Spouse and I arrived in the land o' free today and thanks to some of you nice folks we came prepared for the ghetto IR-1 hurdle.
Long story short, first officer says he can't endorse her CR-1 visa as IR-1. I ask for the supervisor. He says the same thing. I don't accept defeat and he says well you can take it "to the back," aka scary secondary down the long red line. So I agree. We waited almost an hour until an officer, who curiously wasn't wearing the same "cop" outfit as all the others handling people in secondary called our name, asked for our marriage cert, said gimme one min to take care of this, and handed back her passport with "IR-1" written in the endorsement stamp. Hoorah.
Now for a dumb question: even though her entry was through CBP, does USCIS automatically get notified and thus start the green card processing? Any recent estimates on how long that takes? Thanks.