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| San Antonio TX |  Review on November 8, 2017: |
el_greco
Rating:  | Review Topic: Adjustment of Status
My husband and I had the I-485 interview at the USCIS office in San Antonio, TX yesterday. The interview was scheduled for 12:45pm. Since we live in Austin, we left home at around 9am, just in order to make sure we would be there on time, and check the location etc, even though it's only a ~90 minute drive. Thankfully the USCIS location is in far north San Antonio, so we didn't really have to go through the city. We arrived at 10:30, found the building, and then headed to a nearby Starbucks to do some work and relax a little bit before the interview. We entered the building at 12:10.
There were two fairly long lines of people waiting to go through security checking (metal detector) after showing the interview letter from USCIS, but they moved fairly quickly, it took as ~10' to get to the check-in counter, where a helpful employee checked us in, gave us a number, and asked us to move to a super crowded waiting room until our number was up for the interview. First impression was that we must have been the only ones in suits, in general everyone else there was very casual, kind of looked like a Social Security office or DMV waiting area. They must had been running late, because we had to wait there for quite a while, we were called in by our interviewer at around 1:15pm, walked through a maze of hallways till we got to her office. In general she was very friendly, and spend some time chit-chatting with my USC spouse while walking to her office. She swore us in, and then we all sat down.
I think that the fact that our application package was extremely front-loaded really helped with the decision (which seems to almost have been made in the first few minutes of the interview), and in general the whole time there it was a friendly chat, and just confirming some of the information on our papers, but no cross-examination kind of stuff. Mostly like "where did you meet", names of our own parents, how long have we lived together, etc. She was just going over the information already in the papers in front of her and she would put a tick next to each field as we were repeating the answers. Then a conversation (mostly with my husband) about future plans, kids, etc. In general I think that the lady was very friendly and the whole interview was a breeze, even though it kind of felt like an artificially relaxed situation, just in case something damning might slip out (which did not happen). I found it hard to keep a straight face when I had to answer all the terrorism, trafficking, etc questions in person - it's different when you just put all the "No's" on a piece of paper, than having someone legitimately asking you to say you are not a terrorist.
Finally, she went over the photos we had sent with the original package, and some more we had brought in the interview (from the last year, while our application was being processed)
In general, maybe 10' into the interview she said she would recommend us for approval, and we should be getting an official notification in the mail within a few days. We spent about 10' talking about how to ideally deal with the fact that we are moving into a new apartment next Friday, so when would be the ideal time for us to do the USCIS.gov address change thing, in order for the green card to arrive in the correct address.
All in all, it was a far less stressful experience than I thought, and I am glad it's all over. Make sure you all have plenty of evidence of life co-mingling, if possible: joint accounts, leases, photos with families, letters, etc - these turn the AOS interview into a formality, I think.
Waiting for the card now! :D
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #22802