N400-Portland, OR/NSC

[pdx-n-400-filler 0]

Hey Guys!

I got my letter today also for July 30th.

Timeline:

PD: March 26th '08

FP: April 12th '08

IL recieved: 6/6/08

Interview date: 7/30/08

[pdx-n-400-filler 0]

I started my N400 process back in December 07 and have my interview date in June in Portland Or. I came over on a k1 and never knew anything about selective service until the N400 application process. I did not get my green card until after I was 26 - will that justify me not needing to sign up? Also does anyone know if for tax purposes taking transcripts is ok in lieu of the 1722 form requested or are they the same thing?

I don't know anything about the selective service cuz I'm not a guy sorry~

and I think we can either take 3 years tax transcripts or our copies of the past 3 years US tax return. Have you request tax transcript copies yet? is it free?

My interview date is 6/11/08 in the afternoon, I wonder if I would be able to take oath the same day...

KIWIS!!!..

Your interview is This Wednesday(Good luck!!!)..Can you please let us know exactly how it goes...like the questions on the application they asked you,and the civic question e.t.c..I got my IL also for end of July.at 1.30pm so I was also wondering if they do oath later in the day or something....

Thanks...

[pnf0303 0]

Hi everyone I had my interview last Wednesday on 6/4 and had my oath ceremony the same day...I know everyone says it and it's hard to believe but it HONESTLY was soooo easy and stress free that I was amazed and it is far the best experience I have had with anyone EVER within the USCIS...so take a deep breath and relax...it will be fine. All I am waitin on now is my US Passport B) B)

[pdx-n-400-filler 0]

Hi everyone I had my interview last Wednesday on 6/4 and had my oath ceremony the same day...I know everyone says it and it's hard to believe but it HONESTLY was soooo easy and stress free that I was amazed and it is far the best experience I have had with anyone EVER within the USCIS...so take a deep breath and relax...it will be fine. All I am waitin on now is my US Passport B) B)

Hi pnf0303,

COngrats on becoming a Citizen!!!..Could you give us a little bit of details of how it went?...what time was your interview?(because mine is at 1.30pm so not sure if it will be thesame day Oath..?)how long did the interview took?...

what was the process and questions if you remember...

We would appreciate it....

Congrats again!

[pnf0303 0]

Sure - my interview was at 11am but I arrived early at 10am. I went thru security and placed my interview letter in a box outside of the room. There were quite a few people waiting and every 10 mins or so an immigration officer would appear with your interview letter and call a name. To my amazement at 10:30 I got called. The officer was sooo nice and said I could do it early if I wanted to...I said absolutely! We then walked into more of an office type environment and she swore me in. She asked me why I wanted to be a US citizen and then was very conversational and jokey! I commented on the thick file she had on me and she said oh this is nothing...went into her filing cabinet and pulled out a file 3x thicker than mine and said "this is a big file"! She said the slimer the file the better and that I was an "easy one". She went over my n400 to make sure nothing changed and had me initial the application in front of her and sign my 2 pixs I sent with the app. She then asked me my 4-5 civics q's. How many stripes on the flag? What do they represent? How long do we elect each president? Who elects the president? and how many voting members are there in the house of reps? I could see her circling "correct" on her work sheet. She only asked to see my passport (take an expired one if you have one) my green-card and driving licence and that was it! Nothing else...all in all my interview was 10mins max! She then said "how would you like to do the oath ceremony today" YIPEE! she gave me a letter I had to fill out and take back with me by 1:45pm as the oath ceremony starts at 2pm. By the way she said if you have an interview time after 11am you will not have the oath ceremony the same day...that is the cut off time they need to prepare all your docs and have the naturalization cert ready. The letter you take is to make sure there we no changes since your interview- so for me there was not too much point but I still filed it out. They then call everyone together and you go upstairs and they call your name and you give them your letter and say good bye to your green card. You then take the oath with eveyone else and then pledge allegience watch 2-3 videos and get called up to get your certificate and flag...and that's it. I would allow an hour or so for the ceremony from beginning to end. And then...it was done...I was an American.

[pdx-n-400-filler 0]

Sure - my interview was at 11am but I arrived early at 10am. I went thru security and placed my interview letter in a box outside of the room. There were quite a few people waiting and every 10 mins or so an immigration officer would appear with your interview letter and call a name. To my amazement at 10:30 I got called. The officer was sooo nice and said I could do it early if I wanted to...I said absolutely! We then walked into more of an office type environment and she swore me in. She asked me why I wanted to be a US citizen and then was very conversational and jokey! I commented on the thick file she had on me and she said oh this is nothing...went into her filing cabinet and pulled out a file 3x thicker than mine and said "this is a big file"! She said the slimer the file the better and that I was an "easy one". She went over my n400 to make sure nothing changed and had me initial the application in front of her and sign my 2 pixs I sent with the app. She then asked me my 4-5 civics q's. How many stripes on the flag? What do they represent? How long do we elect each president? Who elects the president? and how many voting members are there in the house of reps? I could see her circling "correct" on her work sheet. She only asked to see my passport (take an expired one if you have one) my green-card and driving licence and that was it! Nothing else...all in all my interview was 10mins max! She then said "how would you like to do the oath ceremony today" YIPEE! she gave me a letter I had to fill out and take back with me by 1:45pm as the oath ceremony starts at 2pm. By the way she said if you have an interview time after 11am you will not have the oath ceremony the same day...that is the cut off time they need to prepare all your docs and have the naturalization cert ready. The letter you take is to make sure there we no changes since your interview- so for me there was not too much point but I still filed it out. They then call everyone together and you go upstairs and they call your name and you give them your letter and say good bye to your green card. You then take the oath with eveyone else and then pledge allegience watch 2-3 videos and get called up to get your certificate and flag...and that's it. I would allow an hour or so for the ceremony from beginning to end. And then...it was done...I was an American.

WOw Thanks foo much for sharing this with us...Mine is in July and hope it will go smooth as yours...

I heard if you can take oath thesame day,they would ask you to ocme the next day or soo...do you know anything like this...

Thanks soo much

[warpedbored 0]

Sure - my interview was at 11am but I arrived early at 10am. I went thru security and placed my interview letter in a box outside of the room. There were quite a few people waiting and every 10 mins or so an immigration officer would appear with your interview letter and call a name. To my amazement at 10:30 I got called. The officer was sooo nice and said I could do it early if I wanted to...I said absolutely! We then walked into more of an office type environment and she swore me in. She asked me why I wanted to be a US citizen and then was very conversational and jokey! I commented on the thick file she had on me and she said oh this is nothing...went into her filing cabinet and pulled out a file 3x thicker than mine and said "this is a big file"! She said the slimer the file the better and that I was an "easy one". She went over my n400 to make sure nothing changed and had me initial the application in front of her and sign my 2 pixs I sent with the app. She then asked me my 4-5 civics q's. How many stripes on the flag? What do they represent? How long do we elect each president? Who elects the president? and how many voting members are there in the house of reps? I could see her circling "correct" on her work sheet. She only asked to see my passport (take an expired one if you have one) my green-card and driving licence and that was it! Nothing else...all in all my interview was 10mins max! She then said "how would you like to do the oath ceremony today" YIPEE! she gave me a letter I had to fill out and take back with me by 1:45pm as the oath ceremony starts at 2pm. By the way she said if you have an interview time after 11am you will not have the oath ceremony the same day...that is the cut off time they need to prepare all your docs and have the naturalization cert ready. The letter you take is to make sure there we no changes since your interview- so for me there was not too much point but I still filed it out. They then call everyone together and you go upstairs and they call your name and you give them your letter and say good bye to your green card. You then take the oath with eveyone else and then pledge allegience watch 2-3 videos and get called up to get your certificate and flag...and that's it. I would allow an hour or so for the ceremony from beginning to end. And then...it was done...I was an American.

Thank you so much for the interview rundown. My wife's interview is here in Portland July 9th and she has been pretty nervous. I'm going to print this out for her to read.

[pnf0303 0]

warpedbored - I am happy to assist and hope your wife found it useful as I know how stressful the whole thing can be! FYI for everyone here is an awesome site that gives you practical tips once you have become naturalized - I HIGHLY recommend reading the whole site : http://www.newcitizen.us/index.html

[warpedbored 0]

Thanks! I'm always looking for new information.

[warpedbored 0]

My wife had her citizenship test today and passed. It was very easy. From the time she was called in the waiting room to finish was fifteen minutes tops. She was asked six civics questions. and had to write the sentence, "He has a very big dog".

the questions were all pretty easy.

1. How many stripes are there on the flag?

2. how many states are there in the Union?

3. for how long do we elect each Senator?

4. What are the duties of the Supreme Court?

5. What were the 13 original States of the United States called?

6. What is the introduction to the Contitution called?

We came back in the afternoon for the oath ceremony.

[usa & pakistan 0]

Congratulations to you two who successfully passed the citizenship interview!! Yaaay! My husand has his coming up on the 15th... just next week. I'll come back and let y'all know how it goes. Thank you guys very much for posting your experiences, it really does help us be fully prepared.

:)Marnee

[warpedbored 0]

As pnf0303 mentioned if you have the interview in the morning you can come back that afternoon for the oath ceremony. I asked the clerk about them and she said they do the ceremony Monday thru Thursday every week.

[usa & pakistan 0]

Congratulations to you two who successfully passed the citizenship interview!! Yaaay! My husand has his coming up on the 15th... just next week. I'll come back and let y'all know how it goes. Thank you guys very much for posting your experiences, it really does help us be fully prepared.

:)Marnee

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FAILED INTERVIEW:

We filed the I-751 in March of 2007 and then the N-400 in March of 2008. We went for my husband's citizenship interview today and the officer said that he passed the citizenship test, but not the I-751 part, saying that we needed more relationship proof. I've never heard of anyone NOT passing the I-751 interview. The officer was very irritated and said that he was out of status, since his extension letter expired back in April 2008, and so she wrote OUT OF STATUS in big red letters in his file. I told her that we didnt think he was actually out of status, and that we had the letters showing his pending cases, but she said no, his employer shouldnt have even let him work. Then she wanted to see a current lease, but I dont have one since I am an apartment manager and so I had brought a letter from my boss saying that we lived on site with our two children and also a letter from our last landlord saying what good residents we had been for 3 years, plus a copy of the old lease, but it still didnt make her happy.

She was also irritated when I explained that our mailing address was a rented mail box, but it didnt specifically say "P.O. box", it looks more like an apartment address, and she was mumbling something about "what if they try to go to your door" and I pointed out that the form has a place for a HOME address and then below is the MAILING address, but she still wrote in red ink all over it. Then she wanted current bank statements and even though I specifically asked Asghar if he had current bank statements in the file and he said YES, he really meant NO, and the officer was even more irritated. We gave her a recent insurance statement showing me on Asghar's health plan thru his work, but it wasnt enough. Keep in mind that when we filed the I-751, we sent in a ton of relationship proof and she had it all in her file in front of her. She wanted to know if we had any receipts from travelling or vacationing recently, but we just had old stuff, like our family trip to Disneyland, but it was 2 years old and so she didnt care about it. UGGGHHHH!!!! She started asking us how we met and writing down notes, and when I said we met on line, things just went from bad to worse. She asked Asghar where we got married and he said "downtown portland", and she was like, oh? At the courthouse? I'm sure she already knew that was not right... the wedding place was not even downtown, so I tried to correct it and smooth it over saying that the lower east side looked like the downtown area. She took notes in her red ink while asking me about my visits to Pakistan and my job history. It was a nightmare.

After this, the officer had me leave the room and grilled Asghar about stuff like, Isn't it unusual for him to wait so long to get married (he was 27 when we met) and then put him thru his paces with about 15 test questions,even though he knew all the answers - even had him name all 13 original states, and then had him write three difficult sentences. In the end, she said he passed the citizenship test, but we didnt have enough relationship proof to approve the I-751 and we will be receiving some letter in the mail. What does this mean?? I am assuming it will be some kind of RFE, but I dont know what else we can give them that we havent already submitted, bank statements for sure, and I'll try to see what else I can come up with. The officer did say that maybe in 3 months Asghar can get his citizenship, so there is hope, but I am just really upset today. I've never heard of anything like this happening before.

Marnee

[usa & pakistan 0]

we didnt have enough relationship proof to approve the I-751 and we will be receiving some letter in the mail.

Marnee

Oh ya, and we also gave the officer our 2007 tax return that she wanted.

Marnee

[MGM 0]

I just received my IL on 07/18/08! I am so excited! My interview is scheduled on 09/09 in Portland, OR. It is set-up for 8am so, if everything goes well (I am keeping my fingers crossed), I hope to take the oath the same day as so many on this board did. I will let you know how it goes. I am so happy for all of you who have already passed. Congrats!

MGM