Chicago interview experience

[Carmelbuck 0]

I haven't participated much around here, but as reading these forums has been helpful in my process, I figured I'd describe our Chicago interview experience from a week ago for any who might benefit.

The background: My wife is from eastern Europe, in the U.S. on a student visa.

Our interview had to be rescheduled twice, as I was out of the country for more than two months. The second time they manually rescheduled us (she went to the Chicago office, as they're essentially impossible to contact otherwise) for a few days after I got back. Unfortunately, on our specially scheduled date they were still in the process of moving to the new location (where we were told to go), so there was a bit of confusion when we showed up! But the assorted staff to whom we were sent were friendly, and they found the file and someone to interview us.

The interviewer was very friendly, and made a bit of chit-chat about my work travel, something that's been in the news and is vaguely related to my work, and other things.

All we were asked were our address, our dates of birth, to verify that this was the first marriage for both and that we had no children, and the standard questions (not a terrorist, haven't voted, etc.) for my wife. He looked at our birth certificates and marriage license, and my wife's passport.

He asked if I had my most recent tax return (we filed for AOS in January), which I didn't. He also asked if we both had newer verification of employment, which we didn't. One page of one of my tax returns submitted with the Affidavit of Support was missing in our file, but we had copies of all the submitted stuff with us, including that.

He asked for any supporting docs we had, which were: Evidence of joint bank account; copy of our lease; copy of our car title and evidence of insurance; evidence of joint credit card; evidence of joint cell phone account; and copies of airline receipts for two recent international trips. We had copies of all of this, and he simply took all the copies and leafed through them without comment.

We had wedding pictures, but he didn't ask for them. He asked if we had pictures from those two trips (which we didn't), but he asked in a smiling "we get to look at travel photos, right?" kind of way.

And he approved it, and explained the conditional bit, and that was that.

[Waiting in Vancouver 6]

Thank you for sharing your experience with us ... I will be going through Chicago eventually and it is nice to have something to use to prepare for it ...

[sorana77 0]

Carmelbuch

When did you submit your AOS file?

I am from Chicago, and I am still waiting for my interview notice.

Congratulations for your approval.

[Carmelbuck 0]

We filed in early January, got the original interview notice in early May, for an interview in mid-late June.

So I expect you've a while to wait yet...

(My wife, by the way, is Romanian.)

[allynella 0]

Congrats

[sorana77 0]

We filed in early January, got the original interview notice in early May, for an interview in mid-late June.

So I expect you've a while to wait yet...

(My wife, by the way, is Romanian.)

Hi Carmelbuck,

I am glad to hear that your wife is Romanian!

Say Hi to your wife, by the way, I am from Galati city, Romania.

Thank you for sharing your time.

[Mohsin 0]

We went to the chicago office for our interview the same day also.....nice new building theyve setup.....