Tweet
Hi,
I am a US Citizen and my wife and I just had our green card interview today. I wanted to share about our case and hopefully at least 1 person finds it useful. I might be in the minority here and I think this forum is an absolute asset. However, I also feel like it can cause a lot of people to became extremely stressed maybe when they don't have to be stressed. This is what happened to me, and while this site is useful, I also feel like I became too stressed for no reason now
tl;dr: Do your due dillgence. Become prepared. Go over your relationship and life with your spouse. But stop stressing so much unless you absolutely have to. Documents showing joint assets carry a lot of weight.
Background: I met my wife over 5 years ago while she was on H1B and we became serious decently fast. She is originally from China. We weren't living in the same city to start out with, but I was traveling on business every week for over 2 years to where she lived, so we still saw each other every week. I moved to "her" city (now where we both live). 9 or 10 months after this, she moved in with me at my place. The landlord at the time had a strict policy about adding people to the lease - they wouldn't even do it on lease renewal even for a new occupant. It was a small time landlord, and our super didn't care that she moved in. On our 4 year anniversary (a little over a year ago), I proposed to her at the same place as our first date. A month later, we moved to a new apartment together with a new lease. For whatever reason, I put her as an occupant on this lease instead of a lease holder. We live in NYC and the market can be crazy, and since I cleared the income required for this apartment by myself, I didn't need her except as an occupant. The landlord told us it would make the application go faster to secure the apartment, so she was never put on as a leaseholder. This summer we were legally married at the city clerk's office but had been planning our actual expensive wedding since a few months before that. We had our big wedding ceremony and reception at the end of September, which was great.
Our package was received by USCIS in early August and my wife went in for her biometrics in early October. In early November, we received a letter in the mail that they scheduled our interview for December 13 (today). We did hire a lawyer to prepare for us and they did an alright job, but be careful about hiring a lawyer who knows what they're doing.
In the last 2-3 weeks, I was doing a lot of research into the interview process. Honestly, I was getting really, really stressed out. Although I am a US CItizen, it is my life too. I have a good job with expanding responsibilities and the last thing I want to do right now is have to leave it. My wife is still on H1B and it doesn't expire until the end of 2021. Even though our lawyer told us we'd be fine, I was still stressing out big time. Even moreso than our wedding, honestly. I started reading a lot about this on the internet and it started to freak me out. Certain sites saying if you have even 1 single document incorrect, that you'll get automatically denied. There is a lot on this forum about the process. In hindsight some seems useful and some seems rather apocalyptic and not useful at all. Every case is different
My wife has never been out of status while in the US and has always been on OPT and H1B. This is our first marriage. I believe our case is very straight forward. Maybe moreso than others, but maybe it's not so unique either. Many people go through this of all sorts of situations.
Our Package: Along with the required forms and checks made out to the US Dept of Homeland Security, we also submitted a photocopy of our marriage certificate, our birth certificates, all of her visa information along with I-797s, I-20s, etc (photocopies), former EAD card, I-94 record from DHS. I also submitted my last 3 years of IRS tax transcripts (which you can get through the IRS website either digitally or order through the mail) as well as my last 3 years of W2 tax returns (which were huge from the 2+ years of constant business travel). Of course there were other things submitted for her such as her sealed medical examination, a few new passport photos, etc.
For proof of our marriage, we submitted numerous flight ticket emails going back 2.5 years (yay for not clearing out email for a long time), a few emails of gifts I'd given her with both of our names on the email back 1.5 years, 3 affidavit of support (1 from both of my parents and 2 from friends who have known us as a couple for most of our marriage). and numerous photographs. The lawyers only sent in about half of our photographs for some reason. We had a lot of photographs with other family/friends in them including me in a few pictures with her parents and other family, and her in pictures with some of my family (including my parents). At the time of submitting, we weren't using a joint bank account at all though we knew we eventually would. We did not start using it until right after our wedding ceremony which was over 3 months after our legal marriage.
Our lawyer put the package together for us, but only organized into the sections such as the forms, the tax information, the photos, etc. They merely made a general table of contents with no explanations on it. There was no explaining to the USCIS officer in the form of paper about a sequence of events in our relationship.
When I started reading this forum, I became extremely stressed out to the point of getting physically ill one day. I had read cases of people who were saying that you have to make a timeline for the USCIS officer because they are basically (implying) "too lazy" to piece it together themselves. That you can't show any gaps in your relationship, blah blah blah. It was crazy to me. People who are truly in love do not usually plan right away to get married and *****ally save every single thing they've ever done together. But somehow reading this forum seemed like people were advocating that you had to do that or else you could get denied easily.
I got a bunch of other documents ready for our interview to submit to them during the interview itself. We only had 2 statements of our joint bank account and really only 1 of them showed constant usage. I printed up almost every document we submitted already and I printed up in physical form all of the pictures we submitted. I also got more pictures from our legal marriage which included a picture with the Justice of the Peace in the background and about 10 or 12 photos from our wedding ceremony a few months later. Some of these pictures included other people from our ceremony, and we had a few pictures included me, my wife, her parents, and my parents together. I also printed up our wedding ceremony contract, wedding invite, tasting event sheet, hotel block contracts, wedding registry printout, and I also got another affidavit of support for my witness of our legal marriage. I even scanned in all of the receipts of the engagement ring that I bought her as well as the receipts for both our marriage license and marriage certificate. My wife also would pay me a little bit of rent every month before we were married and put our money together. I had almost all of those checks from her to me (with words like "rent" in the memo line) dating back to 2017.
The Interview Since we are in NYC and live probably 6 miles from the interview location, we left 90 minutes before our interview time and arrived early. The security was very airport security-like and took a good 15 minutes to get through. We did not have a lawyer present with us by the way. You are told to not check in more than 30 minutes early - but we got to the final waiting room 10 minutes before that. The security guard let us go for some reason after he thought about it for 30 seconds. You could tell in his head he thought "whatever, screw it." We ended up waiting for over an hour for our number to be called. There were other people who showed up 20 minutes after us who got called 30 minutes earlier than us. I suspect that each case is assigned to a particular officer and the reason for us waiting like this is due to the officer on our case's time with previous interviews.
We entered the officer's office - she was very nice and personable. We both raised our right hands and swore to tell the truth. She explained to us that the questions she'll ask are based on her experiences with being an officer and what she thinks is important to ask based on her experience. I was still very tense partially because I had a headache going, and we hadn't eaten all day (our time was scheduled at noon). I had stood up a little bit to give some documents and we were told to never stand during the interview for security purposes. She asked for my wife's name and then asked for our IDs - our passports, IDs, etc. My wife doesn't have a US issued ID for whatever reason, but it was fine with the officer.
I don't remember every question, but here were a few generally
- How did you meet? When did you meet?
- When did your relationship turn serious?
- Has your relationship always been monogamous? (after telling her we met in 2014 and became serious shortly after)
- Questions to my wife about me: What does he (me) do for a living? What company does he work for? How long has he been working for that company? Where was he born? Have you met his parents? Does he have siblings? Where do his parents live?
- Questions to me about her: What does she do for a living? What company does she work for? How much does she get paid? What do her parents do for a living? Where do her parents live? Does she have any siblings? What is her degree in?
- Questions in general to her: How much is your current rent? What does that include in it (i.e. utilties)? - I was asked if what my wife stated was correct.
- Questions in general to me: Do you live together? Did you ever live together before being married? If so, for how long?
At this point in time, I presented her all of the rent checks that my wife wrote to me before we were married dating back to September 2017. She looked through all of them including the backs and then handed them back to me. She then asked if we had any joint bank accounts to which I presented her with 2 joint bank account statements. I believe she kept those and put them into our file but we got the checks back. She asked us how we deal with expenses together in this joint account and how much we allocate to this from our paychecks. I explained we haven't paid rent yet because we got December rent for free, but we'll pay for rent out of this account coming up. We were not asked why we waited a few months to put money together.
We then showed her the 10-12 marriage ceremony pictures and she looked at every one of them. Again, these included pictures of my parents together with her parents. She asked if our parents got along, and we joked about how my mom had learned some Mandarin to be able to converse more freely with my wife's parents. She kept a few wedding pictures for the file.
At this point in time, she bluntly told us that she thought our marriage was legitimate and I felt a huge sigh of relief go over my body. She then proceeded to ask questions required by law to my wife such as "Are you a terrorist?" and "have you ever killed somebody?" - things like that.
Our case was approved today and we got notice that a card was ordered and being processed for us. We were never separated for questioning. We were always in the same room together through this process today.
What the officer told us: The officer was very personable with us which I believe is a tactic employed by some officers to get you to give information you weren't asked without realizing. I used to be a consultant for one of the major consulting groups in the world for 8 years, and we were taught this tactic big time. I did it many times to clients to get information out of them that they wouldn't give up with a direct question, but would give up if you were just having a nice friendly chat. I think some of what she did was this and she was good at it. She got us comfortable, but we have nothing to hide either.
She pointed out that she could tell I was tense (I didn't think I gave off that vibe so more props to her for being able to tell). I explained to her that I started reading some internet forums and stressing out big time on the case. She bluntly told me: "Do not read those forums. They are inhabited by people who had cases that went wrong and will make everyone believe their case will go that way. Every single case is different." It's funny because I'm sharing with you my entire experience, but I still think it's important to breathe.
She explained to us that in a little less than 2 years, we'll have to file a form to have the green card conditions removed. She had indicated we had a lot of documentation, but a lot of it doesn't carry as much weight as joint asset documents. She indicated that the documents like flight tickets pale in comparison to something like joint bank accounts, a condo/house in both names, etc.
Bottom line
Now I think this forum is very useful, but for the love of God do not end up like me and getting so worried you get a major headache for an entire day. If you have a straight ahead case - the person getting sponsored has never entered here illegally, overstayed a visa, etc then it should go smoothly. Joint asset documents carry a lot of weight and I think that multiple photos showing you and your spouse together with other members of the family (parents, siblings, etc) goes a long way too.
For my job, I interview a ton of people and what they do here at USCIS is not that much different than what I do in terms of process. We have to follow a general process, but what we want to ask is completely up to us based on our experiences and what is important to determining. They do the same thing. So while what I say is my experience, you may get another set of questions. Maybe you will get some of the same questions, but you could get other ones too. Each officer is different.
Prepare for this - gather as many documents as you can, but also don't unnaturally rush into things right before the interview. It might look suspicious to open up a joint bank account, and put each other as beneficiaries on a life insurance just 3 days before your interview. I think most of these officers don't expect you to be perfect and that all of this is new to you, but also doing these types of things at the last minute could look very unnatural and suspicious. Open up joint accounts before filing for your GC if you can with one statement. If not, then it's not the end of the world - bring a few statements showing actual usage to the interview.
Bring everything you submitted in your package just in case they somehow lost one of the documents. Talk with your spouse about these types of questions - even the ones like "how many windows do you have in your bedroom?" at least a few weeks before and go over them every once in awhile. We were not asked them, but it was still good to go over.
Cheers
I am a US Citizen and my wife and I just had our green card interview today. I wanted to share about our case and hopefully at least 1 person finds it useful. I might be in the minority here and I think this forum is an absolute asset. However, I also feel like it can cause a lot of people to became extremely stressed maybe when they don't have to be stressed. This is what happened to me, and while this site is useful, I also feel like I became too stressed for no reason now
tl;dr: Do your due dillgence. Become prepared. Go over your relationship and life with your spouse. But stop stressing so much unless you absolutely have to. Documents showing joint assets carry a lot of weight.
Background: I met my wife over 5 years ago while she was on H1B and we became serious decently fast. She is originally from China. We weren't living in the same city to start out with, but I was traveling on business every week for over 2 years to where she lived, so we still saw each other every week. I moved to "her" city (now where we both live). 9 or 10 months after this, she moved in with me at my place. The landlord at the time had a strict policy about adding people to the lease - they wouldn't even do it on lease renewal even for a new occupant. It was a small time landlord, and our super didn't care that she moved in. On our 4 year anniversary (a little over a year ago), I proposed to her at the same place as our first date. A month later, we moved to a new apartment together with a new lease. For whatever reason, I put her as an occupant on this lease instead of a lease holder. We live in NYC and the market can be crazy, and since I cleared the income required for this apartment by myself, I didn't need her except as an occupant. The landlord told us it would make the application go faster to secure the apartment, so she was never put on as a leaseholder. This summer we were legally married at the city clerk's office but had been planning our actual expensive wedding since a few months before that. We had our big wedding ceremony and reception at the end of September, which was great.
Our package was received by USCIS in early August and my wife went in for her biometrics in early October. In early November, we received a letter in the mail that they scheduled our interview for December 13 (today). We did hire a lawyer to prepare for us and they did an alright job, but be careful about hiring a lawyer who knows what they're doing.
In the last 2-3 weeks, I was doing a lot of research into the interview process. Honestly, I was getting really, really stressed out. Although I am a US CItizen, it is my life too. I have a good job with expanding responsibilities and the last thing I want to do right now is have to leave it. My wife is still on H1B and it doesn't expire until the end of 2021. Even though our lawyer told us we'd be fine, I was still stressing out big time. Even moreso than our wedding, honestly. I started reading a lot about this on the internet and it started to freak me out. Certain sites saying if you have even 1 single document incorrect, that you'll get automatically denied. There is a lot on this forum about the process. In hindsight some seems useful and some seems rather apocalyptic and not useful at all. Every case is different
My wife has never been out of status while in the US and has always been on OPT and H1B. This is our first marriage. I believe our case is very straight forward. Maybe moreso than others, but maybe it's not so unique either. Many people go through this of all sorts of situations.
Our Package: Along with the required forms and checks made out to the US Dept of Homeland Security, we also submitted a photocopy of our marriage certificate, our birth certificates, all of her visa information along with I-797s, I-20s, etc (photocopies), former EAD card, I-94 record from DHS. I also submitted my last 3 years of IRS tax transcripts (which you can get through the IRS website either digitally or order through the mail) as well as my last 3 years of W2 tax returns (which were huge from the 2+ years of constant business travel). Of course there were other things submitted for her such as her sealed medical examination, a few new passport photos, etc.
For proof of our marriage, we submitted numerous flight ticket emails going back 2.5 years (yay for not clearing out email for a long time), a few emails of gifts I'd given her with both of our names on the email back 1.5 years, 3 affidavit of support (1 from both of my parents and 2 from friends who have known us as a couple for most of our marriage). and numerous photographs. The lawyers only sent in about half of our photographs for some reason. We had a lot of photographs with other family/friends in them including me in a few pictures with her parents and other family, and her in pictures with some of my family (including my parents). At the time of submitting, we weren't using a joint bank account at all though we knew we eventually would. We did not start using it until right after our wedding ceremony which was over 3 months after our legal marriage.
Our lawyer put the package together for us, but only organized into the sections such as the forms, the tax information, the photos, etc. They merely made a general table of contents with no explanations on it. There was no explaining to the USCIS officer in the form of paper about a sequence of events in our relationship.
When I started reading this forum, I became extremely stressed out to the point of getting physically ill one day. I had read cases of people who were saying that you have to make a timeline for the USCIS officer because they are basically (implying) "too lazy" to piece it together themselves. That you can't show any gaps in your relationship, blah blah blah. It was crazy to me. People who are truly in love do not usually plan right away to get married and *****ally save every single thing they've ever done together. But somehow reading this forum seemed like people were advocating that you had to do that or else you could get denied easily.
I got a bunch of other documents ready for our interview to submit to them during the interview itself. We only had 2 statements of our joint bank account and really only 1 of them showed constant usage. I printed up almost every document we submitted already and I printed up in physical form all of the pictures we submitted. I also got more pictures from our legal marriage which included a picture with the Justice of the Peace in the background and about 10 or 12 photos from our wedding ceremony a few months later. Some of these pictures included other people from our ceremony, and we had a few pictures included me, my wife, her parents, and my parents together. I also printed up our wedding ceremony contract, wedding invite, tasting event sheet, hotel block contracts, wedding registry printout, and I also got another affidavit of support for my witness of our legal marriage. I even scanned in all of the receipts of the engagement ring that I bought her as well as the receipts for both our marriage license and marriage certificate. My wife also would pay me a little bit of rent every month before we were married and put our money together. I had almost all of those checks from her to me (with words like "rent" in the memo line) dating back to 2017.
The Interview Since we are in NYC and live probably 6 miles from the interview location, we left 90 minutes before our interview time and arrived early. The security was very airport security-like and took a good 15 minutes to get through. We did not have a lawyer present with us by the way. You are told to not check in more than 30 minutes early - but we got to the final waiting room 10 minutes before that. The security guard let us go for some reason after he thought about it for 30 seconds. You could tell in his head he thought "whatever, screw it." We ended up waiting for over an hour for our number to be called. There were other people who showed up 20 minutes after us who got called 30 minutes earlier than us. I suspect that each case is assigned to a particular officer and the reason for us waiting like this is due to the officer on our case's time with previous interviews.
We entered the officer's office - she was very nice and personable. We both raised our right hands and swore to tell the truth. She explained to us that the questions she'll ask are based on her experiences with being an officer and what she thinks is important to ask based on her experience. I was still very tense partially because I had a headache going, and we hadn't eaten all day (our time was scheduled at noon). I had stood up a little bit to give some documents and we were told to never stand during the interview for security purposes. She asked for my wife's name and then asked for our IDs - our passports, IDs, etc. My wife doesn't have a US issued ID for whatever reason, but it was fine with the officer.
I don't remember every question, but here were a few generally
- How did you meet? When did you meet?
- When did your relationship turn serious?
- Has your relationship always been monogamous? (after telling her we met in 2014 and became serious shortly after)
- Questions to my wife about me: What does he (me) do for a living? What company does he work for? How long has he been working for that company? Where was he born? Have you met his parents? Does he have siblings? Where do his parents live?
- Questions to me about her: What does she do for a living? What company does she work for? How much does she get paid? What do her parents do for a living? Where do her parents live? Does she have any siblings? What is her degree in?
- Questions in general to her: How much is your current rent? What does that include in it (i.e. utilties)? - I was asked if what my wife stated was correct.
- Questions in general to me: Do you live together? Did you ever live together before being married? If so, for how long?
At this point in time, I presented her all of the rent checks that my wife wrote to me before we were married dating back to September 2017. She looked through all of them including the backs and then handed them back to me. She then asked if we had any joint bank accounts to which I presented her with 2 joint bank account statements. I believe she kept those and put them into our file but we got the checks back. She asked us how we deal with expenses together in this joint account and how much we allocate to this from our paychecks. I explained we haven't paid rent yet because we got December rent for free, but we'll pay for rent out of this account coming up. We were not asked why we waited a few months to put money together.
We then showed her the 10-12 marriage ceremony pictures and she looked at every one of them. Again, these included pictures of my parents together with her parents. She asked if our parents got along, and we joked about how my mom had learned some Mandarin to be able to converse more freely with my wife's parents. She kept a few wedding pictures for the file.
At this point in time, she bluntly told us that she thought our marriage was legitimate and I felt a huge sigh of relief go over my body. She then proceeded to ask questions required by law to my wife such as "Are you a terrorist?" and "have you ever killed somebody?" - things like that.
Our case was approved today and we got notice that a card was ordered and being processed for us. We were never separated for questioning. We were always in the same room together through this process today.
What the officer told us: The officer was very personable with us which I believe is a tactic employed by some officers to get you to give information you weren't asked without realizing. I used to be a consultant for one of the major consulting groups in the world for 8 years, and we were taught this tactic big time. I did it many times to clients to get information out of them that they wouldn't give up with a direct question, but would give up if you were just having a nice friendly chat. I think some of what she did was this and she was good at it. She got us comfortable, but we have nothing to hide either.
She pointed out that she could tell I was tense (I didn't think I gave off that vibe so more props to her for being able to tell). I explained to her that I started reading some internet forums and stressing out big time on the case. She bluntly told me: "Do not read those forums. They are inhabited by people who had cases that went wrong and will make everyone believe their case will go that way. Every single case is different." It's funny because I'm sharing with you my entire experience, but I still think it's important to breathe.
She explained to us that in a little less than 2 years, we'll have to file a form to have the green card conditions removed. She had indicated we had a lot of documentation, but a lot of it doesn't carry as much weight as joint asset documents. She indicated that the documents like flight tickets pale in comparison to something like joint bank accounts, a condo/house in both names, etc.
Bottom line
Now I think this forum is very useful, but for the love of God do not end up like me and getting so worried you get a major headache for an entire day. If you have a straight ahead case - the person getting sponsored has never entered here illegally, overstayed a visa, etc then it should go smoothly. Joint asset documents carry a lot of weight and I think that multiple photos showing you and your spouse together with other members of the family (parents, siblings, etc) goes a long way too.
For my job, I interview a ton of people and what they do here at USCIS is not that much different than what I do in terms of process. We have to follow a general process, but what we want to ask is completely up to us based on our experiences and what is important to determining. They do the same thing. So while what I say is my experience, you may get another set of questions. Maybe you will get some of the same questions, but you could get other ones too. Each officer is different.
Prepare for this - gather as many documents as you can, but also don't unnaturally rush into things right before the interview. It might look suspicious to open up a joint bank account, and put each other as beneficiaries on a life insurance just 3 days before your interview. I think most of these officers don't expect you to be perfect and that all of this is new to you, but also doing these types of things at the last minute could look very unnatural and suspicious. Open up joint accounts before filing for your GC if you can with one statement. If not, then it's not the end of the world - bring a few statements showing actual usage to the interview.
Bring everything you submitted in your package just in case they somehow lost one of the documents. Talk with your spouse about these types of questions - even the ones like "how many windows do you have in your bedroom?" at least a few weeks before and go over them every once in awhile. We were not asked them, but it was still good to go over.
Cheers
Comment