steeeeve

that's not a lot of notice but depending on timing we'll likely wait for the interview appointment before booking any travel. we like a few month in Europe in the summer and all winter in Thailand.

i wonder how much notice they typically give for the oath ceremony appointment? if we are out of the country we'd need time to get flights back. i guess USCIS should send the appointment notice withing 30 days of interview so i can work with that

ok, well i'll do the math then, i think a 3 month trip will still be under the 18 month limit but it will be close. i'll double check.

ok, so there is a physical presence rule 18 months max outside the country during 3 years from green card to application for married applicant. suppose a trip between interview and oath puts us over the 18 months, would that be a problem?

so if you end up having to wait months for the oath, i assume you can still travel and use the green card for re-entry then?

ok, i guess the posts i read meant the same day, not necessarily during the interview. i did mine about 30 years ago and don't remember much about it but i do remember having to go to a ceremony outside the San Jose courthouse with about 30 other people. my wife's friend recently did the N400 interview in Syracuse which is our office too and she had the ceremony about 3 months after the interview. i've also see reports pf people saying they've waited 9 months for the oath so i guess it really is random.

why do some people get to do this and others have to wait to attend a ceremony? is it based on which office you do the interview or something else? oh, just saw the above post, so basically no way to know which way it will go then?

i see a lot of people report doing the oath ceremony during the N400 interview. if this happens, is there any need to attend another oath ceremony in a group meeting later? how is it determined if the oath is done together with the N400 interview or later? i'm just not clear what happens after the interview (assuming success of course) and most importunately,, how long it would take following the interview to get a US passport? thanks

i see the new civics questions are out https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/questions-and-answers/2025-Civics-Test-128-Questions-and-Answers.pdf Also Name one example of an American innovation. • Automobile (cars, internal combustion engine) is pain wrong, Karl Benz in Germany invented the car

totally agree with that, if someone gets a question wrong it's most likely because they got the question and answer confused. my wife always confuses franklin (DOI) and john jay (constitution), so more questions is less chance of a simple mistake like that making an impact. it would be awesome if they drop the contributes to society BS, that's what we worry about

i wasn't saying miss it, its not like they will tell you the ceremony will be tomorrow.

my wife's green card interview took over a year to come through and so i filed a complaint with the immigration ombudsman and then she got an interview appointment in a couple of weeks, so try that. also on your question, i was thinking, if you've passed the interview already, what's stopping you from traveling? you still have the GC and you don't have to worry about interview questions about been out of the country any more.

we've been practicing and the problem she's having is remembering the exact sentence structure like "Canada is to the north of the United States", then she will invariably write "Canada in north of the United States" or "Canada is in the north of United States" or something like that. stuff that is trivial for a native English speaker can be quite tricky for a foreign speaker. But we have a long time to practice so I guess its good she has me, but for someone without a native English speaker available to help i bet it's very hard

is it ok to ask the officer to repeat the sentence several times, including in the middle of writing the answer? also how strict are they on spelling?, my wife often forgets to pluralize words thanks

i have no idea but May 15th is a long time ago. did you ask USCIS why it was taking so long, i thought it was typically a couple of months?

please post how it goes. things like 'social ties in the community and 'care-taking role for sick family members', how would you even get documentary evidence for that?

hi, on the IRS website there are 4 types of transcript available , account, return, wage & income, and record of account. which one is needed for N400? also, is download and print ok or should i get copies sent from IRS? thanks

the writing an essay thing is just a proposal at the moment right? anyhow if my wife had to write an essay, i'd write it for her and make her write it out every day until she memorized it perfectly, so really no different to memorizing a hundred other things no one would need to know in real life, like who was president in world war 1 and what does genocide mean. my bigger worry is if they want proof you are a "good citizen". how do you prove you help your community, do you need do some kind of documented community service or something?

unless USCIS hires investigators to go out and do this, i don't see it happening, maybe a phone call to a neighbour if the applicant provides a number, but even that could easily be bogus, there is basically no way this could work practically. my wife is actually good friends with our neighbors so we should have no problem getting them to write an affidavit, but i think a lot of people will have problems with that

i just saw this is this true? would this check be before of after in the interview? is it a good idea to get letters from the neighbors first? thanks

i'm a bit worried about this. my wife has zero crimes anywhere so that was never an issue but she doesn't work, and we travel quite a lot outside the USA although we will meet the rules for less than 18 months in 3 years out of the US. we just started volunteering for habitat for humanity but realistically i doubt we'll do many hours. we do help our elderly neighbour with house repairs for free, maybe she would be willing to write a letter to confirm that. i wonder what else we could do? we bought a fixer up house and have been restoring it over the last couple of years, we don't get paid for that but it is a kind of job and we pay more property tax as a result of the upgrades. i wonder if these things will be enough? i guess no one knows yet since the new rules haven't kicked in.

ok, thanks, so just stick to the script then and sound confident

many of the civics questions have multiple possible acceptable answers. is it ok to answer the minimum possible answer like say "freedom" or would it be better to say "religious freedom" or something that shows you understand the context and history a bit more? i wonder if showing more of an understanding in the civics part will result in easier questions on the N400 part?

i have plenty of time to teach her but i also have an English accent. hearing the questions in an American accent is not a bad idea, fortunately there are a million youtube videos on this, and i'll ask my US friend to go though the test with her too. however there's no guarantee she'll get an american interviewer (we had a chinese guy for the green card interview) so i guess she needs to be prepared for anything.

not a bad idea, i do understand Thai and she usually speaks Thai while I speak English at home. anyhow, her friend just passed the USC test in Syracuse NY a couple of weeks ago and they didn't ask for any explanation of the N400 yes/no questions. i know her friend and I'd say her English is worse than my wife's. however, we just watched another video, and part of the reason for failure was not know knowing, or at least not been able to, explain the definitions of the N400 words. at 19:43 in the above video she is asked "do you know what "cited" means. in the doc you posted it says "A naturalization applicant must only demonstrate an ability to read, write, speak, and understand words in ordinary usage." . personally i wouldn't consider "cited" to be a word in common usage.