Interview at Houston

[aquan2 0]

Havent posted much on the forums and I dont remember my timeline so I dont have that updated but if youre curious USCIS recieved our I-130, I-485 and I-765 on March 7, 2008.

Anyways we had our interview at the houston office yesterday morning. My husband and I werent sure what to wear sooo I think we over dressed a bit; he was wearing a full suit and tie even in this lovely texas weather. Let me start off by saying that you CANNOT leave too early, no such thing as leaving too early to go to the interview. We got lost on the way because we live outside of houston and arent that used to the city. We had googled directions but every street around the place has some variation of the name of the street its on. My husband called up USCIS and finally got ahold of a rep and she gave us crazy directions. We then found a USCIS officer at a different USCIS building and he wrote out very nice directions for us, even gave us a little map.

We arrived at the place about 30 mins early and went through a metal detector then sat down in a large room with a bunch of chairs, filled out a sheet of paper, etc.. My husband got all of our files and papers which took about 5 mins, and we didnt have that long of a wait after that til the interview. I almost think it was early but then again we were both very nervous so time went quickly. *Correction: My husband is telling me that we were in fact interviewed 10 mins early.*A woman called us into the office like area from behind a door and we followed her down a hall to a room. She had even made some conversation in spanish to my husband(he s from mexico). Later on he told me she had commented on how much stuff we had dragged to the interview. lol! There was another woman in the room, apparently the USCIS interviewer, the woman who had lead us there was a trainee who was there to watch the interview.

We all shook hands and introduced ourselves, the officer seemed really nice. I think she was surprised at my husband's accent or lack there of..most people think he s from amsterdam or even canada... very mixed accent, mostly because he has travelled a bit. She asked if we had our lawyer with us and we said, err...we dont have one. lol So we signed the waiver for having the interview without a laywer. She then got out our package... lol she made a million comments on how grotesquely huge our package was, "this is wayyyy overkill" etc, (we sent in a ton of evidence, about 750+ pages, was a little nervous because Im in my 20s and my husband is in his 30s and Ive heard agegaps can make them suspicous so we overcompensated with tons and tons of evidence. Its better to wow them. ) then she swore us in and comfirmed various things in the package, I almost accidentally gave my birthday instead of my husband's, its sooo hard to say someone else s birthday after stating your own name. lol She asked my husband the "are you a convict" etc, questions. :PP Then she asked for a copy of our marriage license...we had sent it in the package but apparently they do loose things in the copying or something. ;P It was fine though of course because we had practically brought the whole house and easily gave her a copy and showed her the original. She had one question about the affidivat of support, since he was on an H1B and was cosponsering himself-- his tax return for 2007 showed under the minimum since my husband has only been working since September of 2007 in the country, we explained that to her and she seemed fine with it. She also asked for a new letter of employment from my husband; it was fine since we had 2 more recent letters stating his anual salary which is well over the minimum.

Then her tone got slightly more serious but still friendly and she asked us how we had met, how long we dated before we decided to get married, if my husband had talked to my parents and had met them, if we had a big wedding, the names our cats...actually that was it. We mostly explained things, but you could tell that she was searching for things to fit their profile of what they like and if your case varies from it, you d better explain..like when we said we didnt have a big wedding, my husband explained that we were planning on having one soon and that my dad was going through some medical problems right now.

She seemed pretty satisfied and we asked if she had wanted to see more evidence but she said NO! what we had was quite enough. I was a little disappointed because we had a ton more to show her, mostly financial documents, joint bank accounts, car insurance, life insurance, etc, from the 6 months we were living together before we got married and beyond. The officer then said the magic words... Im approving your case!!! and stamped my husband s stuff. hehe Then she explained what we needed to do to renew the greencard and when he was eligible for citizenship. It was great. hehe She then told us to tell our attorney it went very well.. lol I guess she was still convinced we had one. (we didnt)

The interview only lasted about 15-20 mins and it was a huuuuge relief! I recommend going out and having frosted cookies and milk afterwards if you have an early interview! really hits the spot lol.

[mybackpages 0]

YAY! nice to see a good interview in Houston. Congratulations!

[ELW 5]

WOW thanks for all the great details and I think you guys win the prize for the MOST paperwork!!

Big CONGRATS and enjoy the rest from the USCIS for awhile!! :dance:

[JaHoney 3]

Congratulations to you and your husband.

[bluegreen 0]

Congratulations! Your interivew sounds a lot like ours:) I wish we had thought of cookies an milk though. We did Jambajuice but it didn't feel as celebratory as cookies sound!

[Kathryn41 3,205]

Very good:-). Congratulations! Remember, you can still use some of that paperwork - start collecting/saving it now for the I-751 which is when your husband needs to remove the conditions on his green card in just under 2 years:-). You need to re-prove that you have a valid marriage. Again, nice review.

Edited June 28, 2008 by Kathryn41

[ellla 0]

Congratulations and thank you for sharing your experience with us!!!

[StoryAngel 4]

Congratulations!! Nice to hear how well it went... especially as we're in Houston and have just filed for AOS

[mybackpages 0]

Congratulations!! Nice to hear how well it went... especially as we're in Houston and have just filed for AOS

Last year a lot of K-1 filing for AOS out of Houston were transfered to CSC and approved without an interview. Good luck to you either way!

[KC♥MP 0]

Congratulations!!! . Thanks for sharing.