November 12, 2003
The Big Day
This was the day we'd waited nearly two years for, the Adjustment of Status meeting. We woke early and headed down to the INS office. I was pulling a rolling suitcase filled with: copies of all our paperwork, our passports, birth certificates, translations of her birth certificate, ID photographs, Social Security card, marriage certificate, life insurance policy showing my wife as the beneficiary, any INS correspondence from the past two years, three years of tax returns with three years of W2s, 1099s and paystubs, canceled checks from the IRS, three months of checking and savings account information for myself, three months of checking and savings account information showing joint accounts, gym membership card, health insurance information proving she was on my plan, hospital bills from a miscarriage to show that we were trying to have kids, proof she had her fingerprints taken, her work authorization, a copy of our wedding invitation, cards from a Las Vegas casino to show we share a life together, receipts from our wedding rings, boarding passes from flights we’ve taken together, bills from the dentist to show I’m paying for her dental work, receipts from NYU to show I’m learning Polish, a receipt showing we sat through the horrendous Pre-Cana classes the Catholic church required us to take to get married on their property, phone and utility bills, my college quarterly showing a photo from our wedding, both Advance Parole documents and enough photographs to detail our entire life together. We had photocopies of everything, save the pictures.
For the first time ever, there was no line at the INS building. We walked right in and went through security. It was eerily quiet. That turned out to be misleading. We exited the elevator onto the eighth floor and into a sea of people. After handing the agent our appointment letter we were told it would be a 3-4 hour wait. We sat. We waited. I studied the crowd. There was a little bit of everyone in the world sitting in that room.
The PA system did not work correctly. For over an hour and a half we heard people testing the microphone. They tapped on it. They blew on it. They said “Test, test, test…” into it. But it didn’t work properly. I was certain that after two years of waiting for this appointment we weren’t going to hear our name called and that would be that.
Every few minutes and INS officer would come out, on the other end of the room, and call out a name. It was nearly impossible to hear. Some of the agents halfheartedly called the names, as if they were conserving valuable oxygen. Between that and the din of the crowd the anxiety was working itself to a fever pitch. I tried to read, but all I could really do was listen intently the nearly inaudible announcements.
As seats became available we migrated our way towards the area where the INS officers called out names. When we heard ours we bolted towards the woman and were escorted through a labyrinthine office – a football field of cubicles. She took us into a side office and shut the door.
I was a nervous wreck. I feared that my nervousness would make her think that we were lying. That made me more nervous. I fumbled through my suitcase as she asked to see a few ID documents to make sure we were who we said we were. She opened a file on her desk, our file, and I recognized all the documents that I had mailed to them nearly two years ago.
When she asked to see the I-693 Medical Report results my heart sank. We had sent them in with the initial packet in December 2001. We told her as much. I was terrified they had lost them and it would suddenly be our fault. She flipped through the folder and found them. She opened the envelope. Apparently no diseases to worry about. She pressed on.
The questions were straightforward. Her job is to determine that we’re legitimately married and financially secure enough that we won’t be going on welfare. Fair enough. She asked where we met. What we did. She looked at the original birth certificates, marriage license, passports, bank documents and passports. She took copies of them. Copies of the W2s and 1099s. She flipped through our photos and asked a few Who, What and Where questions. She made a photocopy of a picture from our honeymoon.
She wrote her name and date in my wife’s passport and told us we’d be getting a letter in a month or so. The letter would have an appointment time for us to come in and get her passport stamped. That would serve as proof of a Green Card until the temporaryGreen Card arrived in the mail, God knows when.
A temporary Green Card, called a Conditional, is issued if the couple has been married less than two years. In our case, we would have reached that mark only five weeks later. We mentioned this, but it didn’t matter. Rules are rules. Even if our second anniversary was only five weeks away, we hadn’t been married two years yet. A Conditional was issued.
This means that our two-year journey did not end on that day. Two years from now, we’ll be filing an I-751 Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence. We’ll be given another interview date. I’ll be packing another suitcase full of paperwork, and we’ll be making our way back to the sea of humanity to once again prove that I’m legitimately married to an Alien.
For the first time ever, there was no line at the INS building. We walked right in and went through security. It was eerily quiet. That turned out to be misleading. We exited the elevator onto the eighth floor and into a sea of people. After handing the agent our appointment letter we were told it would be a 3-4 hour wait. We sat. We waited. I studied the crowd. There was a little bit of everyone in the world sitting in that room.
The PA system did not work correctly. For over an hour and a half we heard people testing the microphone. They tapped on it. They blew on it. They said “Test, test, test…” into it. But it didn’t work properly. I was certain that after two years of waiting for this appointment we weren’t going to hear our name called and that would be that.
Every few minutes and INS officer would come out, on the other end of the room, and call out a name. It was nearly impossible to hear. Some of the agents halfheartedly called the names, as if they were conserving valuable oxygen. Between that and the din of the crowd the anxiety was working itself to a fever pitch. I tried to read, but all I could really do was listen intently the nearly inaudible announcements.
As seats became available we migrated our way towards the area where the INS officers called out names. When we heard ours we bolted towards the woman and were escorted through a labyrinthine office – a football field of cubicles. She took us into a side office and shut the door.
I was a nervous wreck. I feared that my nervousness would make her think that we were lying. That made me more nervous. I fumbled through my suitcase as she asked to see a few ID documents to make sure we were who we said we were. She opened a file on her desk, our file, and I recognized all the documents that I had mailed to them nearly two years ago.
When she asked to see the I-693 Medical Report results my heart sank. We had sent them in with the initial packet in December 2001. We told her as much. I was terrified they had lost them and it would suddenly be our fault. She flipped through the folder and found them. She opened the envelope. Apparently no diseases to worry about. She pressed on.
The questions were straightforward. Her job is to determine that we’re legitimately married and financially secure enough that we won’t be going on welfare. Fair enough. She asked where we met. What we did. She looked at the original birth certificates, marriage license, passports, bank documents and passports. She took copies of them. Copies of the W2s and 1099s. She flipped through our photos and asked a few Who, What and Where questions. She made a photocopy of a picture from our honeymoon.
She wrote her name and date in my wife’s passport and told us we’d be getting a letter in a month or so. The letter would have an appointment time for us to come in and get her passport stamped. That would serve as proof of a Green Card until the temporaryGreen Card arrived in the mail, God knows when.
A temporary Green Card, called a Conditional, is issued if the couple has been married less than two years. In our case, we would have reached that mark only five weeks later. We mentioned this, but it didn’t matter. Rules are rules. Even if our second anniversary was only five weeks away, we hadn’t been married two years yet. A Conditional was issued.
This means that our two-year journey did not end on that day. Two years from now, we’ll be filing an I-751 Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence. We’ll be given another interview date. I’ll be packing another suitcase full of paperwork, and we’ll be making our way back to the sea of humanity to once again prove that I’m legitimately married to an Alien.
