AOS interview

[chromedOut 0]

yesterday I had my AOS interview for my AOS -- family sponsored preference/unmarried son of citizen -- I filed at the very end of june. my father (my sponsor) and I arrived at the center 45 minutes before my interview. we had to walk under a metal detector after emptying our pockets and putting our briefcases in the conveyer belt to be run past the x-ray machine. my pocket phone was turned off and inside my bag and the officer instructed me to take it back to the car since it was a camera phone. I missed the "no audiovisual recording devices allowed inside" sign clearly posted outside the front door since this large family ahead of us had held the door open. after doing so and going past the metal detector and the wand I was allowed to join my dad who had already showed my interview notice and told to fill out a simple, single-sided form.

we were called in by my interviewer right when scheduled and followed him back to his office after introducing ourselves. he asked to see both of our driver's license and he wrote the numbers down on a NOA paper inside my file. my file was a legal-sized brown folder; one side had all the forms I had submitted including my opened medical examination (they even had kept the sealed envelope with "confidential" stamped all over it, ha) and the other had a series of what seemed to be a series of check lists and internal paperwork. the topmost check list had the following written in red along the left margin: "receipt?", "single?", "i-130". I did sneak a peek at a sheet under that check list that stated that my fbi namecheck had come back "NO RECORD". wheew!

he made us sign a waiver or something since my attorney was not present. then, the officer explained that he was going to ask us a series of general questions under oath. he swore us in and his first question was: have any of you ever been arrested by the police? my dad and I replied "no". he then asked me if I had ever been deported. another no. asked me if I was single. yes. each time I replied he made notes on the checklist. and those were all the questions I had to answer.

he took a moment to leaf through my file and told us that there was no proof that I had paid the $1,000 overstay penalty but that he read in my attorney's statement that they were submitting it. he asked to see a receipt. we didn't have one that exclusively for it, just a cummulative one. he added up the fees including the penalty and came out to the same figure for the receipt we had and crossed out "receipt?" from his margin notes. next, he told us that there was no i-130 in my file and before I could produce our copy and original he just told my dad to fill a fresh one out and he would approve it right there. we did.

he went off to make a copy of it and typed some stuff into his computer. leafed through my file again and informed me that I was approved...but that at the moment there were no numbers available for my priority date. my attorney had told me this would happen, but I was still hoping he'd be wrong. he said my file would be set aside and monitored periodically and when my date came up again they would send for my gc. as we were leaving -- still in a state of shock -- I asked him if I was truly done. "yep. you are approved. no more fees, no more finger prints, no more interviews. it takes five days for our gc to be made after we send it off when your date comes up".

well, today, a day after my interview I discovered that a visa will be allocated to me under the upcoming november bulletin. so now I'll wait a few more weeks until I can finally put this behind me and start l i v i n g.

Edited October 13, 2006 by chromedOut

[rebeccajo 14]

What's in this upcoming November bulletin?

And what's a $1000 overstay fee?

Edited October 13, 2006 by rebeccajo

[Dr_LHA 3]

rebeccajo: The poster clear is getting a green card through a route other than marriage to a USC. The visa bulletin is a monthly release from the department of state that gives preference dates for people waiting for green cards in categories other than "married to USC". For example if after getting your citizenship, you wanted to sponsor your brother or sister for a green card, a visa number would not be automatically available to them like it was in your case.

In those cases people have to wait for their priority date to come up before getting their green card, even if approved in interview. You have to go to the Visa Bulletin to find out that date, which for example is 22 October 1995 for siblings of US citizens from most countries.

Basically this guy is asking his question on the wrong forum.