AOS interview experience - Raleigh/Durham

[Mary and Enrique 8]

Our interview was this morning and since this week we were scrambling to read as many interview experiences as possible, we thought we'd add ours!

At the recommendation of the VisaJourney community, we brought an interpreter with us. My husband mostly speaks English, as I mostly speak Spanish, but he sometimes has a hard time communicating in English under very high-pressure situations. Although the interpreter was borderline overkill, I'm glad we took the suggestion because it made us feel more confident and of course, it's better to be safe than sorry.

We were ushered upstairs after security asked me to throw out the tweezers they found in my purse in order to avoid losing our place in line while I returned them to the car ("don't worry, your eyebrows look great" someone said, which made me laugh a lot -- as though I'd purposely brought them in case of a personal grooming emergency!). We were given a ticket and only had to wait maybe 10 minutes before being called in.

Our IO was pretty mean, actually. He reminded me of a professional poker player in the way that he refused to make eye contact or show any emotion whatsoever. We were sworn in, and he first went through the I-130 information, verifying dates and such. I was worried about an inconsistency in my father's birth state (he passed two years ago and the family, and my personal documents, are not in agreement) but it never came up. He wanted photocopies of our drivers licences, which I provided.

At this time, the IO asked my husband if he understood everything he was saying. He said yes. The IO told our interpreter that he should return to the waiting room. He then asked us for our supporting marriage documents. I shifted my chair to flip through that section of my obsessively-organized binder:

- copy of our lease. I told him that I'd added my husband after we got married. He immediately had a problem with that since we had different definitions of "after". He asked many very judgmental questions about the lease and when it started. I told him that I was not good with dates but an approximate time, and offered to show him my original, unaltered lease, which he took (and ultimately kept -- hope I don't need it! that was the only thing I didn't make extra copies of). Just goes to show that the less you say, the better, because that whole line of questioning could have been avoided if I had just said "our lease".

- a verification of deposit from a shared bank account. he asked when I opened the account, and I told him some months back, maybe March. He asked if I worked for the university whose credit union we'd joined - one of many rhetorical questions this morning. He took a copy.

- a sprint phone bill with both of our cell phones on it

- a copy of our shared car insurance

- I told him we had two credit cards together. I had a copy of all the information of one, and in searching for a similar document, had misplaced the copy of the other. We decided to move on to keep the momentum going, and he didn't complain just having the one.

- cards from the family. I only had one wedding card (in reality most people did not know we were getting married when we did), so I included that, a valentines day card addressed to both of us, a postcard from my brother, and a gift tag addressed to me from his family. He was not really interested in these but did look them over.

- photos...of when we met in Honduras, the wedding that first brought him to the states, a trip to Atlanta, and trips to several other places that are irrelevant since he didn't care. He asked how many times I went to Honduras, and repeated many times over these few minutes the question of how long the second visit was, or how long the third visit was. I thought that was silly since he clearly already had copies of every stamp in my passport -- it's not like I'm going to lie about that. Two of the photos were corny theme park souvenirs which we bought with this scenario in mind, to demonstrate that we were in a certain place on a certain date. That seemed to be enough for him.

- also with the photos, a blurry one from the wedding. I explained that we forgot our camera on the big day and my cousin took that with his phone, which we'd tried to blow up into a meaningful size. He said that was fine and asked where we got married, what relatives were in attendance. I told him I have no family in the area except for my cousin and his wife, so they were our witnesses. He seemed satisfied with that.

- emails - I had catalogued many and even highlighted relevant parts of drier emails for quick perusing, but it didn't matter because he didn't even want to see them. That's not to say that you shouldn't bring them to your interview, of course, since all interviews are different.

Moving on, he explained that we were going to look at the I-485. He asked most, but not all, of the yes/no questions on the form, saying that they were pretty straightforward but we could go back and bring in the interpreter if necessary. He didn't seem to take that part very seriously since we'd already answered no to everything.

Finally, he did his best to ferret out anything sketchy about the circumstances under which my husband decided to stay here. We went through his return flight information and he asked when he decided to miss his flight. My husband said that he'd had no intentions to miss the flight as he was enrolled in school and had a job to return to. We gave him copies of his school enrollment. He asked when he quit his job, and he said that prior to missing his flight, he called his boss and told her he woudln't be returning to work. He said, "so after one week, you decided that you were never going back to Honduras???" and we had to explain that no, the plan was still for him to return home well within his legal window to do so, but his job wasn't going to wait for him and his decision was to stay 1-3 months (on a 6 month I-94) to better know where our relationship was going. The IO asked him when he filled out his visa application, how long did he tell the officer he was planning to stay? My husband answered that he hadn't known, because the original plan was for his trip up for the wedding to be only one part of a trip he was taking with his family, and his parents, who often come here for their business, weren't sure how long they were going to stay total. The IO asked if the parents came to the wedding, and my husband said that ultimately they couldn't come on the trip, but they did come back soon after we were married to take the trip all together. We referenced photos from that vacation, and he seemed satisfied. He asked me if I spoke Spanish, and I said yes.

We were suprised that he didn't ask for my birth certificate, since I went through hell and back to get a certified copy of it (figures! and again, don't take this as permission to come unprepared, because I'd feel awful if someone got a denial/RFE on my account!), and he also didn't ask a single financial question. My job is pretty secure and I've had it for a long time, so maybe that didn't stand out on our application. The IO never asked my husband if he'd put his EAD to good use. There was no small talk either. He really seemed much more concerned with catching us in some sort of inconsistency or raising doubt that my husband had come here with intent to return to his home country.

He was not smiling and had not opened up even a little bit to us (I had hoped that with enough evidence of a legitimate relationship, he'd relax and put his guard down, but no), and we'd shown him pretty much everything we had at this point, so I was very nervous but tried to remain calm since nothing had really gone horribly either. The IO asked me if I'd consulted with an immigration lawyer about this case, and then I was really scared! I told him that no, we had not. He said, "well, do you understand what I'm talking about when I say, 'conditional status'?" and all the tension started to lift -- he was going to approve us!

He gave us a "section 216 notice" informing us of the date and our window to apply for removal of conditions and told us that we could expect the green card in 2-4 weeks. We thanked the IO many times and he finally cracked a smile. Human after all!

If you're reading this, you're probably preparing for your own interview -- good luck! I hope this helps

Edited August 4, 2009 by mkpw

[Bobby+Umit 161]

I don't think the IO was intentionally being mean, he is probably just staying detached from the interview, to objectively figure out if it's legit or not.

He sees 100's of cases, and probably gets irritated when people do not come with the correct info/forms needed.

Shows that sometimes they do dig in to question about why people stay on a visitors visa - but you had the answers and passed.

Congrats!

[Mary and Enrique 8]

I don't think the IO was intentionally being mean, he is probably just staying detached from the interview, to objectively figure out if it's legit or not.

He sees 100's of cases, and probably gets irritated when people do not come with the correct info/forms needed.

Shows that sometimes they do dig in to question about why people stay on a visitors visa - but you had the answers and passed.

Congrats!

Oh I totally agree -- I didn't take it personally, I'd just hoped for one of those unicorn IOs you hear about who are super friendly and nice right off the bat. But all's well that ends well, right? Thanks so much though!

[shellyalex 0]

thanks for the advise, this experience would surely assist me with my AOS, which my husband and I just sent off last week.

thanks again and congrats!!!

[furiousng 2]

Congrats! Seems a decent professional IO. Goodluck with removing conditions!