andrea874

I was gonna just scan the stamp and post it here, but I need to take advantage of having the rest of today off, and get myself to the DMV... I'll post the full story later on, for now we'll leave it at this: Approved. Got the stamp. Was soooooooooo easy!

Thanks everyone!
Details later!

HunterGreen

Congratulations Andrea! Thanks for stopping by and letting us know.

Elaine

inquisitive40

Woohoo... CONGRATS.... I am SOOOO HAPPY FOR YOU....
Never really doubted you would have a problem,, I don't think Canadian visa fraud is top of their list LOL...
CONGRATS AGAIN
Patrick

hopelessinks

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

I hope you are going to celebrate tonight!!!

jcapulet

Congratulations Andrea! Wonderful news

Rete

LOL

Andrea ... from black clouds to silver lining. You must have lived right in some incarnation to make everyone who uses the New York City USCIS want to either hunt you down and assume your identity or find out who you must know in the high echleon of the USCIS to come through it all so quickly.

Imagine, waltzing into the US from Canada with no immigration visa in sight, marrying, getting your vehicle imported after the fact from the Custom's people at JFK, having your purse stolen, losing and finding your passport, having a major car accident on a Long Island Highway, and all within 120 days from applying. All this while there are people out there waiting from 2002 for an interview date.

Congratulations Andrea .. but hide your identity ;-)))))


Rete

Noorah101

Congratulations, Andrea!

Mecca

Congratulations! You must be so relieved. Now, it's really time to party but before you do that ... I want details! My husband's interview is in 17 days ... I'm getting nervous now. Here's what we have collected thus far.

Passports
Driver's licenses
Social Security Cards
birth certificates
affidavit of support
tax returns
tax transcripts
paystubs
bank statements (his and mine)
employment letter
sonogram pics
wedding pics and other miscellaneous pics
utility bills
cell phone bill
lease
car insurance

Are we okay or do we need more evidence?

Jess2100

Congrats!!! Glad everything went smoothly for you!

inquisitive40

Dang that is a lot of evidence. I have seen posts here of people with only one utility and a joint bank account get approved.
Having said that the country of origin probably plays a part also (sadly)

Patrick

mrsm

Many Congratulations!!

Mecca

Let's not forget city/state of residence too! I can't wait to hear Andrea's experience so that my husband and I can do some last minute running around before d-day.

Thanks,
Mecca

tortoise

congrats, andrea :) i'm very glad it went without too much stress.

mine's in a couple of weeks time... hopefully they have my paperwork there this time ;)

kittya2004

Congratulations Andrea

andrea874

Alright. Well, here you go:

Our interview was scheduled for 8:30am. We got there around 8:10 (would have been earlier but as soon as we got off the train, Chris told me he REALLY needed to find a bathroom ASAP haha, so we went to the McDonalds across from 26 Federal Plaza, first). Anyway, we got up to the 8th floor, gave the appointment letter to the lady at the counter, and took a seat. We sat there for almost two hours, just waiting and getting pretty nervous. Finally they called my name (I didn't even notice, so I'm glad the husband was paying attention).

Anyway, we went over to the side door, which I nice little lady opened for us. We took a walk back to the adjudicator's office (her name escapes me at the moment...). As soon as we walked into her office, she asked us to raise our right hands and promise to tell the truth, before we had a chance to sit down. From there it was just light-hearted conversation.

The first thing she did was ask Chris "so, how did you meet your wife?", he responded by telling her that his band was playing a show, I came to with someone he knew, and it went from there". She looked at me and asked what his band is called, and what kind of music it is. When I responded that it's "metal / hardcore... heavy stuff", she looked back to Chris and asked him if it was the kind of music she could 'jam out to' haha. Anyway, then she asked for my passport, and some form of I.D for Chris. She noticed that Chris's passport hadn't been signed, so she made him sign it and made a comment about how good it was that he got a passport for the interview, because people come in with all sorts of illegitimate I.D. Anyway, she flipped through my passport, found the entrance stamp, and confirmed the date I came in and asked if I had left the country since then. I responded that I had not, and she said "good", and continued with the interview. She went on to ask Chris if he knew my parents, what their names were and when he met them... and whether he met them in Canada or the US. Then she asked me if I knew his parents, I responded by saying "yes, they live 3 doors down from us, so I know them quite well", and she made some comments about being handy for if we didn't feel like cooking. Anyway, she asked for their names, and then asked me what my husband does for a living, if he's in school, and the name of the school. She turned to Chris and asked him our wedding date, and where we got married.

At that point she asked us what we had brought with us to show her. Chris handed her our wedding album, which she started flipping through right away... commenting how her work involved way too many papers so she was always excited to see pictures. The last picture in our album is us in the back seat of a car, on the way to our wedding ceremony, making goofy faces, so she had a good laugh about that one. I asked her if she would like copies or originals of the other things we had, to which she responded that copies were just fine. I handed her the stuff we had compiled, and she just set it aside except for the few snapshots I handed her, which she immediately looked through. At this time she handed me back Chris's passport so she "didn't forget about it", but she kept mine. She picked out 3 or 4 snapshots, and asked me if it was okay for her to keep them, and made sure I knew that if she did, I would never see them again. It was fine with us, as everything we brought with the exception of the actual wedding album, were extra copies we had printed.

Before she looked through the stack of evidence I had given her, she told me she needed to ask me some legal questions, and not to get offended. She basically ran through that first page of the I-485, starting with asking me if I had ever been arrested. This one I had to say yes to, she saw I was very embarrassed, asked what it was for (it was shoplifting when I was like 14 or something), and asked if I had the court records, which I did. She didn't even really look at it (I think she looked at the date, figured out I was definately a minor, and just put it in my file), just asked me if I had ever been in trouble with the law besides that incident. She went on about the terrorism, etc (I asked her if anyone ever said yes to that... she said no, no one ever does, its more for future stuff - if anyone who has adjusted ever gets caught for that stuff later on, they use that to say they committed purgery, etc and the whole nine yards). The last question she asked was if I had ever worked illegally, to which I said "yes". Now, here's the surprising part, all she said was "what do you do for a living, anyway", so I told her, and she just said "that sounds really interesting, and continued with the interview.

She then started flipping through my file, and asked me if I happened to have a copy of my entrance stamp. I had included a copy with my original application, so I told her that, but I didn't have a copy with me today. She said she didn't see it with the application but that it wasn't surprising as pieces were very often missing, but it was no big deal, she would just take another copy of it. She looked through the file one more time and found the copy I had originally included anyway though. While she was looking through it, she noticed that my husband was born at the same hospital she was, and told a little story about her father being so flustered when she was born that he drove his mother to the wrong hospital, and they had a little conversation about the neighborhood. Durring this time, she was "looking" at the evidence I brought. All she really looked at was the lease, and our joint bank account... the other stuff she was flipping through while making total eye contact with Chris and conversing with him.

Anyway, she added those copies to my file, and stood up, saying she would be back in a moment and that when she was, the interview would be over so while she was gone we could gather our things and get ready to go (we didn't really have any things to gather, but whatever haha). She stepped out with my passport, was gone for about 5 minutes. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to get the stamp, as my whole process was so fast, but she returned with my passport opened, handed it to me, said congratulations I was now a permanent resident of the United States, that the stamp authorized me for travel and employment, so I didn't neet to use an EAD or AP anymore, and a card would be coming "in a few weeks".

She shook both our hands as we stood up to leave, then stopped us by saying "oh yeah, I'm not sure if anyone told you this, but since you have been married for less than 24 months, you'll have to fill out one more form 90 days before the card that's coming in the mail expires", and wrote "Don't forget, I-751, 90 days before card expiry!" on a yellow post-it note, and told me to stick it somewhere that I'd see it all the time so that I didn't forget. She told us which way to walk out, in case we forgot I guess, and away we went!

That was pretty much it. It was soooooooo much easier than I thought. It was really strange that she didn't press the issue of working illegally, coming into the US without a visa, or anything like that. I was totally shocked at just how easy it went. I'm not used to things going that well. In no way am I suggesting to ANYONE that doing things the way we did is a good idea at all. If I had to do it again I would definately do the K1 route, just to alleviate the stress factor

After we got home and cleaned the house, we went to the DMV to get my drivers license back, which was another whole experience on its own! I finally got my license, after a battle with the supervisors there about their own policy (the fact that for some reason my passport doesn't have my middle name on it, and the rest of my ID did was an issue as well).

Anyway, all in all, a great day in which a lot was accomplished. The next step is switching my SS card to my married name (which I hadn't done simply because I wanted to wait until I was approved so I can get the unrestricted card), and figure out how to register a business in New York state so I can move my record label down here officially.

Thanks soooooooooo much to everyone who helped me out! You guys are the best