Sukie
Difficulty:  | Review Topic: Port of Entry Review
JFK is a huge airport, and usually gets terrible reviews. Your trip (ordeal?) through immigration will depend on a lot of factors: your arrival terminal, how many flights are getting in at the same time, and where they are from, what time of day you arrive.
We arrived at Terminal 7 - the British Airways terminal. While the departure portions of the BA terminal are fairly nice, the immigration hall is small and can be hugely crowded. There are ramps leading down to the hall - I've seen people backed up on those ramps. The sides are divided into two main lines: US Citizens, Permanent Residents, Crew, Global Entry, and Embassy versus "Visitors".
I felt extremely bold this morning, and I did not stop to ask "Where should Julie go?". I just had her go with me into the US Citizen's line, and we approached the CBP officer together. I said, "Hi! This is my wife, and she is immigrating today!" I had on my most charming smile. He smiled back and said, "Oh, do you have your packet?" and she nodded.
He opened the packet and slid out the contents. The ONLY things he did was to check to see if the medical report was in there, and then he stamped the cover sheet on the packet. Then he stamped her passport right above the visa and walked us into another room with lots of chairs. We sat for about 5 minutes while another officer looked through things and fingerprinted Julie.
And then we were done!
Now, I must tell you - we were the only flight in the hall, and due to many frequent flyer points, we were flying Business Class which meant we were at the very front of the line. There were no other travelers outside our flight. The agents were rested (time was about 1:15 p.m.) and friendly.
The officer was very curious about us - he didn't want to offend us, but we were one of the first same-sex couples coming through on a spousal visa. He asked us how long the process had taken, and we said over one year. He just shook his head.
He did ask us why we didn't adjust status from Julie's coming on the Visa Waiver Program - and we said that it could raise suspicions, and we wanted to do it the right way. What I didn't say was that at the time we married, it wasn't LEGAL for us to adjust status, as DOMA had not been ruled unconstitutional yet.
The one thing I'm not sure about - we talked to Officer #1 about making sure the request for the Social Security Number was generated. But then in the group room, the officer there said - Oh, you can go to your local Social Security Office. So I'm not sure if the request was generated or not....
Your mileage may vary at JFK. It took us 15 minutes - but it could have taken us 3 hours - especially if we had been in economy class.
We are very tired - the flight from Australia takes about 26 hours in all with the layover - but we are very happy, and we cannot wait to get Julie's physical green card in hand!
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Port of Entry Member Review #15692
Entry Date: 2014-07-15