Local US CIS Office Review: Seattle WA
Review Topic: cis_topic
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| Event |
Description |
| Review Date : |
September 21, 2019 |
| Embassy Review : |
We had our interview at the Seattle field office! Here's a breakdown of our experience.
Preparation:
Our lawyer had thankfully advised us to get a new I-693 (civil surgeon exam) completed beforehand, which was excellent advice as ours indeed turned out to be expired. If we hadn't had it on hand, we would've received a RFE. (I'd suggest to anyone applying to adjust status, check out the updated USCIS rules regarding the civil surgeon exam. I believe it is, if your I-693 was completed 60 or more days before you submitted your package to USCIS, then the I-693 is only good for 1 year; if the I-693 was completed 60 or less days before submission of package, it's good for 2 years. Unfortunately we had mine done in November 2017 and submitted February 2018, so it was outside the window & we needed to redo. But I'm glad we did!
We made the mistake of working the day before our exam, so we ended up staying up until 4 am copying documents and assembling them all into sets. We made 3 packets, each packet was a labelled manila envelope:
-Main (containing originals of all items requested on the interview letter)
-Updated information (containing originals of all items that had updated since we submitted the original package, such as finances, 2018 tax return, etc)
-Supporting information (containing originals of proof of cohabitation, proof of mail received at same address, and photos)
We then made copies of all this information, separating sets of documents with paperclips. Some documents felt related, e.g. we were using them to prove we lived together, or received mail at the same address; we called this a "tab" in our coversheets. I made a coversheet for each of the 3 packets, following this format for each item (in case it's helpful to anyone else--I copied our lawyer's format from the original package, and also saw a very helpful post on this forum about how they approached the coverletter, and combined the two) :
Tab 1. Evidence of Cohabitation
1. Lease agreement for (address) signed by both (my name) (Spouse Beneficiary) and (husband's name) (Petitioner) on (date)
2. Lease agreement for (address 2) signed by both (my name) (Spouse Beneficiary) and (husband's name) (Petitioner) on (date)
Tab. 2 Evidence of Joint Accounts
1. Joint bank account statements (bank account name) for both (my name) (Spouse Beneficiary) and (husband's name) (Petitioner) for as far back as (earliest statement date)
2. Joint loan statements (bank account name) for both (my name) (Spouse Beneficiary) and (husband's name) (Petitioner) for as far back as (earliest statement date)
(Etc. for as many tabs as needed)
Then, we made a copy of each packet, and stored these separately from the originals.
We also reviewed our entire application twice, once a few days before, and then again on the drive up to the field office. I think this was helpful later!
The Interview: (sounds like a movie title!)
Everyone was very nice to us (the person who checked us in for the interview even made a joke asking why I would want to leave Canada, the land of free health insurance 😆). We had just gotten upstairs to our waiting area when our number was called, which was amazing since we had heard Seattle can often run a bit behind schedule. Our officer was really nice too, we felt comfortable answering questions and making a little small talk. Here's the "timeline":
First part - swearing in
Second part - reviewing the submitted information, asking us the questions on the form & verifying our responses, then going over the portion of the I-485 that asks if the beneficiary has been involved in illegal activities (just reading the questions and asking for a yes-or-no response); also he asked us the same information at different points (ex: asking my husband when my birthday was [he fudged up at first and said the wrong day at first, we all laughed at him], asking me where husband was born, etc). That's where I felt reviewing our packet first was helpful; of course we knew all the information in it, but it helped to know what to expect.
Third part - asking us some questions about how we met, who was at our wedding, etc. All questions felt very reasonable and allowed us to kind of tell our story, felt like telling a coworker (or someone) about how you met your partner, with a few more little specific questions thrown in, as he was typing out notes.
Third part- allowing us to present our updated & supporting information. He took what he needed and left us with some of the copies. (He paused at one moment to ask my husband to identify some people in photos; not me though, which was a little surprising)
All in all, our interview was about 50 minutes long. Our lawyer advised us that a typical interview is 25-30 minutes, and if longer, it means trouble. However, we think we ended up making our interview go overtime by having so much supporting info--my husband was so excited to get rid of the box of copies we worked so hard on, he jokingly asked the officer to "please take it, we worked so hard on it" (he told the officer how late we stayed up copying it, so we all laughed) 😄 We agreed that around a half hour, the interview felt done, and the extra time was just us going over the additional information. I felt bad if we caused someone else's interview to run late (sorry if you were scheduled for 3 PM at Seattle and had to wait!) but I feel we firmly established our relationship with all the work.
At the end of the interview, the officer said he'd have to review everything and we could check the status online, so no decision was given then -- probably because of the updated information.
We were approved on 09/13/2019 (Friday the 13th, haha), 17 days after interview, and I received the Permanent Resident card on 09/20/2019, 7 days after approval & 24 days after the interview. |
| Harassment Level : |
Very Good |
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ver 5.0