Chicago Interview Success!!

Michael&Susan · June 28, 2006

We just finished with my wife's AOS interview at Downtown Chicago this morning and I want to share our experience with the rest of you:

Our appt. was for 7:45am, so we got up early and took the train to the downtown station, then walked several blocks to Kluczynski Federal Building about 10 minutes before. There are already a line of people there waiting to get through security in the lobby. We then took elevator at 2nd floor to wait in a big room. Moments later a lady came and told everyone here for the 7:45am appt. to follow her to the 23rd floor. About 30-40 of us followed her.

Once on the 23rd floor, everybody turned in their appointment letter (NOA's) and wait for the names to be called. We dressed respectfully but there are also some people in tanktops, shorts and sandals, like they're at home. We waited only about 10 minutes before her name is called by an Caucacian male interviewer. He was very polite probably in his mid to late 20's. His name was Kevin O'Neil.

Kevin led us to another room for the interview. We first took an oath for the truth, then we all sat down to get it started. I started to whip out all the paperwork, originals and copies altogether and was ready for all the questions there is. He asked to see our ID, we showed him the driver licenses. Kevin then started going through questions like her birth date and country, and a few questions from the list on I-485. He told us not to be offended by some of the questions and he even grinned a little on the "have you ever been associated with a terrorist." We went through this part fairly quickly. He then made sure we fulfilled the K1 visa obligation by checking the marriage license copy already in the I-485 package. He also asked for our last year's tax return so I gave him a IRS transcript copy.

What he said next surprised us, "All right, I'm going to approve your case and stamp on your passport." "Huh? This is it?" I asked with a puzzled look. Kevin comforted us by saying fiancee cases are fairly straight forward and usually won't take long. He told us we should expect to receive the actual green card in a month but he actually made the temporary passport stamp good until end of Sept. as a nice gesture, no complain from us. He finally asked us to surrender the AP and EAD since she won't need them anymore.

When we were leaving, I joked with him to let him get on with the next 30 or so interviews for the rest of the day, he replied and said they each get 10 interviews a day, some other cases could last 1-2 hours (yikes!) but he didn't say what kind of cases. We didn't feel to ask them either.

I was surprised by what Kevin didn't ask to see: passport (well, not until he stamped on it), birth certificate (we asked him to correct her birth date entry error on the I-485 form during the interview), and most importantly, evidence of our relationship and living together, you know, the bills, insurance papers, house deed, bank statements, pictures. None of that was even mentioned by Kevin. We felt he already made up his mind during the first 30 seconds of the interview about the decision and he actually quietly admitted it when I brought it up on our way out.

All and all, we knew we were prepared and shouldn't have any problems for the interview but didn't expect it to be SO EASY!

Good luck for other folks still waiting for their interviews, as long as you have everything in order, you should be approved like the rest of us!

Finally, we want to thank everyone in this site who kindly helped us along the way, we couldn't get to this point smoothly without your help.

Sincerely,

Michael and Susan