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Immigration

Adjustment of Status - I-485

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Chicago FO Interview experience
On September 13 I(beneficiary) and my wife(petitioner) had I-485 interview in Chicago field office.
I prepared three folders with the paperwork:
1) Our original documents (marriage and birth certificates, passports, etc.)
2) Evidence of bona-fide marriage
3) Work related stuff like paychecks for my wife, letters from the employers, etc.
I put all documents in the separate sheet protectors with the brief explanation of what every sheet protector contains on top of each of them.
We both dressed up to the nines, I was wearing a three-piece suit and tie, my wife was wearing a professional dress and heels. We came in, waited for our lawyer, checked in, waited like 10-15 more minutes and got called in. Our immigration officer was vey nice young Hispanic lady. She swore us in and our lawyer told her right away that we’re gonna be an easy case and she would be done before her lunch break even starts.
She verified my wife’s employment, DOB, and address. She asked her my DOB. Then she verified my employment, DOB and address. Asked me when we got married. I said that we got married on 1/19/19, and it’s like a magic number for us, because the address of Chicago Courthouse is 119 as well. She laughed.
Then we proceeded to all yes/no questions. She asked if I ever worked without authorization, I said yes. If I ever violated my status. I said that since I was working without authorization, I assume, I did violate my status. She nodded and smiled. When it got to “have you even been arrested, cited or etc.”, I said that I had two speeding tickets, in 2016 and 2017. The 2017 one I got in Florida when we went to vacation with my wife, so the last day of our vacation we spent looking for a lawyer, and my wife almost killed me fo that. She smiled and asked if I complied and paid them. I said that I brought certified court dispositions for both of them, and she was like “oh, wow, that’s great”, and took them. Then she said that she sees that I served in my country’s military. I told her that I indeed was the Special Forces second lieutenant. She said “of course you don’t happen to have any paperwork showing your discharge? It’s not a problem, no worries” I was like, lol, I actually do have my discharge papers, and gave them to her. She was stunned for a second, but she took them. The lawyer was like, I told you they are on top of their stuff. Then we went through the whole bunch of other questions and at the end she said, that she is absolutely sure that I didn’t bring my wife’s paychecks. I was like, nope, I actually have them as well, here are her paychecks for the past 2 months, and verification employment letters from both of her employers. At this point everyone just started laughing and my lawyer asked if I ever considered being a lawyer :) She also asked when I entered the US, what status I was in (F-1) and what University I went to. I answered and said that my University is actually right down the street from the immigration office, like 5 minutes walk. She was like, hell yeah, you guys have a gorgeous campus.
We proceeded to the bona-fide evidences, so I turned in the whole folder with the table of contents and the explanation of every page. I said that she could flip through the pages and go through that evidence real quick, or just keep the entire folder for herself. She thanked me for making her job so easy, and took the whole folder.
After this, she asked how we met(we were living in the same building and we met each other at 3am in the laundry), and I told her our story, and then my wife told her the story from her own perspective. We were all laughing for the whole time, cause our story is hilarious.
She asked me how I proposed, and I said that I want to show her a video of my proposal. She was like, ok, why not. So I showed her a video. At the moment when one of my friends got out of the car’s trunk with balloons and a huge sign “will you marry me?” the officer started laughing again and she was like “how long were this poor guy sitting in the trunk?!!!” We laughed, she said that it was very creative, she has never seen anything like that in her life, and she only wants to know who attended our wedding.
After we talked about who came to our wedding, I said that I really want to show her the photo-album of our story, cause my wife spent 2 days making it with so much love. She flipped through the pages really quick, and returned it back to us and thanked us for sharing that with her. At this point she said she didn’t need anything else, but I said that I also brought a personalized love-book that my wife made for me, and she really wanted the officer to see that book. She went through it and got super excited, saying that she wants one like that too, and asked my wife where she could order that. The officer was Hispanic and my wife is Hispanic two, so I guess at this point two Latinas just clicked and started talking about this book :)
The officer was smiling and saying that there is REALLY nothing else she would need from us. She told us this regular stuff about how they say that case is gonna be held for review for 120 days, but that’s not true, and she personally makes decisions in 4 to 5 weeks. She said that if they need something else, they’ll send a letter and all that usual stuff. My lawyer asked if she was to make a positive decision, when we should expect our green card. She said it usually takes around 5 weeks for her to make a decision and for us to get the card.
The weird thing is that she never gave us any white paper, saying that case was held for review, which most of the people get. I was also kinda upset, that we didn’t get neither white paper, nor decision at the end of the interview, or during the day. The case status online changed tonight to “Case must be reviewed”, and that’s all she wrote.
We did our best at this interview, I was as prepared as I could be. I brought literally every single piece of information that could be relevant to our case, and my wife put so much love into making all those albums, pictures and other stuff. I don’t get my hopes high, because I see all these people on this forum who say that their interview went amazing, the officer was all smily and snuggly, and then they wait for their approvals for months and years. I don’t know how this bureaucratic machine is gonna work, I don’t know how this whole immigration system is gonna act, but I know that we did the best we could and the officer was more than convinced. Our lawyer told us that he works with this officer all the time, and he is sure she already made a decision, because she can be very strict and non forgiving, but in this case she barely asked us about out marriage, and she was pretty excited. Nonetheless, I’m morally bracing myself for USCIS to screw up, like forget about our case and leave us in limbo for the next X amount of time. I hope for the best though, and I’m happy if this information helps anyone with their preparation. Ask questions if you need, I’ll be happy to answer.
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