I-485 Interview Approved

[VizeAndBees 6]

My wife (the beneficiary) and I (the USC) just had our AOS interview from ESTA today and were approved on the spot. We silently browse VisaJourney, but since it helped us file everything ourselves, we wanted to share our experience with the interview process as it is now.

 

Our interview time was 9:25 AM. We arrived exactly 15 minutes early as this is what they wanted on the notice. The airport-style security is still the same, although they want you to read a few questions behind a plastic barrier asking whether you have coronavirus symptoms or have been asked to quarantine by a doctor. Other than that, it was pretty standard. As you can guess, we needed to wear a mask inside the building and during the interview.

 

We proceeded to the waiting room and waited for about 40 minutes until we got called in at 9:50 AM. There weren't a whole lot of people there, just a handful of others waiting for their various interviews.

 

We got a fairly friendly IO who was quite nice to us. There's quite a lot of distance between the chairs we had to sit in and the IO's chair for safety reasons. We sat there there for a moment whilst we waited for her to pull out our case. We did the oath and she asked us for the medical exam, my original birth certificate, my wife's original birth certificate. my ID, my wife's ID.

 

She was going through our application and asked us a single personal question: how we met. We kept it fairly brief and just said we met through work online. The rest of the questions were verifying information we had sent in. I'll post all of the questions we remember below:

 

1. How we met.
2. Where we work (my wife is employed whilst I'm a contractor for the same company).
3. What my wife's parents' names were.
4. What services my company offers.
5. Our relation to the sponsors.
6. Our address.
7. The date we got married.
8. Where we got married.
9. My wife's last POE date.
10. If we had any previous marriages (first for both of us).
11. My wife's phone number (she didn't remember it, but we did remember what it ended in).
12. She asked me about my legal name change from years ago. Personally, I loathe this question because the reason is a sensitive matter, but I gave a brief explanation of why I changed it and gave her the original copy of my decree of name change.

 

She asked us if we had any new pictures, so we gave her about 15 new ones as we submitted a lot of evidence and photos in the original packet. She asked us if we had any photos with family or friends in them, and we replied that we do not have any friends and our family doesn't live near us (nor are we close as we're not social people). She did get a bit funny with us and switched to a stern tone for a moment before saying, "You don't have any friends? I find that hard to believe". We did get nervous because we didn't expect that reaction, but we just reaffirmed that we really don't socialise. She then went back to being friendly and said "I understand that, you guys work online and it's not like it is for me here where I can make friends with co-workers".

 

There were a few other questions, just her asking us to verify a few different details about the sponsors. She did ask me why I didn't sponsor my wife myself as I have the income for it. I just explained that at the time of filing, I didn't have it at the time (that, and I thought getting a sponsor was a better idea as I'm self-employed and I heard this is more scrutinised).

 

She asked my wife the usual i-485 questions ("Are you a prostitute terrorist who is also a member of the Communist party who sells drugs and engages in polygamy?" All right, I consolidated them there, but we all know what the questions are). There were a couple of different questions in there, such as "have you ever used public benefits", which we don't believe was on the i-485 back when we submitted it. There was another question that threw my wife off a bit because it was vaguely-worded; "Have you ever hurt or injured anyone?". As you can imagine, this can mean many things, but our guess is that it was an alternate version of question 48a in the i-485 application form because we're sure they're not asking "Have you ever hurt your mum's feelings by forgetting a Mother's Day gift?"

 

Once that was done, she said she was going to update the case, so she sent us to the waiting room for another 30 minutes. I'm not completely sure about this, but I think she updated the application so that I was the sponsor.

 

We saw her come out and she was holding a single piece of paper. She came over and said "Congratulations, you're approved" and went over the removal of conditions process before giving us the paper confirming this called "Notice to conditional permanent resident". Oddly enough, our online case status, like many others, doesn't actually reflect this correctly. It went from "We ordered your new card" to "Interview Was Completed And My Case Must Be Reviewed" in the same minute we were approved. We were curious to know if anyone else came across this or if it's just another system glitch, but we're betting on the latter considering another online case status we have.

 

We wanted to thank VisaJourney once again for helping us get through this application process. If it hadn't been for VisaJourney, we wouldn't have known that we could adjust my wife's status when she was down here visiting. We felt we had a fairly typical experience with the process, aside from our original interview date in March getting cancelled due to COVID-19. We also felt we had a fairly straightforward case to review as we had no previous marriages, no criminal records, no age gap, or the usual stuff that gets scrutinised. 

Edited August 25, 2020 by VizeAndBees

[Ed&Midori1031 330]

Congrats!

[FattieBanton 35]

wow, awesome stuff. i look forward to posting a similar story one day

[BellaUnion 75]

Congrats and thanks for the comprehensive review.

[Bigtuna 34]

Thanks for this! Its very helpful. I laughted with the no-friends thing because we are kinda the same way hahaha.

 

Congrats!!

[VizeAndBees 6]

56 minutes ago, Bigtuna said:

Thanks for this! Its very helpful. I laughted with the no-friends thing because we are kinda the same way hahaha.

 

Congrats!!

You're welcome!

 

Yeah, my wife and I just like to keep to ourselves. It's just a personal preference, although we were surprised it was an issue, even if it was only for a brief moment. Perhaps we just spend too much time in our own little bubble, though.