Our interview was at the Federal Building in Los Angeles at 11am
I got a call from my attorney’s office at 8am saying he was taken ill to the hospital during the night and he can’t make it to the interview. The office said we can go by ourselves or they could postpone the interview.
After speaking with my wife we decided to go by ourselves. Part of me thought, “what a way to start the day” and another part of me was glad because I always thought taking an attorney might show that we had something to hide.
We got there at 10.45 and went up to Room 6001 and handed the notice and waited. I’ll admit I was quite nervous, even though we had a relatively straight forward case. At 11.15 an officer came out and called my name, we got up and walk up to him, he confirmed my name and said he wanted to interview me first and then later call my wife separately.
I followed him to his office and he swore me in and offered me a seat. He was pleasant enough and asked for IDs and passports. He asked about my attorney and I told him he was ill, so he asked me to sign a form which waives my right to my attorney and that he will get the transcript of the interview. He then explained about the conditional GC, as we have only been married for 16 months, and he even gave me the form to fill out in two years, which I thought was odd.
He went through my file and commented about my birth place, confirmed my medical and shots were good and confirmed my employment and salary. I volunteered my employment confirmation letter and pays stubs but he was not interested.
Then he started with the questions, when, where we met, how did our relationship grow, about our college and degrees (we met at grad school) how long we dated, how I proposed, where I got the ring, how much, how may carats . He asked about our home, phones, computers, carpets, sofas, our wedding and about my work.
He then asked for any joint docs we had, so I gave him, our joint tax returns, bank a/cs, insurance, credit cards, utility bills, phone bills, wife’s name change docs, airline tickets, and wedding receipts. He seemed impressed at the collection of joint docs and that I had photocopied everything for him. (he took the copies)
He zoomed through our 200 photo album and seemed happy. He said everything looked good so far and he would need to verify some information with my wife. He said my name check had come through but he needed to run another background check in the afternoon. And if everything went well he would approve the case later on in the day.
He kept my passport and showed me out and called my wife in.
She was interviewed for about 10 mins, and she was basically asked the same questions I was asked to see if our answers matched. After the questioning, she was informed that he was satisfied with the case; he needed to run a background check, and if there were no hits he would approve the case later on. He returned my passport and ID to her.
We walk out feeling the whole process was a big anticlimax, and wandered when I would really be approved, and what this “new” background check was, as I had not heard about it, even through this forum. I was a little annoyed our attorney was not there but I’m not sure what he could have done.
Well later on this evening I got about six case status emails, detailing I-130, I-485 case approved and an approval notice mailed; message. So you can now imagine we are happy bunnies and celebrating!
So apart for thanking the members of this forum, I wanted to emphasize the Interview FAQ doc was very useful to us as we didn’t think we would be interviewed separately but it happened and we were prepared.
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