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| San Diego CA |  Review on May 2, 2019: |
Minsk_2_San_Diego
Rating:  | Review Topic: Adjustment of Status
We arrived at the USCIS office in downtown San Diego about 20 minutes before our scheduled interview time. The waiting room was already packed with about 50 people and it seems that we were all scheduled for the same morning session. Since we arrived later than the others, we were called in for our interview nearly last, when the room was almost empty. The point here is, "If you want to be interviewed first, arrive earliest".
I'm not sure if it was by luck or by design, but our interviewer spoke Russian as well as English - My wife's English is good, but it put her very much at ease when the interviewer offered to speak with her in Russian. Very cool. Our interview lasted about 50 minutes total and felt very friendly and almost informal.
We were asked basic questions about how we met and about our current living situation - but those questions were intermixed with the process of verifying our documents (marriage, divorce, birth certificates, passports and visas). It really didn't feel like an inquisition - much more like a friendly conversation - but each time we gave answers, our interviewer wrote many notes in our files.
We came VERY prepared and VERY organized. We had separate folders for all our original documents so we could show them and then get them back... and a separate folder for photocopies that we intended to give to the interviewer. We had heavily notated all of our documents and evidence with little post-it flags to describe each thing. My wife had painstakingly gone through each supporting evidence photo and written on the back the date and time and names (and relationships) of each person in the photos.
All of the "additional supporting documents" like joint lease agreement, joint bank account, letters from family, photos, etc were all handed over in one big stack at the very end of the interview.
Our interviewer was careful not to promise that we were approved... but she said that everything looked good in our file and that we'd provided "more than enough" supporting documents to prove the validity of our marriage. She said that they'd need to go through the application completely and look over all our supporting stuff one last time - and if there was no RFE, we could expect to receive her green card within 14 days.
It was a little disheartening not to get a definitive approval there on the spot - but I don't think it was because we lacked a strong case. It seemed more procedural than anything about our specific case. At any rate, it was a very easy and positive experience and our interviewer wished us happiness in our marriage as we were leaving.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #26091