bobbyA
Difficulty:  | Review Topic: Port of Entry Review
My fiancee and I went through the visitor/non-citizen line at the San Francisco POE. It was about 8:30am. The CBP officer was probably in the 30's, probably Polynesian or Hispanic. No smile on his face, probably too early in the morning for him :D
I said to him, "good morning Sir, this is my fiancee and she's entering with a k-1 visa", and handed over my fiancee's sealed brown envelop along with our passports, her I-94 form, and our custom declaration form. When he opened the sealed brown envelop, the first thing he saw was the 2-page EOR I wrote. He read it for about 20 seconds. Then he pulled out what looked like the DS-156 form that my fiancee turned in the day before interview, then he signed and stamp it and another form, I think.
Before that, the officer looked at my passport and typed something on his computer, I guess to clear me first.
This officer is a man with little words, but it's fine by us as long as he does his job. He asked when we're getting married. He then asked my fiancee to place her 4 fingers on a scanner, and had her look into a camera. Then he proceeded to stamp her I-94 form and wrote an expiration date which is 3 months from our entry. He wrote what looked like a big "2" with a red marker on our customs form after asking if we brought any food, which I answered no.
I don't remember what he said at the end, but I thanked him and proceeded to pick up our luggage. Speaking of luggage, we flew United, and we were prepared to have to open her 2 big bags to remove some stuff for fear of overweight. Both bags were about 25kg according to United's scale at the Shanghai airport. However, the United staff did not say anything about the weight. The United lady asked if we had one bag each, and I told her yes. She tagged them both and we're on our way.
Back to the POE: After we picked up our two big bags, we were on our way to turn in our customs declaration form. A CBP officer stopped us and asked to see our passports and customs form. He saw my fiancee's visa and said, "oh, congratulations, when are you guys getting married?". This officer is a little friendlier. He's in his 30's, I think. He asked if we brought any food, I told him I didn't allow my fiancee to bring any food. He asked how much money did I bring, I said not much. He asked, "how much is not much?". I said $200. He then asked my fiancee how much she brought. I stepped in and said she had about 2000 yuan and no US money.
He then signed or made some marks on our customs form, and sent us on our way. We simply turned in our form at the checkpoint to another CBP officer, then proceeded to check in our bags again before going to our connecting flight.
Something was different this time. A United agent wanted everyone to go up an escalator to the international security checkpoint instead of turning right and walk a long way to the domestic security checkpoint as I recalled from previous flights.
All in all, things went well.
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Port of Entry Member Review #14994
Entry Date: 2011-09-04