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| Charlotte NC |  Review on March 22, 2004: |
metropolis2k
Rating:  | Review Topic: General Review
Hello everybody!!
Well guys, all our efforts to get our stuff in order and all our fears we had about it finally paid off. As of today I am a conditional permanent resident!!!
Here's our experience in Charlotte:
My appointment was at 10:00 am. We left our hotel at around 8:30 because we weren't sure with Charlotte morning traffic how long it was going to take to drive from the Adam's Mark hotel to USCIS (it's only 8 miles). We arrived at Tyvola Centre Dr. at around 8:50! We decided to kill some time and have a cup of coffee and a biscuit at bojangles up the road. We finally arrived at USCIS at 9:35am. I had never been to the new Charlotte location, the building sure is a lot nicer than the old USCIS building on Woodlawn. We went in, and through the metal detector. When I went up to the reception we were directed to go to the waiting room for interviewees (they have two waiting rooms), we didn't have to deposit our interview letter in a box or anything but had to bring it along with us to the waiting room. There were not a lot of people waiting there. Still it took about 45 minutes for the immigration officer to come get us. In that time we just flipped through our wedding albums that we brought.
The waiting room has absolutely nopthing to keep you busy while waiting. There is a TV but doesn't have cable (yet), and there is no reading material or anything. At around 10:45am the officer announced my name. Lisa by then had just gone to the bathroom, so we waited another minute till Lisa came out and went along with the officer. First she took two index finger prints and I had to sign the form with my fingerprints. Then she took us to her office. We sat down and she asked us to give her our paperwork. I took out everything in our organizer that I brought, the new affidavit of support I had brought, all the evidence etc. And started giving it to her piece by piece.
First question she had was why we had a joint sponsor! Apparently my mother-in-law now does NOT have to be included in household size, or at least, that's how she made it sound. I told her I had called customer service and spoke to an immigration officer and that that guy told us we had to. She did accept the new affidavit AND the joint sponsor affidavit however. So either way, we were okay. I gave her all the other stuff we had, passport with I-94, wife's passport, two new immigration pictures (aka mugshots) of my ugly face  , the letters from friends and family we had taken to prove validity of our marriage (I know not needed, but hey, better be safe than sorry eh?), bank statements, insurance records, car title ... she accepted everything and while I was passing her the papers she asked 'where'd you guys meet?' , I told her on the internet, in a chatroom on Napster and she nodded ... and when I gave her my final 'evidence', she said, as of today you are a conditional permanent resident, do you know what that means?' ... And I said I had heard about it ... she explained to me that that status will be for two years and after two years I need to file form I-751, removal of conditions to the INS to get the conditions removed. And from today after three years I can become a US citizen.
She gave me the approval letter which we both had to sign, and stamped my passport with a temporary evidence of my current immigrant status, told me the greencard will be in the mail between 6 weeks and 6 months, but that with this stamp I am free to travel outside the US. She also said (she took my EAD) that the stamp now is my proof that I'm legal to work (the greencard will replace that once I get it), and she also removed my I-94 out of my passport. All in all everything took about 5 minutes!! And I'm a step ahead in the immigration game. She didn't even take one glance at our pictures and wedding album. I was so flabbergasted with this that I forgot she still had our original documents and so I went back in and the security guy got the immigration officer and she gave me my originals, stating that if there were any more originals left in the paperwork that she would mail it back.
So that's my story you guys! Good luck to everyone waiting to go through this process. It's a piece of cake!
Rudy
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #144