Laure&Colin
Difficulty:  | Review Topic: Port of Entry Review
This review is for San Diego international Lindbergh airport.
I came on British Airways daily flight from London, the most direct way to reach San Diego from Europe. We landed at 6:30 PM, and I was out by 8PM.
First, I had to go to one of the regular booths, where they took my fingerprints (worked a lot better than in Paris embassy on the day of my visa interview...) and picture. Then I was asked to sit and wait in front of the door leading to CBP offices, and told when the lines start to clear, someone would come pick me up. (SAN is a small airport and the CBP staff that night was about 8 people).
After about 25 min, an officer came, took my passport and brown enveloppe, and asked me to wait outside. 15 more min and he came out, asking if I had additional passport sized photos, because the embassy didn't include them in the packet and he needed 2 more. I had expected that to happen and had them in my carry on bag (see my embassy review).
Finally, he came back out another 10 min later and asked me to follow him into the office. He made me sign both sides of the GC application form he was filling out, and took my fingerprints with black ink. We double checked the address to which my GC would be sent (there was some confusion about it at the embassy). He then started to enter data into his system, not very sure what to do (he had to take out his immigration law manual to check how long he was supposed to give me on the stamp). Luckily all the other officers came into the room helping him out and joking with me. One of them even knew my home town and they told me the day my stamp expires is when I have to come back cook them a French dinner!
Eventually, they gave me my passport back and said I should contact USCIS if I don't receive my GC within 3-4 months, and escorted me to luggage screening. I failed to realize they didn't handwrite my A# on my passport, after an 11-hour flight I was really out of it... So, some waiting (Colin was getting crazy waiting outside), but no difficulty at all.
However, later, as I applied for a social security number, I was made aware of a problem with my records. USCIS then informed me that the CBP made a wrong data input when I entered the country: my last name has been "shortened" in the arrival record. Over one month later, I'm still trying to have this error fixed, and nobody at CBP knows what to do...
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Port of Entry Member Review #15208
Entry Date: 2012-04-12