Photo Credit: Hamed Saber
A phone conversation from last night:
Aditya: Hey, guess what came in the mail today?
GG, at the office, as always: How are you home already? Don’t you work? … And, yeah, so what came in the mail?
Aditya: News from the Department of Homeland Security.
GG: Have they scheduled our follow-up green card interview, then?
Aditya: Better – they approved me right away! I’m now a permanent Permanent Resident.
GG: Wait, they can waive the two-year review interview? Sweet! Do you think the fact that we sent in not one but two dog adoption contracts pushed us over the edge into not needing another interview? Or was it the printout of the front page of gorigirl.com?
Aditya: I think it was the detailed timeline of our relationship I wrote up, and maybe the fact that we own a house and two cars together. Also: I can now divorce you freely. Be nice to me.
GG: Oh, frack you. And please have dinner ready by the time I get home.
*click*
For anyone interested, our (well, Aditya’s) immigration timeline can be found here. We may have had the easiest green card experience in the history of US immigration. Ever.
(Also, for any immigration officers reading along at home, Aditya does not plan to divorce me now that his green card is secured. I think. Please still send us an updated green card, preferably with Obama’s profile included in the Presidential lineup.)
14. October 2009 at 9:36 am
Hi Gori Girl! Congrats on the P-PR status for Aditya!
I’m starting to look into all the permanent residency stuff for P… I swear he is the only Nepali person I’ve ever met who is so laid back about a Green Card! Meanwhile, everyone else frantically applies for the DV lottery every year.
The travel issue is the big problem for us… since he is still working on his phd and occasionally has to attend conferences/trainings abroad, and periodically leaves the country for research back home, he is hesitant about when we should get married and start the application process
Meanwhile, sometimes I think my family thinks we are dragging out the inevitable forever… we’ve been dating for 6 going on 7 years, we have been engaged for over a year… and every time they see us we get the, “so did you set a date?” question. All the immigration stuff doesn’t make sense to them anyway (and my grandmother, who married my Irish born grandfather insists that she wouldn’t marry him until he became a US citizen… grandma- that was nearly 60 years ago… its not that easy these days!)
I am used to working with USCIS and the Department of Homeland security in my day to day job, and I know that timing is really unpredictable with these agencies. Which makes it hard to convince P that the process could potentially be “quick and painless” (like yours, versus poor Gori Wife!)
According to your time line it looks like it took about 3 or 4 months for you and Aditya to get both the green card and the advanced parole (they came around the same time?) hmmm…
14. October 2009 at 5:01 pm
Thanks! Guess you had plenty to say on this topic, hmmm?
It only took 2.5 months for advance parole to go through for us, and 3.5 for the green card – but it varies so much case by case. We were pretty surprised it went through so quickly, since Aditya’s father was in the Indian army, and he didn’t have a proper birth certificate. *shrug* Crapshoot, I suspect, altho I do think nationality plays a part in the speed of the processing.
14. October 2009 at 11:35 am
Hey, Congratulations, that’s awesome! And I can’t believe how easy your process was (checked out your timeline). Mine was strikingly similar to Gori Wife’s, with the added hitch that my husband did not register after 9/11 like he was supposed to, so that took longer too. We applied in January of 2004 and he got his GC in March of 2006. We just applied in September for naturalization, which I am sincerely hoping will go more smoothly. Processing times for our area on N-400 says 4 months! But probably that is just wishful thinking… At one point I thought I wanted to be an immigration lawyer, but the utter frustration of my M’s GC process and subsequent travel visas for my il’s had made me reassess that one. I’ll stick with the corporate litigation thank you.
14. October 2009 at 4:19 pm
Yeah, I have a blog-rant bubbling on the back burner about the unnecessary trials and tribulations of the US immigration process. I’m very thankful that are process was as smooth as it was, but that is not the case for so many others.
14. October 2009 at 2:32 pm
(Also, for any immigration officers reading along at home, Aditya does not plan to divorce me now that his green card is secured)
Technically, even if Aditya divorced you for the sole reason that his green card came through, USCIS cannot do anything about it. Same logic would apply, if you and Aditya were called up for an interview and he told the USCIS officer during the interview that he is waiting for the green card to divorce you. USCIS can only look at Aditya’s intent at the time you got married. That marriage had to be for love. If Aditya a week into the marriage changed his mind and continued to be stayed married to you for the green card, that is none of USCIS’ concern.
14. October 2009 at 4:54 pm
It’s my understand, tho, that the way USCIS determines whether it was a “real” marriage at the time is by both tracking documents before & after the marriage – so if you don’t have the document trail built up when your two-year review comes through, you could be in trouble.
When our first green card came, our immigration lawyer sent us a letter with congratulations. Buried about halfway in, it mentioned that, should we become divorced before our two-year review period was up, there were “steps that could be taken” that would allow Aditya to keep his green card.
14. October 2009 at 6:26 pm
Congratulations, GG and Aditya! I used to have to deal with the USCIS for a job, ugh, and I really wasn’t fond of informing people of how long it could take to get a GC (top record: 4 months after applying!).
Also: Pagal aadmi for debauchery is a really awesome username.
14. October 2009 at 11:13 pm
You are too funny!!
15. October 2009 at 3:25 am
Congrats on the permanent res card.
15. October 2009 at 9:01 am
Hilarious, GG! Congrats on the green card.
15. October 2009 at 11:11 am
That’s awesome!
15. October 2009 at 9:42 pm
Gori girl, u are hilarious! lolol seriously! The Title of the blogpost, the image and the frack u had me roaring with laughter! Congrats to A on getting the PR, now be nice to him
16. October 2009 at 3:44 am
Our process was easy too. We had his (but it feels like “our!”) greencard (without Obama on the back) in hand 97 days from the day we sent our package in.
At our interview the guy told us that the more “proof” we send in in 1 year and 9 months (well, now 1 year and 7 1/2 months), the less likely we are to have to do a second interview. I’m getting smart this time–I’m keeping a file of joint stuff already copied and ready to go. This little honeymoon we’re on? When we get back the receipts, ticket stubs, etc are going to be copied and filed, ready to pull out later!
Anyhow–many congratulations to you both.
20. October 2009 at 2:39 pm
Heh. You’re WAY more diligent than we were – for our trip to India, for instance, all we mailed in were a few copies of photos and a photocopy of our passports showing the same entry date on the immigration stamp.
16. October 2009 at 3:45 am
PS–my backup proof in case we got sent to Stokes was to print out every blog post about Good Man I ever wrote.
19. October 2009 at 10:33 pm
Congratulations!
Back in the ‘olden days’ when we got married, I represented us! I just remember that no matter what was in my 4 inch tall stack of forms and papers, the agent always wanted the one thing I didn’t have.
As for second interview, we did not have one either–I’m going with the joint mortgage theory–I assumed they figured I wasn’t letting him out of my sight!
Citizenship was a little tricker, only because we moved from Boston to Chicago after all was done, only the swear in left to do, but Boston–and this is not an exaggeration–only sent an empty file with my husband’s name written on it, so he had to redo most. He was finally set to go, and then the Federal Government closed down for lack of money. Luckily they went ahead and did the ceremony for those already in process.
20. October 2009 at 2:37 pm
That sounds like quite the hassle, Deanna! And I thought we had it tough when we had to fly back to California from the East Coast for our first interview.
20. October 2009 at 2:12 pm
Congrats! My husband has his last fingerprinting in two weeks and then we get to find out if we need a follow-up interview, or not. I really hope not, since we’re living out of the country for a few months and would need to both fly back (expensive around the holidays!).
We don’t have a mortgage, a car, children or pets jointly, so I’m a bit worried… but it’s pretty apparent from everything else in our files that it’s not a fraudulent marriage, so hopefully it will all work out…
20. October 2009 at 3:04 pm
Let us know what happens, Andrea. I’d be interested to see if the joint-property theory holds up or not. (Not that you can actually draw any conclusions from a handful of cases…)
We had to fly across the US for the original green card interview, which was not fun. (Especially since I was teaching at the time, and couldn’t miss more than a day of work.) I hope you guys get your interview waived!
27. October 2009 at 7:57 pm
Hi
I filed for divorce in Jan this year. My I485 interview is tomorrow. My husband filed for GC for him and I last year. I did not receive any follow up letters from INS as he did not pass to me. His lawyer just sent me a letter and it got forwarded to me and then I came to know that I did not appear for three biometric appointments. Now he says that I am not living with him, so not his family and not eligible for GC. Fine with me. However, he is not filling any of the divorce forms either. He just rejects the letters or refuses to reply to court sent letters nor appear for CMCs (case management conf). He is already at default of the court, but that would not fetch me divorce. He is holding me on both fronts. I am married to him for 13 long years and took me so long before giving up. Any advice for my interview tomorrow? Can I take divorce papers to immigration office and get him to sign in that? Anyway I don’t care where I live but how well. That is why I do not care about this GC processing. Any advice to srivisa2002@yahoo.com will be much highly appreciated. Thanks.
27. October 2009 at 8:09 pm
Srivisa, you should consult an immigration or divorce lawyer and NOT look for advice on blogs.
28. November 2009 at 5:13 pm
wow, thanks for the post! we’ll be starting the whole mess ourselves pretty soon and the timeline is really helpful.
congrats on the quick and painless process!
28. November 2009 at 5:16 pm
Glad it was helpful – I hope your process goes as smoothly as ours did!