AddyG's US Immigration Timeline

Petitioner's Name: M Beneficiary's Name: A VJ Member: AddyG Country: Canada Last Updated: 2015-05-22 Add Comment to Timeline Register or log in to follow this timeline

Immigration Checklist for M & A:

USCIS I-130 Petition:       Dept of State IR-1/CR-1 Visa:     USCIS I-751 Petition:   USCIS N-400 Petition:

IR-1/CR-1 Visa Event Date Service Center : Vermont Service Center Transferred? No Consulate : Montreal, Canada Marriage (if applicable): 2008-02-14 I-130 Sent : 2008-05-22 I-130 NOA1 : 2008-06-02 I-130 RFE : I-130 RFE Sent : I-130 Approved : 2009-01-21 NVC Received : 2009-01-23 Received DS-261 / AOS Bill : 2009-01-31 Pay AOS Bill : 2009-01-31 Receive I-864 Package : Send AOS Package : 2009-02-03 Submit DS-261 : 2009-01-28 Receive IV Bill : Pay IV Bill : 2009-02-01 Send IV Package : Receive Instruction and Interview appointment letter : Case Completed at NVC : 2009-02-26 NVC Left : Consulate Received : Packet 3 Received : 2009-02-04 Packet 3 Sent : 2009-03-11 Packet 4 Received : 2009-03-27 Interview Date : 2009-05-20 Interview Result : Approved Second Interview (If Required): Second Interview Result: Visa Received : 2009-05-25 US Entry : 2009-05-28 Comments : Called Senator at 7 months 2 weeks and from there everything seemed to happen a whole lot faster. Our NVC would have been 15 days less if we had not been waiting on my UK police check. UPS also added 2 extra days by losing our package & finding it again! We followed the K-3 along as well and were assigned an April 15th interview but since I was in the US visiting and already had plans made we did not try to switch the K-3 to a CR-1 interview. Instead we stuck with the May 20th CR-1 Interview date. Processing Estimates/Stats : Your I-130 was approved in 233 days from your NOA1 date. Your interview took 352 days from your I-130 NOA1 date.

Port of Entry Review Event Date Port of Entry : CDN-USA Border POE Date : 2009-05-28 Got EAD Stamp : Yes,Passport Stamp Biometrics Taken : Yes Harassment Level : 0 Comments : It took around 45 minutes and that was mainly because the Custom's Officer was teaching another lady how to process CR-1's.

Lifting Conditions Event Date CIS Office : Vermont Service Center Date Filed : 2011-02-28 NOA Date : 2011-03-07 RFE(s) : Bio. Appt. : 2011-04-11 Interview Date : Approval / Denial Date : 2011-08-22 Approved : Yes Got I551 Stamp : No Green Card Received : 2011-08-29 Comments : Our biometrics appointment was for 04/11/11 but I am due around that time so I went for a walk-in 03/29/11 instead. It was successful - thank goodness!

Citizenship Event Date Service Center : Vermont Service Center CIS Office : Memphis TN Date Filed : 2014-12-30 NOA Date : 2015-01-09 Bio. Appt. : 2015-01-28 Interview Date : 2015-05-07 Approved : Yes Oath Ceremony : Comments : Biometrics appointment was in ATLANTA at 2pm. Arrived and went in (about 20 min early) leaving phone in car. Handed my appointment letter to same nice guy as last time (2011). They checked and stamped it. Handed me a clipboard with a form to fill out. I was one of first to fill out and hand it back to desk. Sat in chairs. Then they called me up and sent me to next set of chairs to wait with a number. My number was called right away. I was fingerprinted with their machines and all but one finger worked the first try. I was finished and in the parking lot again in 20 min.

Member Reviews:

Consulate Review: Montreal, Canada Review Topic: IR-1/CR-1 Visa Event Description Review Date : May 21, 2009 Embassy Review : I arrived at the embassy at 6:45am for my CR-1 interview. I was the first one in line. Moosker waited with me. About 5 min after we arrived other people started showing up. I am not sure if it was because it was a Wed, but by the time the security guard opened the doors at 7:35am there where 10+ people behind me (twice as many as when I waited the morning before with Moosker). The security guard waved everyone over and let us in. I was the first one in and through security, yet they gave me the letter B and gave the family behind me A. Once through the security you go down some steps, follow the yellow arrows on the floor to the waiting room for the elevator. I was there waiting by myself for 5 min before anyone else came. People slowly came into the waiting room and after about 10 minutes the elevator opened and the security guard called A,B,C&D to get in the elevator. I remembered reading the doors of the elevator opened on the other side so I faced that direction and giggled. No one else turned until the security guard warned them the doors would be opening on the other side. We went up to the 19th floor and sat in the waiting room. (And yes the view of Montreal from there was amazing!) We were in the waiting room by 7:50am. Nothing happened until around 8:35am when the first name was called. It wasn’t mine or the family’s. It was the girl who had D. Next the family who were A was called. By around this time another elevator load of people had come up and around 30 people came out. I honestly couldn’t believe how many people they had packed in there. At 8:45am my name was called. For the first stage they use counters 9,10,11&12, which are down a hall past the ladies’ restroom. There are basically windows that you stand at with small dividers between them. There is only a small opening to slip papers under back and forth. I had not clearly heard which number I was to report to but there were only 2 windows vacant. I went to the first vacant one and asked if she was waiting for me. She said no, so I went to the remaining window where I could see the lady had my passport open and my file. I stood there for a minute and she did not say anything. She was reading. She was an older lady with glasses and blondish/whitish short curly hair. She was very pleasant. I was asked how I met my husband, some questions about my previous addresses (I have lived overseas) and she asked questions as she went through my history and calculated timelines based on the dates. I really didn’t have time to answer any though, as before I did she had moved on to the next question. She was pretty much talking herself through my paperwork and was reading aloud and seldom let me answer anything. She wrote notes and ticked things off in red pen along the right side of the forms. She saw I had the police check from the other country I had lived in and moved through the paperwork quickly. She asked for my sealed envelope containing my medical results and for the Xpress envelope. I had already filled my address into the TO: section and she stamped the embassy stuff into the FROM: section and put it with the rest of my file. She told me to go back to the waiting room and she’d call me back. When I went back the waiting room none of the others from the original 4 were done yet. I was back first. When they got back they told me they had been asked lots of questions. Most of them had been asked for their sponsor’s 2008 tax info, which they did not have. (They had never heard of Visa Journey) There were also a few that did not have an Xpress envelope either and they were mad they had not been told to bring one and they were getting more nervous. At 9:05 I was called back to the same window to do my fingerprint scans. The lady was having computer issues and had to re-start twice. She was talking to her co-workers who were telling her they also had restarted several times that morning. She let me sit in one of the chairs directly across from her window instead of going back to the waiting room. After about 10 minutes she apologized and said it should be fine. I did the left fingers, then right fingers and then the 2 thumbs. It took a while to get good scans that were acceptable on my right hand for whatever reason. She said my fingers were not flat enough. After that she asked me to return to the waiting room and wait for my name to be called into either room 7 or 8. At 9:20 when I got back everyone from the original group was waiting again for a long time. People from the other side of the room were starting to be called to different windows for different things by this time and it seemed like the waiting room was almost full. I was starting to fall asleep I was so tired. The guy who I had been chatting with who was letter C was called into Rm 7 around 10:45. Names of the others people were staring to be called into the rooms 7&8 - 2 small closet-like rooms located across from the ladies’ restroom in the hall towards counters 9,10,11&12. They too had a window to stand at with only a little slot to pass papers under. When the guy with C came out he said he was a bit flustered because they asked him to fill out more forms regarding his finances because he was self employed. He asked to use my pen again. When I was called to room 7 at about 10:55 there was a kind lady behind the glass with her computer. She said “Good Morning” and asked me how I was. She was smiling a little. First she told me the computer would pick a random finger to verify it was really me. It picked my left thumb so she asked me to place it on the scanner. After that was done, she asked me to raise my right had and take an oath everything in my paperwork or that I was about to say was true. After that she asked again where I met my husband. She said it must be nice to have a spouse with a common interest. She asked when we got married, how often I have been to see him, whether I liked the city he lives in, where we will live, whether the address on my form was still current and whether it was safe for sending stuff to me. She asked me what my husband did and if he had filed his 2008 taxes – I told her he had and asked offered her the photocopies I had. She asked if she could keep them to add to the file. I said yes. She asked if I was ready to move to the USA – I said no… she laughed. She said “Well… you better get ready because I am granting you a Green Card today.” She gave me the “Welcome to America” letter and explained how long I had to enter the USA asking “Will that fit into your schedule?” and told me what to expect when I entered and activated it. She said I should get the passport with the visa in it back in around a week and that when I received the condition 2 yr green card in the USA there would be more papers and info with it. I was done at about 11:05 and went and told the nervous lady I had been speaking to what they asked and told her to relax. The other guy I was speaking to was still filing out the additional forms. I told the others to say goodbye and good luck to him and let him keep my pen! All in all – it was soooo easy and as long as you are prepared there is no reason to stress at all! I was only speaking to the 2 ladies for a combined total of about 20 minutes max and most of that was watching them check through paperwork and enter stuff into the computer. Rating : Good

POE Review: CDN-USA Border Event Description Entry Date : 2009-05-28 Embassy Review : Border: Windsor/Detroit, Ambassador Bridge Processing was very easy, pretty quick, polite. We waited in our car in the queue for about 10 min, drove up when it was our turn. The guy in the booth talked to us for about another 10 min. He asked when we were married, what we had in the U-Haul (I told him I had a list and he said to keep it handy), whether I was bringing any pets over, which type of visa, etc etc and then gave us a yellow paper to take to the office. The officer actually joked with my husband about where he works and asked him some questions about the company he works for pertaining to the some stuff that was been in the media. They had a little giggle together. I had no idea what they were talking about. He then told us to drive over to the building (he had radioed his colleague to expect us) and we would be told where to park. We drove over and where met by the next person. My husband was trying to park where the officer was yelling he wanted us to be. He was a bit rude. We were told to park and leave everything unlocked and to take only our ID, sealed envelope from interview/papers, wallets/purses and keys into the office. Once in we had to be signed in with our passports and they took our keys. We were then told to "take a few steps back" and wait for a counter to call us. I went to sit down and another officer yelled at me to listen to what I was told and stand there. Yikes. Our name was called by a lady behind the desk. She was being trained by another officer who was very nice. As he went through and explained the step to her she asked us a few questions (which type of visa, which one of us was going where, etc.) and then asked for our passports and then the envelope. I had to verify the address I would be moving to and then we were told to sit down and they would call us back. After a while they called me to put my finger print in a little box (with ink) and sign my signature in another box. She told me these would be for my green card which I would get in the mail. I sat down again. They called another time to ask my about the K-3 I had also applied for as they had papers for both in the mysterious sealed envelope. I told them it was the CR-1 I was activating because they were both approved at the same time. They laughed and said "Really???" Yea. They looked sorry. They continued going through everything together and I listened from where I sat. He sounded like a good teacher. They were very courteous and polite when they called me back and told me all the info about renewing before the 2 yrs are up or I will get in a lot of trouble, about crossing back and forth, about being able to work with the stamp in my passport, about the green card coming to me in the mail... the regular info... then they said "Welcome to the United States of America". I giggled, thought it was funny. We went back over to where we had signed in and got our keys and went outside. I thought they would still want my list and to have a quick peek inside the U-Haul but they didn't ask for anything and we got to leave! Super easy!! Nothing at all to be stressed about. Took about 45 min from takling to the first officer to driving away and that was mainly because the lady I had was being taught the entire process. Harassment Level : Low

Local US CIS Office Review: Atlanta GA Review Topic: cis_topic Event Description Review Date : May 22, 2015 Embassy Review : My appointment for BIOMETRICS was at 2pm. Arrived and went in (about 20 min early) leaving phone in car. Handed my appointment letter to same nice guy as last time (2011). They checked and stamped it. Handed me a clipboard with a form to fill out. I was one of first to fill out and hand it back to desk. Sat in chairs. Then they called me up and sent me to next set of chairs to wait with a number. My number was called right away. I was fingerprinted with their machines and all but one finger worked the first try. I was finished and in the parking lot again in about 20 min. Harassment Level : Very Good

Timeline Comments: None yet, be the first!



*Notice about estimates: The estimates are based off averages of other members recent experiences
(documented in their timelines) for the same benefit/petition/application at the same filing location.
Individual results may vary as every case is not always 'average'. Past performance does not necessarily
predict future results. The 'as early as date' may change over time based on current reported processing
times from members. There have historically been cases where a benefit/petition/application processing
briefly slows down or stops and this can not be predicted. Use these dates as reference only and do not
rely on them for planning. As always you should check the USCIS processing times to see if your application
is past due.

** Not all cases are transfered

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