm sorry that Officer did that to you!!  That was Wrong and your answer of giving New York was correct, he was NOT allowed to ask you to elaborate. That makes me angry when I hear of other Officers not following the rules.  

On 12/28/2016 at 10:43 AM, Yuda1718 said:

I am unsure about something. On some of the questions in the study guide, there are multiple answer choices. If the question does not specify to only give 1 or 2 answer choices, do you have to list them all or will one be fine? For instance:

What does the Constitution do?

- sets up the government

- defines the government

- protects basic rights of Americans

If I were to say only one or two of those, does that count as a correct answer?

For all questions that don't specifically ask you to name 1 or name 2 and the there are multiple choices you are required to only give 1 answer, you do not have to list all of the choices.  So all of those questions just pick 1 answer and memorize that one.   The test is administered the same way across the U.S. in all of our offices.  I did N-400 interviews for 10 years.  The Officer cannot require you to elaborate on those questions and ask you to name more or give another answer.   

5 minutes ago, silkafi88 said:

I want to Thank you again for putting my mind at ease. I will be honest with you, I'm not considering it as of now to pursue French citizenship but maybe in the future that could change and thats why I had all of those questions lol.

 I'm very happy with my US citizenship and I don't want to jeopardize it ever.  

 

I would consider getting it (if it was possible) when I get close to retirement so I can maybe travel in europe and don't have to worry about how long I can stay legally there lol.

You are welcome and you definitely would not jeopardize your U.S. citizenship.  Another citizenship given to you though Jus Sanguinis is never a problem 

6 minutes ago, silkafi88 said:

First I want to thank you for reading my post and having the time to answer it as well. 

 

As you can see I'm from Tunisia, I became a Naturalized US citizen 2 years ago. Here is my situation: My great grand father is a French citizen. French citizenship is supposed to go down the line because of jus sanguin. However because my great grand father did not register my grand mom the citizenship never went down the line. So I didn't mention anything about it in the applications. Will that create a problem? (maybe I could be found for lying about citizenship).

What if we fixed the registration for my grand mother and citizenship was granted in the future, will that create any problem legally with my situation?

Say it was fixed, I know I wouldn't have to take any oath of allegiance or anything but will getting French citizenship result in taking away my US citizenship?

 

 

Thanks again for reading my post and answering my questions. 

You are very welcome, and you have nothing to worry about.  If you did not know or think you had claim to another citizenship at the time of your naturalization nothing at all is going to affect you negatively now and even if you knew at the time it still would not have negatively affected your naturalizing in the U.S.

Please don't worry about that, many times people find out at some point in their life that they may have a claim to another citizenship through jus sanguinis and getting another citizenship through that is O.K. and it does not affect your citizenship in the U.S.  

Now since your Great Grandfather never recognized or registered your grandmother that might be an issue for the French government in terms to passing down citizenship to you through jus sangunis and you will have to check up with the French government on all of their rules and regulations and if you have the proper documents to claim it,   If you are able to obtain French citizenship through that manner it is not going to jeopardize your U.S. citizenship at all.  That French citizenship is something that can be conferred to you through blood, family lineage and there is nothing at all wrong with that.  

I have the ability to do the same thing through a Great Grandparent on my father's side and I'm strongly considering it at this point. 

5 minutes ago, silkafi88 said:

ptm897 I have a question about citizenships and I don't want to hijack this topic. I'm gonna start another subject is there a way you can help me out with an answer? Please.

 

Thanks. 

Sure start another topic, sounds good!! 

When I was interviewing in Citizenship I never really cared if someone had more than 1 citizenship during the time of naturalizing. Many of us realize that people are dual citizens already and most of the time it is because of one of their parents and it's through blood relations and direct family lineage.  I think they tell you on the application to put only one down because on your naturalization certificate we can only put down one.  When you are filling out the application go ahead and put both of them down and during the interview the Officer will ask you which one you want to have listed on the certificate, you have to just pick one because the computer program in which the certificates are printed on do not allow us to have more than 1 country.  It's not really a big deal so I wouldn't worry about it at all.   

47 minutes ago, Abdouk said:

I didnt know that i can ask the embassy if i can do that i will try it its a good idea the other think is a guy in this webside told me that last year he did his interview in france and they didnt ask for it all they ask from here is the police report . I just wanna knoe wats gonna happen if they denie me the visa when do i have to ask for it again 

You can ask and it might not be a problem at all, like I said, sometimes the Consulates can be funny about things, but sometimes they really don't care, Let me see if I can ask a few of my friends that work for the State department and see if they know anything, I think if you are only out of status on your student visa for a short time and have a valid passport already it's very probable that the AMCON in Paris would not care what your legal status is in France. I'll reach out to a few of my friends that work for the State department, and I'll do a little research on my own to see what the requirements are if I can find it.  The State department is not my agency since I work for USCIS and we are two totally different agencies, but we do work in tandem with each other on these visas and the issuance of them. So let me see if I can get more info for you.  

Will you be finishing up your degree in France? Is there any chance of asking for an extension?  And if you choose to process in France just realize that you very well may need to travel back to Senegal to get a police clearance letter from where you lived in Senegal, so that issue there would potentially be a problem because if you leave and depart France to go back to Senegal to get the Police Clearance letter would you be allowed back into France without the Student visa since it would be expired?  

Has your Fiance ever had a B2 visa before?  If this is his first visa chances are he will be denied. That is just the reality of it so I don't want to sugar coat anything.

 I've been an Immigration Officer for 20 years now and the State Department is hard on B2 visas.  Don't be surprised if he is denied the first time.  Young single men from very poor countries have the highest rate of refusal, and there really is no actual interview other than a minute or two if that in front of the State Department Officer that will quickly review his application.  The refusal rate is extremely high because people are basically guilty (intending immigrant) and you have to prove you are not an intending immigrant, which he is an intending immigrant based on what you have said so far, the second they hear he has an American girlfriend that is a huge strike against him unless he is wealthy in his home country and his family has money and he has a really good job and owns property. Having a child there is not enough especially since he is not married to the mother, people leave their children all the time in their home countries to come to the U.S. and have family members take care of them so that alone is not a strong enough tie.  It is extremely hard for single men in your Fiance's age range to get B2 visas.  You may see a lot of people here in the U.S. with them, and think it's not that hard but you are only seeing the ones that made it, and not the hundreds and thousands of denials.  

Several times we have had State Department Officers comes speak to us at USCIS here in the U.S. for various different training sessions over the years and what has always stood out most was the Officers that spoke about the refusal rate of the B2 visas, on an average day in just one consulate there can be 500 applicants in just one day alone and out of those 500 maybe just maybe 25 people get approved.  The refusal rate is so high that I often wonder why so many people still attempt to even try.  

Just be prepared that you may have to end up going to Fiance Visa route the K1 without him ever getting the chance to come here first on a B2 visa to see family members.  The reality is, he is an intending immigrant and the Officer, unless your Fiance lies through his teeth and never mentions you at all, will be able to see through that, and his financial situation and lack of ties to his home country is probably going to be enough to just flat out deny him the first time around, so please don't be surprised if this happens.

Going through the K1 process will probably be your best route but if he does  get the B2 then he will be very lucky.  You have not spoken at all I don't think of his financial and social status in Jamaica so I don't know if he is considered wealthy there and privileged or just someone struggling like the average citizen there.      

Definitely have him attend the interview on Thursday and like the others said, they will put the decision on hold in order for him to get the medical done. All he has to say is he missed the medical appointment due to a time constraint or he can maybe try to get in for the medical right before the interview within the next few days.   Can I ask why he is getting cold feet?  About the marriage part or coming to the U.S.??  If you don't mind me asking, I see he is processing in Canada from your info, so I'm hoping he is not worried at all about the actual interview process.  There are very low levels of Fraud from Canada so it's not like he will be on the hotseat during the interview.  Tell him not to worry.   

You may not be allowed to process at the AMCON in France if you do not have a legal status there, you may have to return to Senegal to process, many times you have to ask the specific consulate that you want to process in permission in advance to process there if it is not your country of origin and you are not a resident of that country.    Have your American Fiance ask her U.S. Senator or U.S. House of Representatives to do a Congressional Inquiry and ask that Consulate in Paris, France if they will allow you to process your K1 visa in France, if they say Yes, then it should be OK.  Have you checked the AMCON website for Paris to see what their regulations are?  The State Department can be funny about these things, but it might be possible.   Is your American Fiance on this message board?  If so have her start inquiring into this with her Congressman's Offices.   

I just went back and saw in your OP that you mention that you are currently in France legally on a student visa but it finishes next month, so is there anyway that you can extend your student visa at all?  If your Fiance files the K1 right now, it will still take around 3 to 4 months for it to be approved here in the U.S. and then it gets sent abroad to the Consulate,  so if you don't extend your visa and are undocumented then it might be hard to process there, I'm not sure, as I have not dealt with the State Department now for a while in my job since I don't interview cases anymore, but I still say your Fiance needs to start asking for help here in the U.S. with her questions by going to the Congressman's office to get some answers for her.  Also you really may want to consider just going back to Senegal and having the K1 processed in Dakar.    

I have not read all the posts to your question but if you are legally married already then you cannot do the K1 visa and your Fiance/Wife, must then file the I-130 visa and it is best to just process this back in Dakar at the AMCON there.  You will need to get a Police clearance certificate for France and you should get that before you leave France and bring it back with you to Senegal.  Anytime you have lived in more than one country you will need to get Police Clearance letters from each country and even if you plan on trying to Process in France you will then need the Police clearance letter from Senegal, and that might be harder to get if you are in France, at least while you are in France legally you can get the Police clearance letter in France and just bring it with you and go back to Senegal to process.  

9 hours ago, prettypass2000 said:

I don't know if we can trust online status. My N-400 was expedited and I became U.S. Citizen on 12/21/2016. My status had been "My fingerprint was scheduled and ....". It just changed to another status 2 days after I became U.S. citizen. As of today, my status was "my oath ceremony was scheduled....." which is obvious. I already have the naturalization certificate in hand, got my passport, updated my SSN, and registered for voting. I don't know what in the world USCIS has been doing with their online status!!!!!

Don't trust the online status updates you get from the website, most of the time they are not accurate at all. We still have too many individual systems that don't talk to each other, however ELIS is now starting to get going the way they are hoping, all the cases I think will eventually move to the one ELIS system so it will hopefully be easier to get updates.

Hi,

I have my interview tomorrow, and I'm really scared. I didn't save a copy of my application, and just found out that they ask you details about your employment, like dates, etc. I worked in so many places at the same time (part-time jobs), it will be impossible to remember!

Did you get a lot of questions about that? What if I make a mistake and tell the wrong date? Any advice?

Thanks!

Please don't be terrified, just let the Officer know exactly what you said here, we are not there to be mean or to try and make you nervous. Just be honest that you forgot to make a copy of the application before you sent it in, and that you have worked so many places that to remember everything if asked on the spot might be hard to remember, when I was interviewing N-400's I pretty much just asked where you were currently working and really didn't have time to go into depth about all the past employers. We are usually only give 20-25 mins per interview and most of the time we are rushing to try and get everyone interviewed on time. Just relax, don't loose sleep over this. It will be OK

Thank you so much! That's great to know!

So would you recommend we ask to talk to the immigration officer about this specific issue, or is it something the contract staff at the ASC can get sorted out for us?

You are welcome, and Yes you really should ask the Immigration Officer about it, but not all of the Officers at the ASC sites are as helpful when it comes to giving out info to the public, I am extremely Customer Service orientated and I always make sure I give everyone the best and most accurate information.

There are instances though when the duplicate notice is not really a duplicate notice because the processing code on there is different, sometimes when they schedule the first appointment they put a Code 1 or a Code 2 in the Code indicator and it really should be a Code 3, so then they end up having to reschedule someone to come back and have our office take the rest of the biometrics. So it is always better to just show up at the ASC even if you get a second notice because only we will know what the reason is for, and we will look it up to see if it was a mistake or a real appointment and you need to have something done again.

That was really insightful, thank you. I had no idea Tier 2 agents at the call center weren't actual officers. Makes sense though. I work for a call center that is contracted by big companies and we have to pretend to be them, in a sense.

Yes, and the public really doesn't understand that they are not talking to actual Immigration Officers, this is why they make so many mistakes, they are just contract staff and I have absolutely NO idea what kind of training they give them, because they are not actual Federal Government employees they are never allowed to attend any our official training centers, like the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center better known as FLETC in Brunswick, Georgia, so over the years I have been an Officer it is really sad to see so many applicant's being given wrong information by the toll free number and thus making very serious filing mistakes. :-(

I will tell you the easiest way to study the 100 questions.. I am an Immigration Officer that spent 10 years interviewing the N-400 application at our Field Office, I no longer interview but I do spend a lot of time talking to N-400 applicants when they come into my ASC site and get their biometrics taken for their application. I show them this simple way of studying for the 100 questions and I'm telling you honestly it is the fastest and easiest way to study. Stay away from the phone apps, the CD and the book, why??? Because you are constantly looking at and hearing too much information that is not needed to successfully pass the test. The administration of the history/civics tests is standard across all of our Field Offices, the test is administered orally, so you are never looking at a written multiple choice question, the Officer will ask you the question verbally and you must respond verbally.

So as you can see in the questions that many of them indicate, Name one or Name two in the question and then they give you multiple choices to pick from, only study what you have to and not more, so for every single question that asks you to Name one thing or Name two things, you go through those questions and pick out the one or two answers that you like and are easy for you to remember and you put that answer on your flash card, then for the questions that don't specifically ask you to name one or name two things and just asks the question like "Why did the colonists fight the British" and it gives you more than one choice, then for these questions the answer defaults to just one of the choices, the Officer does not expect you to say all three of the choices that are there for that question, as long as you give one answer that is fine, believe me the Officer does not want you rattling off all of the choices because we have to write down all of your answers, and only one answer for those questions is necessary to have passed that question. Many times for the questions that don't specifically ask you to name one or name two things and it gives you more than one choice, it is many times a different way of saying the same thing.

The best way to study the 100 questions is to go to the store, and do this old fashioned, buy a set of blank index/flash cards and make your own flash cards. Go through the entire book and write out each question on one side of the card, then on the other side put the answer, but again remember only do what the question asks you, if the Question says "There were 13 original states, name 3" Do not try to memorize more than 3, pick three, and put those down on the flash card and only remember those three, etc.. and go on for all of the questions and only pick the one or two answers you have to remember. And again, the Officer does not care which ones you give them, as long as it is just one answer or two if the questions ask you to name 2 things etc.. you are fine,

Also when you sit down to study never ever ever sit down and go through all 100 questions in one sitting, that is just too much information overload at one time, Just sit down every night with just 5 questions at a time for about 15-20 mins and only study those 5 questions that night, then the next night study 5 different questions and so on, if you follow this simple way of studying you will have all 100 questions memorized in just 20 days.

Believe me this really helps and is a much more efficient way of studying than trying to do it online with some online quiz, or with a phone app or with the CD or with the book directly. Why???? Because when you are studying like that, you are constantly looking at ALL of the choices for the questions, so for every question that says Name one or Name two and you see a huge list of choices, your eyes are always staring at those other choices and that can be confusing, and if you are listening to the CD then you are hearing them list ALL of the choices, just let your brain focus on the one or two answers you need to memorize for each question. There is only 1 question that asks you to name three things, and that is the question, "There were 13 original states, name three" every other question is just asking you to name one or name two and again for the questions that don't specifically name one or two then those questions just require you to give one answer.

The day of the interview the officer randomly pulls a test sheet, and we have 10 different test sheets that have 10 questions already on them, we must ask only those 10 questions and cannot pick and choose which questions we ask you, if we pull test number 1 then you get asked all of the 10 questions on test number 1, you must get 6 out of 10 questions correctly and we are told that if you answer the first 6 questions in a row correctly then we are to stop the history test as you already passed and then move on to the writing and reading portion.

I hope all this info was helpful,

Correct what the others have said, her legal entry with a visitors visa and being an overstay is only advantageous to her if she is married to a USC and is an immediate relative, any other preference category and adjustment as an employment base would not allow her to remain in the U.S. to file for adjustment of status, she would have to leave the U.S. and then pick up her visa abroad, and when she leaves she will trigger the 10 year bar for being here unlawfully for more than 1 year.

Hello, I have a general question...I see that many of the applications require bio-metrics. Are you required to do separate bio-metrics for each application? For instance, I-485 & I-751 both require bio-metrics, would you go through separate procedures for each? Thanks

Hi There, Yes, you will still need to do separate biometrics at the I-485 stage and then again at the I-751 stage, we take your photo for each of those and we require that the photo be current. Also when you file for citizenship with the N-400 you will come back to the ASC again for biometrics for that application as well.