Eric-Pris
Difficulty:  | Review Topic: Port of Entry Review
I flew over to Costa Rica to pick up my fiancee and we came back together on May 19th through JFK. We landed at 2:15am (May 20th). When we got to immigration hall, the Citizens line was about 30-40 long and the Visitors line was less than 10. So we both went to the Visitors line. When we got to the officer, I gave him my US passport and Customs form, and told him that this is my fiancee and she's coming on a K-1 visa. She handed him her passport and the large sealed envelope. He opened it up, looked through some of the paperwork, and entered some data into the computer. I don't know if he was new or hadn't processed many K-1's but he kept looking through a small rolodex which I could tell were instructions on the codes to input in the system.
We were done with him in less than 5 minutes. He didn't ask me or her a single question and told us we needed to go to another room (secondary processing). He gave us all the paperwork in a colored folder and pointed us to the room all the way on the left. There's an officer who stands outside that room and takes your folder, tells you to drop your carry-on against the wall, and follow him into the room. He places the folder in a queue and tells you to sit until you're called.
It was 2:40am when we got to secondary. There probably 6 folders ahead of ours but we didn't get out of there until just after 4am. There were about 5 officers but 3-4 of them were working on 2 cases, a fake passport guy, and a guy who was arrested for cocaine possession and tried to change his fingerprints. The fake passport guy was sent back on the next flight out, the cocaine guy had his bags searched and was released.
When they got to our folder, they didn't call us up, and just they processed her, and then stapled her I-94 into her passport, and stamped the temp EAD. Then he called her up and just handed her the passport and didn't ask or say anything. I asked if she got her temporary EAD, and he (kind of rudely) said "she got all that she's supposed to get". I looked on the back of her I-94 and it says "EMPLOYMENT AUTHORIZED ____(date)____"
So we left. I would rate the whole experience a 0, but I gave it a 1 because of the 90 minute wait.
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Port of Entry Member Review #14022
Entry Date: 2008-05-19