Tuesday, November 07, 2006
The green card interview
Yun Jung and I had our green card interview yesterday in Garden City, NY. I'm going to write about it in case anyone else out there is going to go through the same thing.
We showed up way too early. If your paper says that your appointment is at 10am, then 10am is as early as it's going to be. An hour early is more then enough time. You check in and hand them your appointment paper and then you wait for them to call your name. When they do, they take you to another room (upstairs in this case) and you wait some more. This time, the actual interviewer came out and called Yun Jung's name (she was the one applying, I was just there as an aside, although my presence was required).
We went back to her office. She asked us some questions about each other's backgrounds. She asked if we had met each other's parents and that sort of thing. She asked me about her family, asked Yun Jung about some of the people in our wedding photos, asked about the wedding reception. Then we handed her a bunch of paperwork that proves that we live together (lease with both of our signatures on it, bank letters, I need an employment letter from my job, bills with both of our names on them) and then she asked a battery of questions to which the correct answer was always "no" ... thing like "are you a terrorist," "have you ever been arrested." That sort of thing. Then she took Yun Jung's passport and we went back downstairs and waited to get it back. That was it and we were out of there.
We showed up way too early. If your paper says that your appointment is at 10am, then 10am is as early as it's going to be. An hour early is more then enough time. You check in and hand them your appointment paper and then you wait for them to call your name. When they do, they take you to another room (upstairs in this case) and you wait some more. This time, the actual interviewer came out and called Yun Jung's name (she was the one applying, I was just there as an aside, although my presence was required).
We went back to her office. She asked us some questions about each other's backgrounds. She asked if we had met each other's parents and that sort of thing. She asked me about her family, asked Yun Jung about some of the people in our wedding photos, asked about the wedding reception. Then we handed her a bunch of paperwork that proves that we live together (lease with both of our signatures on it, bank letters, I need an employment letter from my job, bills with both of our names on them) and then she asked a battery of questions to which the correct answer was always "no" ... thing like "are you a terrorist," "have you ever been arrested." That sort of thing. Then she took Yun Jung's passport and we went back downstairs and waited to get it back. That was it and we were out of there.
