British Expats - AOS, snow, voting and "avuse"! (long, of course)

Well I'm very pleased to say that the dear SecretGarden and I made it safely back from our AOS jaunt in the Windy City, and I'm warmed up and comfortable again.

Before our interview date we'd made plans about who was picking the kids up after school while we were away for the day, and of course these plans immediately went down the pan as soon as the damned white stuff started filling up the roads for the second day in a row. All the local schools were closed and we were faced with dragging three young children down to Chicago for a day of waiting in USCIS offices... That's if we could even get there at all! I got up at 5:30 so I could shovel the driveway clear, and we loaded the car with packed lunches, snow shovels, jump leads, bottled water, blankets, and lots of loose change for the suddenly-very-expensive tolls. SG looked on the USCIS site for office closings, and not seeing the Chicago office listed, call the Mis-information line (will we ever learn?) No one answered even though it was during business hours, so we assumed that it was still a go. Thirty minutes before we were due to leave we had a phone call from SG's mum, offering to take the children for the day - interesting timing! This was certainly a weight off our minds, and after a short detour to drop off the passengers we were on our way!

The drive into Chicago was much smoother than we expected, with completely clear roads most of the way. We ended up making much better time than we had anticipated, so we were looking forward to stopping for a coffee and a snack before going in for our interview.

We found a big underground carpark on Dearborn Street, within a hundred yards of the USCIS office. No sooner had we walked up to the street level than we heard the parking attendant yelling "No more parking spaces!" at a couple of cars who came in after us, so I think we may have got pretty much the last available parking space. Yay!! :)

Right opposite the exit to the carpark was a cozy bakery/restaurant place called the Corner Bakery (or something like that) and I can recommend the roasted tomato soup, but bring some asbestos mittens if you intend carrying the coffee back to your table. I'm estimating my coffee will have cooled to the perfect temperature sometime in early March. Good stuff though!

The walk from the bakery to the USCIS office was short, but not without opportunities to plunge your foot up to the ankle in the slush and snowmelt that hides the place where the kerb ought to be.

The USCIS office itelf is located in a 56-story building (I think!) with airport-style security checks as you enter. The guy in front of us set off all the metal detecting alarm things, and each time he unloaded a few metallic items and went back through, well... it happened again! Either an artificial skull, or something reminiscent of Spinal Tap, perhaps?

We took the lift up to the 2nd floor, and I was expecting to see something imposing and intimidating like the interior of the US Consulate in London. Well, that's certainly not the case, as evidenced by the gift shop/snack bar down the hall that seems to take up rather a lot of room!

The waiting room itself was a nondescript bit of open plan office space with plastic chairs laid out like a doctor's waiting room. The receptionist took our appointment letter through the window of her little office, and we waited.

And waited.

For an hour and a half.

(ok, so we got there an hour early... Still ne'er mind, eh?)

People came in, walked out, came back, dithered, dropped stuff, hung around a bit, and then sat down, and we all waited some more. The only exciting part was where the lady behind the window got to use her microphone, and oh boy did she get her money's worth! "RESIDENTS OF 4321 ALIAS STREET, YUCKVILLE ILLINOIS, PLEASE" she bellowed, and as we all jumped out of our seats everybody looked at everyone else and no doubt thought "blech, who'd want to live there?" This was by far the loudest PA system outside of a Pink Floyd show. If you live in the US midwest, try opening your windows on a clear day... If you listen carefully you may well be able to hear her wheezing. Or maybe it was the feedback, I dunno.

Eventually our address was called and we collected our original appointment letter (this time adorned with pink highlighter and our time of entry in red pen) and took the lift up to the 23rd floor... To be met with *everybody* we'd just seen downstairs, crammed into a tiny waiting room a third of the size of the one they'd just left! Little by little they were called up and taken through a door that was directly to our right (and alarmingly close to SG's head, because we were sitting on the floor at the time).

You could see the adjudicators coming to the check in area, getting their next case off a list, then coming through the door to get people. An Asian lady with a great big black and white fake flower pinned to her chest got us. SG commented, "She looks nice and smiley, maybe we'll get her!" and the next thing you knew, she was calling our name. "AHA!" we thought! "This is going to be great, she looks so friendly!" But, instead of going though the doorway like everyone else, our petite officer with a flower bigger than she, asked us to follow her for a brisk walk along a winding corridor that got darker and less friendly as we approached her office. Words like "special, horrible processing" sprang to mind. Why wasn't she taking us through the normal door???

The office itself was small, and dominated by a big desk and tons of paperwork stacked all over it. We sat down and were immediately told to stand up again so we could swear an oath. We did. We sat down again.

Our officer, M. Maher, had a fairly thick accent. At first we weren't sure we were hearing her correctly. "So, I can tell you right now that I won't be able to approve you today because your FBI check is not back yet".

Not good.

"It doesn't matter what documents you give me today, you won't be approved." Glare.

Very not good.

"I'll just check one more time..." (checks email) "ah yes, here it is, it must have come through at lunchtime"

Very good, but slightly surreal! Thank goodness our appointment was in the afternoon! (Maybe she did that on purpose to see if we would break down or something!)

Her first question was, "when did you enter the US?" I answered. "When did you get married?" I answered. "Oh, only a week apart? You couldn't wait any longer?" This wasn't said in an amused fashion...she was serious. I know I should have just answered, "No" but I said, "We had been apart for so long." Glare.

She bluntly and confrontationally asked why our file was so thick, and seemed to be accusing me of (in her words) being here as a result of some kind of amnesty or asylum seeking...or that I had been arrested...or that I had entered the US on a previous visa, or that I had overstayed. By now we were getting pretty darn anxious, and I was stammering something about no, not me, that's not right, no no..! But once she actually *opened* it, she saw that the volume of paperwork was just because SG and I were very very thorough with all our earlier submissions. She seemed content with that, and then asked me some rapid fire questions.

First off: "Why are there three I-485s in here? Have you applied before?" No...... "Then why are there three?" SG answered that we had sent in a copy of the I-485 with our AP and EAD apps, and perhaps they had all been put in one file. She seemed to think that was a valid explanation. She ripped the other two copies out and handed them to SG.

Then the questions about crimes of moral turpitude, espionage, terrorism, etc. etc. etc., barely waiting for my answer before she checked the box and interrupted me with the next question. The last question she asked during this time was, "Have you registered to vote yet?" to which I answered, "uh....no?", thinking that only US citizens can vote, and maybe she was trying to get me to slip up. She looked up from the papers and said, "well, that's good, because voting is a right only afforded to US citizens, and you are not one of those. That is a deportable offense." No response from us, at which point a woman came in and handed her three files. She opened them, glanced briefly and said, "Now here....these people have registered to vote without being citizens and that is very bad. They will be sent home and can not be processed." She took the files and put them in what looked like a garbage can under her desk. It took a while to shake off the image of three AOS applicants being selected from the waiting room and taken into a back room to be shot.

Then the real fun started. We were startlingly organised but she asked for what she wanted in such a rapid fire way that our heads were swimming. She literally gave us lists of six or seven documents at a time. Our carefully organised files went completely down the toilet as she passed things back to us, took things from us and generally expected us to keep up. We attempted to get clarification several times, and asked her to repeat, but she ignored those questions completely and set to ripping about our original file and two hole punching things we had handed her. She appeared to be irritated that our marriage certificate and SG's birth certificate were both certified copies...she kept feeling the raised seal and asked, "why didn't you just bring copies?" to which SG replied that certified copies were very cheap in our town.

In the end, we were asked for: photo ID (driver's licenses and my EAD), passport, birth certificates for SG and me, birth certificates for my two children, divorce docs. for our prior marriages, marriage certificate, evidence of "joint assets and liabilities" (her words)---bank statements for our four accounts for the past year, life insurance policy, home owner's insurance policy, letter from SG's employer, SG's W2s from 2003 (she did not want the updated I-864), copies of wedding photos "so I can see your faces together", the EAD card, and then she started typing something on her computer screen. She clarified the spelling of my first name (people always want to add an extra letter), and then said, "well, I'll be stamping your passport with the I-551 stamp", ripped the stapled I-94 out of my passport, crossed out the K1 visa and wrote "cancelled" on it, (after all that work to get it!) and printed out a letter regarding the process to remove conditions. We had to sign the letter, and she explained in her accent, that I could only remove conditions at the end of two years if I was still married to the same US citizen, to which I replied that that was certainly my intention!

She then went on to say that the only way I could remove conditions on my own was if "your wife has avused you, and you would need to have evidence of that." It didn't occur to me right then that she had meant "abused" and so I remained in bewildered silence.

She then handed me the passport, and seemed to soften a bit. As we were gathering up our things, I asked her if it was always this busy or if it was unusual. She said, without looking up, "no, it's always like this, that's why I rush you out of here so I can get on to the next case. Turn right, turn left, and right again."

Dismissed!

Cheers,

Mr Pink
~and SecretGarden
~~ Passport stamped, now get the hell out of here! :)