How do you prepare for your upcoming green card marriage interview with USCIS? You and your spouse applied to adjust status and now you both need to attend the interview at the local USCIS field office and want to make sure you do a great job. This video breaks down what to expect and how to effectively prepare for the big day.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
[The following is the full transcript of the blog video: What to Expect at the Adjustment of Status Interview]
Hello, this is Eric Whitman and I’m going to be breaking down for you in this video, the key steps in the adjustment of status process for you and your spouse, we’re going to imagine that you are the foreign national, from another country and you married a US citizen. And you two have been going through this adjustment of status process in order to move you from your current status and adjust that to a green card holder permanent resident status. So maybe you’re a student, or a visitor, or a business visa holder. Now you’re moving forward with adjusting your status. So we’re going to focus on the interview. So we’re going to skip over all those brutal steps you had to go through to file all the forms to hopefully get your ad work authorization by now and your advanced parole, which allows you to travel internationally. Remember, don’t travel internationally, till you get that Advance Parole. So if you have the interview setup, you’ll receive the happy news in a letter, and maybe it’ll have been six, nine months, sometimes faster. We’re here in Portland, Oregon, so it would vary under jurisdiction. But you finally get the notice. And you’ll be given maybe three to four weeks lead time to look at the list so that you can prepare to bring in what is required. So look carefully at the list, they update it every so often. And you’ll see in the middle of that page, make sure you bring these items in with you. Sometimes the list can be confusing, because you’ve already given them some of those documents. But we’ll, we’ll touch on that in a little bit. Prior to the big day, in addition to getting all the documents ready, you want to focus on supporting evidence to because it takes some time to gather proof of your genuine marriage. So you’ll need to be doing that as well. But at the on the day of the actual interview, it’s going to be the same place the field office where you had your biometrics your fingerprints taken. So you’ll go through security, don’t make any jokes with the the security officers there about what may or may not be in your bag, you head on in. And importantly, then you’ll check in at the kiosk, there’s usually an immigration officer right there can’t miss that person, you check in and you say, here’s my interview, notice. And if you have an attorney, you’ve got to check in with your attorney now as well. But you need to make sure you and your US citizen spouse are both there at the same time, you can’t show up later and get checked in. You can only check in when you’re all there. And then you have to go and wait in the waiting room for sometimes 20 3045 minutes. Other states, it’s even worse. But Portland is not so bad. But you still have to wait everybody’s nervous. Remember, it’s normal to be nervous, even though your marriage is completely genuine. After a little Wait, your immigration officer will call you and your husband back into her office. One of the first things that officer will do is say to both of you please remain standing, do you raise? Would you raise your right hand? And do you swear to tell the truth? So you do that you say I do. The officer typically says okay, please sit down and provide me your ID, and passport. So if you have a driver’s license, you slide that over, you give your passport as well. And after that, the immigration officer will have you use their new electronic fingerprint scanner, put your right index finger forward, then your left. And they confirm that you actually are who you say you are, they take your picture with a little webcam. Following that, after they confirm your identity. Most officers start going through some key details about the application that you’ve already filed. And that should be right there on the officers desk. And keep in mind, they usually won’t set up these interviews. If they don’t have all the documents they need. You would have received or RFP request for evidence if you didn’t give them the key documents to set up the interview. So the officer will flip through your application, look at your form 485 130 and ask questions like Do you still live at this address? Do you have a job? Where do you work? What’s your phone number? And usually just go through basic information about your your application confirming as well. When did you the applicant enter the US? That’s a key question for for the adjustment of status process because you have to show that you had an entry with inspection after they confirm those key details Again, we’re hitting the highlights here. The officer usually transitions into the genuine nature of your relationship. And they want to know how you met. What was the story? What, what was basically the dating history after you’re introduced to each other? And how did things accelerate so that you eventually decided to get married. So it’s sometimes an enjoyable trip down memory lane. You are sometimes asked some follow up questions. And a couple officers here in Portland have even done a Newlywed Game quiz with a doesn’t happen all the time. But we’ll ask one of you, you and your partner to fill out a sheet of paper with questions on it like What did you have for dinner last night? What type of car does your spouse drive, then without allowing the other spouse to see what you’ve written? Take that back, ask the other person the same questions. And then compare the answers that were written with what the other person says that makes a good story. It’s not very common. It’s also not common to be separated in what’s called a Stokes interview. But it can happen. And we’ll have to do a different video about that. You’ll know in the very beginning if you’re going to be separated or not. So at the end of this interview, you’re roughly maybe 1520 minutes into it at this point. There will be security style questions answered about things that you haven’t done. And you have to disclose any of the bad things that you’ve done prior to that, including any speeding tickets, citations. But a lot of questions about Have you ever engaged in horrible things like genocide? Or were you in a Nazi? There’s a lot of questions on there that they will go through and have you’ll select maybe 15 of them. Finally, they’ll ask, do you have any supporting evidence that you want to supplement showing your genuine relationship? So that’s a great opportunity to pull out, it’s essential that you pull out we always recommended our firm photographs, you printed out maybe 15 to 23 to four other types of evidence to updated joint statements updated tax return, joint tax return. So those statements can be bank statements, credit card statements, you can share communications with one another from Skype or instant message you could provide those records. It’s great to show formal legal documents like a lease, or if you own a house together, very compelling documents. There’s a bunch of other things that you need to bring in but we’re gonna keep these videos short. Hope this was helpful.
