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| Portland OR |  Review on July 25, 2014: |
Portlandia
Rating:  | Review Topic: Adjustment of Status
Our interview was scheduled for 7am (ouch!). We arrived at 6.45am, found on-street parking just opposite the building, went through the airport style but friendly security, checked in at the reception desk and were directed upstairs to the waiting room. We weren't called until 7.40am.
Rocky greeted us, and took us to his office where he had us both raise our right hands and take the oath. He asked for our passports and IDs, and as he was originally from the UK, we had a friendly chat about that, which put us at ease. He then asked me to confirm all the details from the I-485 form. He read out my phone number incorrectly which made me panic a bit, I corrected him and he said oh, yeah, sorry, I read it out wrong. He then asked my husband to confirm his details, and then asked for a copy of my husband's divorce certificate as that wasn't in the paperwork for some reason (we had submitted it). We gave him the original and a copy and he kept the copy.
He then said that I'd visited the US a lot, and asked if I'd ever come in on any other visa type other than a K1 or visa waiver, and I explained that my Dad did a work exchange program for a year when I was 4 and I had a H visa of some sort but that I obviously didn't remember much of that - he didn't seem to care about that. He asked if I'd ever overstayed (no) and whether I'd ever been here for this length of time before (no, apart from when I was a kid - the rest were short vacations or work trips).
He then asked how we met, who proposed and how, and about our wedding. We explained that we'd had two, one at the courthouse to fit into the 90 day requirement and the other in April at the beach with family and friends. My husband did more of the talking then, and I just added extra bits. He asked what date my husband proposed and he said he didn't remember, and that he wasn't good with dates, but that it was on my first visit. I said it was the date of the Obama re-election because I was checking election results when Ben interrupted me to propose! Rocky then asked if we had any photos of the wedding, so we pulled them all out along with a spare wedding invitation, and he had a quick look through them - we highlighted the ones with my family, and with the friends Ben had been traveling with when we first met 17 years ago. (He didn't look at any other photos, just the wedding ones). It was a beach wedding, which somehow prompted Rocky to show us photos of his recent trip to Crater Lake (stunning!), and Ben and I talked briefly about maybe stopping there in September on the way down to visit friends in Lake Tahoe.
Rocky then said that the Affadavit of Support had already been approved - I said that we'd put a revised one together as Ben was earning more money now, but he said he didn't need to see it. He asked how long Ben had been living in our place (before the K1 visa was submitted), and asked for a copy of the lease (we just had my add-on lease form, which was sufficient as Ben had been living there beforehand).
He then asked whether we'd co-mingled our finances, I said that we had a joint credit card, and gave him copies of both cards. I said that some bills were in my name and some in Ben's, but most came out of the same account and we had copies of all of that, and also that we had bought a car together and had that paperwork too. He said that was fine and didn't even look at the paperwork - maybe seeing the huge stack of paper was enough!
He then said that he was satisfied that our marriage was genuine, and was going to approve us! And then he explained about removing the conditions in 2 years' time, and that we'd just require us to submit continuing evidence of our relationship, and said "but you've clearly got that under control" (we had a stack of paperwork with tabs for each different document, and a list of contents, which I guess not only helped us to easily find documents when he asked for them, but also made us look organized!)
The entire interview took 20 minutes, and Rocky was friendly and professional and efficient. We didn't need most of the paperwork that we had brought, but I'm still glad we brought it all - just in case! FAR less stressful than my visa interview!
I'd give them 5/5 except that it took 7 months rather than 4 to get the interview, and they were 40 minutes late in seeing us...
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #14900