JA Tam
Difficulty:  | Review Topic: Port of Entry Review
POE Review for Fort Lauderdale:
We arrived in Fort Lauderdale at 3:15pm EDT. The queue for immigration was out the door, snaking around a little room and out the door into the gangway leading from the gate. Approximately 3 international flights landed at the same time as our Air Jamaica flight. It took about 1 hour for us to be called to the cubicle of #10. I was asked how long I had been out of the country (which had been 1 day) and the purpose of my travel (to go get my husband). I was then asked if I brought anything else into the country other than my husband like food or alcohol (NO!)  . He did not ask any questions of my husband, but typed in information from our packet into the system. He then took us to another room where the processing was completed. After sitting in the room for approximately 45 minutes (and being privy to some very interesting conversations), my husband was called to a little table at the corner of the room. There he was asked to sign something and fingerprinted. Approximately 2 minutes after this was done, we were told that we were free to leave.
NB: We had originally been told by the consular officer that we could get our original documents at POE - unfortunately the Immigration officer told us we have to send a written request to get our original documents back to the National Records Center. We are in the process of getting this done. We also asked him if we would automatically get hubby's SSC. We were told that we would have to go to the office to get this done and it could be done the following day (today). After sitting in the SSA office for 4 hours today, we were told that we would have to wait 21 days to return to the office to apply. Reason being, our SSC is possibly being processed and will be automatically issued (apparently in the past they have issued 2 SSN to individuals). If we did not receive this in 21 days, we could return to the office and then they will check the master list to see if we are listed as one of those that are currently being processed; if not, they will then be able to issue the SSN.  Hubby not too happy that he will be sitting down for 4-6 weeks possibly before he can work
|
Port of Entry Member Review #13849
Entry Date: 2007-10-14