Mefrie

Some background: Our case is not really typical of what I see around the forums and in immigration FAQs on the internet and self-help immigration books. This is because my husband was already in deportation proceeding when we got married. (We were engaged before he got picked up and held. He entered the US legally on a student visa and just overstayed it.) He was released to my custody and we hired a lawyer and filed the I-130.
I can't find any kind of guide or anyone (besides the lawyer and apparently the people at DHS) who knows what the process is for filing for AOS during deportation proceedings. It's different from normal AOS...for instance, when we filed the I-130, that was ALL we filed at that time. The stuff that would normally come with it, like I-485, I-864, and I-765, was not filed at that time. I'd love to find a timeline of when we might be allowed to file that stuff. Sometimes I feel like we're just feeling our way along in the dark...only allowed to know each little snippet of what to do next when it's time to do that thing... and heaven help you if you don't already have whatever it is ready at that time. Oh, but if you prepare it too early, you'll just have to do it over again so it's current!
The immigration court in New Orleans has agreed to hold off on the deportation hearing until my husband goes through the immigration process, so that he will have some relief under the law from being deported. We just have to go back to New Orleans every few months to make sure we're still married and together. I'm very grateful for this.
So on May 30th, about 6 and 1/2 months after we filed the I-130, we got our interview notice! Yay!They requested that we bring each other, our ID, any proof of marriage, and our I-864, the Affidavit of Support, which we had not previously filed at all.
We got there and got through security about 20 minutes early. We checked in at the second floor and were sent up to the third floor waiting room, which was pretty empty, only about five or six other couples. We didn't have to wait long at all, probably only the twenty minutes until our one o'clock appointment, certainly not more than 30 minutes. We were near the front of the room, where all the chairs were facing, and all the other calls for couple were coming from the door there, so it really startled me when our call came from behind us, near the hall with the elevators.
Also she spelled out our last name rather than just say it, which in other circumstances might have made me laugh, since it's a common name, only four letters, one syllable and there's really no way to mispronounce it.
Our interviewer was a short lady with short, upswept hair. She had dark skin and a lean face with just a few lines on it and she could have been anywhere from her thirties to early, well-preserved fifties. She wasn't super-skinny, but she wasn't in any way fat or chubby. She was probably pretty when she smiled. She appeared to be in a bad mood.
Now I know all the guides say you should introduce yourself, get your interviewer's name, but...this lady already looked teed off. We didn't want to irritate her further, so we never did get her name. She led up back to a windowless cubbyholle of an-- office? interview room?-- and got our IDs . (She snapped at my husband, "Passport?" when he wasn't quite quick enough fumbling it out of its little plastic cover... I think both our hands were shaking at that point.)
She asked a couple of questions to verify that he was in proceedings already and then asked us for our G-325's and then our evidence. With each thing (bills, checking accounts, insurance, etc) we brought out, we would explain what it was in a sentence or two and almost before it was done she would jump in in with a heavy sigh and a "Is this it?" or "What else do you have?" or "Do you have anything else for me?" or "Do you have anything else you want me to consider?"
I really do not know how to describe her sighs. They were heavy, almost overblown or overdone like bad acting. She would have had to have been incredibly unself-aware to have not known they loudly punctuated almost every question or statement she loosed at us. They managed to give off an air of pessimism, depression, and impatience all at once.
She acted as though each piece of evidence we brough out wasn't good enough, and we were getting more worried by the second. I told her we could get any piece of paer she wanted, any documents, we could mail them, just tell us.
She stopped at the photgraphs (a stack nearly a foot high!) and flipped throgh them ten and twenty at a time. I had witten on the back of each, who was in it, where they were and what they were doing. She stopped at precisely two and asked Richard where they were taken. I don't think she read the back to confirm his answers at all. Then she asked each of us two questions from the G-325- what is your spouses bitrhdate and your spouses city of birth, and she asked me my maiden name.
Then she asked again, with another all-hope-is-lost sigh, what other evidence we had. We brought out the letters from people who knew us. She got downright sarcastic. "Uh, no." Her voicetone and inflection turned to that of a head cheerleader rejecting some nerdy highschooler's akward advances as she tossed the stack onto the table. Then she picked it right back up and began reeling off names from the bottoms of the letters.
" Who is this?" she demanded. I let Richard answer each one, "Her grandmother. Her uncle" "These are your family," our interviewer dimissed them again. "Of course your family will say whatever you want!" She wouldn't even look at our stack of cards addressed to the both of us, just sighed heavily ("huuuuhhhh, NO!") and got sarcastic again, "No, I don't *think* so!"
Then she sighed heavily yet again, asked us if we had anything else, because "right now, I have to tell you it isn't looking too good." We didn't. So she sighed yet again and asked me to sign a sheet of paper saying I had agreed to be interviewed without my lawyer present.
Then she got up and left the room. I was wondering if I should refuse to sign, since it looked like she was going to reject it. I was quietly freaking out. Should we try to get another interview with the lawyer present. Should we try and fing an Atlanta lawyer I still hadn'i signed when she came back to the room.
She typed on the computer an ignored up fo a couple of minutes, Then she asked for the paper I was holding. I signed it and handed it over. She stamped on another piec of paper and handed it over to us. It said approved!!!!
BUT she never asked for our I-164's at all. We realized afterward we didn't ggive them to her!!!
Will this cause trouble in the future?