I33P

Thank you very much!!!!  

You're welcome! Good luck with everything!!!!!

Hey all!

Some of you may have seen my post earlier in the week regarding our upcoming AOS interview. You can check it out here: 

Anyway, we had our interview yesterday, and I wanted to share me and my husband's experience for anyone else who has an AOS interview coming up.

I'll start at the beginning of our day when we woke up at about 3 a.m., and hit the road by 4. We had our interview at the Chicago field office, and it is about 3 hours away on a good day without traffic. Our interview was scheduled for 9:30 a.m. and we arrived by about 8 a.m., so we decided to chill in the parking lot for an hour and prep ourselves.

We entered the building at 9, hit security, checked in and waited until about 9:35 when our number was called. There were probably about 30 other people in the room waiting with us.

We were called by the nicest IO we could probably ask for (and young too!). She escorted us into her office where she had a trainee with her, and put us under oath.

The first thing she did was take my ID and his passport, and verify information on our I-485. She verified my employment and my job title, our address, and finally all the "yes-no" questions. She then asked my husband when his first day in the US was, and if he has ever left the country since. Afterward, she asked the both of us to give a brief overview of our relationship and how we got to this point (all the while, she was taking notes in our file).

Then the IO asked to see some documentation that supports our marriage, and this is where we went a little overboard! I pulled out a stack of about 18 bank statements and asked her how many she needed (she said 2), then we gave her our car insurance card and my husband's vision, dental and life insurance policy information from his job. I had told her that we really don't have anything that arrives at our address with both our names on it because my name is on the lease and all the utilities, so she asked if my husband had any mail at all that was addressed to him specifically. Thankfully I thought to bring some pieces of mail with his name on them.

At that point, she said that is all she needs, and that our case is approved as of that moment! WOO HOO! By the time we got home from Chicago, I checked our case status, and it was updated to "approved"!

In the end, this was literally the most stressful couple weeks of my life, and I was WAY more stressed than my husband, even though he's the one getting the green card  We had tons more bona fides than we needed, but I'm still happy that we came with as much paperwork and proof as we did—because you never really know how your own personal experience will be until it happens. So, for now, we get a couple years of normalcy until we start the whole process over again. In the meantime, we get to breathe easy, and I wish all of you with an AOS coming up, the best of luck! Just make sure you're overly prepared!!!

Thank you for the reassurance! This has definitely been a learning experience, and we are going to have mounds of evidence for the ROC for sure. Thanks again for the good words, I need them!

Hey all,

I've been reading for a while and never posted, and now that we have an interview coming up, I need to hear what you guys think.

Background: 

-My husband and I are a same sex couple, and my husband is the immigrant in this case.

-K1 Visa petition went through basically without issue. (We've been using an immigration attorney for everything)

-Husband arrived in US in October 2015

-Got married in America November 2015  We had a civil ceremony because I don't have much family, and he doesn't have much in the US either.

-Prepared I-485 in December 2015, and waited over a year for any activity. We finally have our interview scheduled for just a couple days from now.

From the day we got a notice in the mail that we have an interview scheduled, I have been a wreck. I haven't been eating. I know how much there is at stake here, and I just don't want to mess up anything at all. The issue that really arises in our case is that since last year, our attorney had said that we aren't going to have an interview, and that our case was cut and dry. Welllllllll..... I was dumb and ignorant, and took our attorney's word as gospel, and now I feel ill-prepared.

I'm praying to god that we have enough to show our relationship is real and strong... Because it is! So what's your opinion on the proof we are able to come up with?

First, I'll list the issues that concern me:
-I'm so so stupid and didn't think to update my drivers license with our current address; (Same state, different street)

-Also, I get handed my paycheck and w2 at work, so I forgot that I have the old address on those too.

-AND it didn't even dawn on me to change my filing status to "married" until yesterday!

-We do not have a lease; because the apartment building only requires 1 year, then it is month-to-month

-I was living there for 3 years before he finally arrived, so all the bills are only under my name

-He isn't on our car loan because the finance guy said we could probably get a better rate that way

-I didn't add him to the credit cards because we are just not using them really... trying to get them all paid

-Our attorney downplays the seriousness of this interview, saying that it's pretty much a "formality"

Here's some good stuff:

-We have two bank accounts that we are joint owners of

-We have a copy of last year's return that we filed jointly

-My husband works, and we have joint vision and dental insurance and life insurance through his job

-We share a car, and he is of course on our car insurance

-We have a notarized statement from my Mom attesting to our marriage and our relationship
-We have a shared phone plan, and shows both our numbers, but it's only under my name

-Lots of photos  

I'm so sorry to unload all that, but what do you guys think? The thought that we could be denied is nauseating. Please, please, let me know if you think of anything else. Thanks for reading my nonsense!