Interview yesterday in Jacksonville

sjoefl01 · July 14, 2006

We went yesterday for the interview in Jacksonville. It was fairly painless. Most of the people in the office were really nice. There was a guard that really stood out. He was such a nice guy. There were also a couple of case workers that seemed to be knocking themselves out to help people. We had to wait about an hour and could not complain. It gave us a chance to fill some chairs with sweat while we waited.

The lady that we went with didn't seem to share the general atmosphere of the office. She was pretty stern. She had no since of humor or no personality. We were doing a K1 / K2 and were fairly well prepared. We had all of the papers they wanted in the order of the checklist that you get with the NOA2. There was a problem though. She asked for almost everything but not in the order of the checklist. We were all freaking out trying to find the things she was asking for. I thought we were probably about half way done when she told Lucero that she was approved. None of us saw that coming. We really thought this lady had some sort of problem with us.

There were 2 things that really embarrassed me as an American.

1. This facility evidently doubles as some sort of prison. As you walk in your are looking at a bus that has expanded metal welded over the windows with iron bars welded across it. They had this bus in plain sight of everybody that walked in. I must say that I did not see anybody walk in without looking at the bus. It was almost like a message that you were not welcome.

2. Most of the people there wore rubber gloves. I thought this was a little insulting. It almost seemed that they were trying to say that the immigrants were somehow unclean.

The last thing that really pissed me off was that they asked for the EAD card that we paid $175 and waited 7 months for and cut it up in the garbage can. When she told us we were approved I asked if Lucero was going to get something from them while we waited for the green card and she said no. She said it comes quickly and there was no reason for me to choke her to death ( like I wanted to ).

Overall it was pretty painless and we would have enjoyed a great celebration if we would have had some energy left after the 12 hour round trip!!

Advice for the future:

Fill the checklist. She wanted to see everything. Even copies and originals of documents they already had. She definitely did not have everything that we have sent. I almost did a half assed job on this thinking that she would have the things from the original package. I was completely wrong. Watch your originals also. Make sure you mark them. This lady wanted to fill the folder and if we hadn't watched closely she would have filled it with originals.