Received oath ceremony letter but...

[dcl766 0]

Hi all-

Marina received her oath ceremony letter today and it is scheduled for November 10 at noon in Chicago. (yaaay!) Unfortunately on the back of the ceremony invite is a bunch of of the same questions they asked at the interview, and they want her to answer them in respect to anything that may have happened since her interview on October 20. Well, Marina rearended some poor guy this past Saturday October 25th, and received a ticket (citation) for failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident. One of the questions on the backof the oath letter of course is "have you been arrested, charged, cited, etc with any crimes including traffic violations since the interview date?" Well, she will have to answer "yes" of course and I assume bring a copy of the ticket and explain herself at the ceremony registration.

Our original plan was to request a court date and contest the ticket since the ticket will most likely be dismissed and not go on her record (and we won't have to pay the $75 fine) if the party she rearended does not show up to court which they probably won't since their car will be fixed (we have the same insurance carrier), and they felt pretty sorry for Marina at the scene of the accident.

Anyway, now we are thinking maybe we should just go to the courthouse and pay the fine and get her license back so there is a resolution to the citation, and they don't consider it "still open" at the oath ceremony since we would still be waiting for a court date.

Marina had an accident where she was ticketed three years ago and also a speeding ticket this past April and we brought documentation of the final disposition of each (the accident ticket was dismissed in court and we just paid the fine for the speeding ticket) to her citizenship interview and the officer said "these are just traffic violations?" and he kept the originals of the disposition papers and Marina's motor vehicle report (driving abstract) and said he would just keep them for the file.

So are we making too big a deal out of this and should just go to the ceremony with the ticket and explain what happened, or should we go pay it so it is a "closed case" and she has her license back? I know they are most likely looking for DUI's and such but we have come so far in this process and it would be a shame if her oath ceremony got screwed up over something so stupid like a unresolved traffic ticket.

Thanks in advance for any opinions.

Dave and Marina

[TayRivers 4]

If it were me I would just pay the $75 and get it over with. Looks like she could do with some lessons in diving a little more slowly

It could happen to any of us.

Congrats on the Citizenship

[NickD 203]

If it were me I would just pay the $75 and get it over with. Looks like she could do with some lessons in diving a little more slowly

It could happen to any of us.

Congrats on the Citizenship

Crazy in Chicago, if you leave over a half a car length ahead of you, some dingbat will try to cut in, even a semi-truck.

The oath letters are processed extremely quick and follow the guidelines of the N-400 instructions, a 75 buck fine is certainly a very minor traffic violation and doesn't have to be reported on the N-400, would tend to forget about it on the oath letter if it's under 500 bucks.