AOS Interview Approved!

MrsB2012 · March 16, 2013

I thought I would share our interview experience yesterday as it might be helpful to others with a similar background or situation. First, thank you to everyone on this site for your candid and helpful insight and guidance. I'm grateful that I found this forum early on in our process.

Quick Background-

Husband and I met in May 2009, randomly in a bar. He was living and working in the US on an L1-A visa. Shortly after we met, he lost his job and had to return to Denmark as an L1-A visa is not transferable to another company. For three years we traveled back and forth from Los Angeles to Copenhagen to visit each other. I think I visited him in Europe close to 10 times. He visited me in the US a number of times under VWP.

In June 2012 he came to visit me in the US for 3 weeks to attend my brother's wedding. Long story short, when the 3 weeks was up, neither of us could fathom saying goodbye to one another yet again. He extended his ticket an additional 2 weeks, then once that was up, he decided to stay and give up his job in Denmark. We got married in September and filed for AOS two weeks after getting married (he became out of status one week prior to us filing).

We were nervous about filing for AOS from VWP because we read some things on line that scared the living s*** out of us, however, in the end it wasn't an issue at all.

Interview-

Our interview was in the San Fernando Valley office. We submitted tons of proof to document our ongoing relationship prior to marriage and everything we had in the short time between getting married and filing for AOS. I brought all the documentation that was asked for on the interview notice plus extra. For whatever reason, my stomach was in knots all day yesterday. I had read so many different experiences on here that I had an idea of what to expect but in reality you never know how things will go until you're actually there.

We waited for about 1 hour until we were brought back. It was late on Friday afternoon and we were the only ones left in the waiting room. We were not asked to swear in. Our officer was young, really laid back and easy going. He told us to sit down and asked to see any documentation showing joint assets and photos. We gave him our joint bank acct statements, joint mobile phone statements, car insurance, health insurance + print out of claims for both of us and life insurance. I also provided him with my last 3 months of paycheck stubs & work contract, which I had also included in our original application. The only thing he really paid much attention to were my paycheck stubs and he commented about how fortunate I am to work for the company that I work for (he has friends that work there as well). He asked if our lease statement was included with the stack of documents I handed him and I said no, that we currently live with my parents. He asked how long we've lived with them and if we lived together prior to marriage (yes). He also asked us to tell him about our wedding & reception. He punched holes in everything to add to our file and didn't give it much notice. He asked for our ids so he could make photo copies and he took the i-94 that was attached to my husband's passport from when he entered the US in Jan under advanced parole. He did not ask to see originals of our marriage license or birth certificates. I also gave him print outs of itineraries from recent trips we have taken together to Denmark, Mammoth, New York and an upcoming ski trip to Wyoming. He actually looked at the itineraries, which were about the only thing he really even bothered reading. At the end I remembered to ask him if he wanted our 2012 tax return and he said that would be great if we had it. He asked how me met. He asked if this was a first marriage for both of us and I said it was my second. He did not ask anything about my first marriage. He asked my husband if he had ever been arrested here or in any other country (no), if he had ever received any sort of ticket (no) and that was it. Pretty much the rest of the interview consisted of he and my husband talking about motorcycles and him telling us about the case that he had right before us that involved 2 hours of interrogation, which ended in the couple finally admitting their marriage was a sham. He said that he was happy to end the day with an "easy" case. He also started telling us about things that trigger red flags and told us that about 30% of cases are fraud.

The interview was a breeze and once we were in there I actually felt at ease. I could sense from the get go that everything was going to be fine. At the end he gave us a print out of the approval notice and explained the ROC procedures. We shook hands and that was it. When we got to the car I already had a text message that notified us that his card was in production. The officer never asked or questioned anything regarding the VWP entry, which is something that worried me. Pretty much everything that I fretted over and felt could come up, never did. All in all it was a very positive experience. We feel very relieved to be able to put this behind us and now we can concern ourselves with much more fun things

Good luck to everyone else with an upcoming interview!