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| New York City NY |  Review on October 4, 2017: |
vkhutchings
Rating:  | Review Topic: Naturalization
We arrived half an hour early for my 12pm appointment. Got through security easily, navigated the building, everything was signed really clearly. I thought it was a little odd that when we checked into the waiting area the guy there took my appointment letter? But it didn’t seem to matter. Then I sat in the waiting room with my husband and baby for a little while and was called in at 12.40.
I had a pleasant Asian guy as my IO, and he acted like the whole thing was really perfunctory. We went into his office (cramped and cluttered and not anywhere near as fancy as I was imagining it would be). I swore to tell the truth and then sat down. He asked to see my green card and then he didn’t ask to see a single document after that. I brought every piece of evidence I could possibly imagine I needed, and he wasn’t interested in any of it!
He started by going through my application, but very swiftly. Wanted to know I still lived at the same address, and basically just wanted me to say yes to the information being accurate for each question. No questions about my relationship with my husband, no asking for evidence of the marriage or my many trips out of the States (only asked to verify that none of them was over 6 months, which they weren’t). We had some brief small talk about my son turning 9 months (he had seen him with me in the waiting room, which I kind of feel worked in my favour). Then he took the time to go through every single one of the Yes/No questions, and that was probably the longest part of the interview.
Then we did the English test, which took about 2 minutes. I wrote out an easy sentence (he didn’t seem to care that I wrote in cursive), then read an easy sentence, he marked the sheets with a big red check mark and we moved on to civics. I told him that I was nervous, and he joked that he wanted it to be over quickly too. He read them out from his computer and they were worded exactly like in the study booklet. Luckily I got all 6 questions right, phew. Then he told me we were almost done, I just needed to electronically sign a couple of things. And then we were finished—the whole thing took about 20 minutes. He handed me a sheet saying I had passed and he was recommending me for approval, and that it would take 30-60 days for my letter to arrive.
As he was escorting me out I was like— “But I brought all these documents!†I kind of wanted him to take a look at some of it because it had taken so long to gather. He smiled and said something like “What were you expecting? You don’t need all of that.†And I replied that I thought I was going to get a grilling, and he said that at this stage they’d already done all of that. It was kind of nice that he acknowledged that by now we’ve been through years of proving our relationship and loyalty to the country and so we didn’t need to again, but he also said something along the lines of, “But it’s on a case by case basisâ€. So I assume our case was pretty straightforward and that’s why they didn’t really need to see anything new to make their decision.
In short, I went in there expecting a really strict experience with an IO who was trying to catch me out (I thought it would be someone like the border enforcement people you get at the airport who are often so serious!). But the reality, for me at least, was it was just some friendly guy who wanted to get another interview over with.
I felt like a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders when we left, and I couldn’t belief it was over so quickly. When I got home I had an email saying I had a case update, and although I can't see anything new yet on this site (https://my.uscis.gov/account/applicant), I have a message on My Case Status (https://egov.uscis.gov/casestatus/mycasestatus.do) saying "Oath Ceremony Notice Was Mailed". So happy and relieved, but also emotionally exhausted by the whole thing!!
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #22618