Green Card Diary

Two days after we receive three identical letters saying the Temporary Permanent Resident Card will arrive, the Conditional Permanent Resident Card arrives.

This is what we've been waiting for for over two years. Actually, it's almost what we've been waiting for. We were waiting for the Permanent Resident Card, but since our Adjustment of Status meeting was a month before our two-year wedding anniversary, we didn't qualify. We got the Conditional one.

So, in a year and a half I'll need to file for Removal of Conditions. We have a 90-day window to do that before her Conditional card expires. If we make a mistake, forget to file, it will be a disaster. More paperwork. More pressure. But for now, it's on the distant horizon. For now, we have a credit card-sized piece of plastic that finally lets my wife live somewhat normally in this great big country of ours.

Att our Adjustment of Status (AOS) meeting, we had been told that we'd receive an appointment letter. This letter would tell us to come in and have my wife's passport stamped. That would act as her temporary Green Card until the real one came in the mail a few months later.

Apparently, that's not what happens.

We receive three identical letters in three different envelopes, all on the same day. They tell us "congratulations" and our Temporary Conditional Residence has been granted. It says the card will arrive in the mail. There will apparently be no passport-stamping.

Now, we're happy about this, there's no reason to complain. But it is indicative of how INS operates. One hand doesn't know what the other is doing. At the interview the officer tells us how it's going to happen, but it ultimately doesn't happen that way.

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.

Throughout our INS experience we've learned that you can not assume anything, that the rules seem to vary, and that the system has hiccups throughout which can often lead to an unpleasant experience. So, when we headed to the fingerprinting appointment at 9:00am we had no reason to think it would be any different.

I'm not fan of government getting any bigger than it already is, but if our experience here is indicative of what the Department of Homeland Security can do for immigration, I say bring it on!

First of all, the appointment was at a different location than the usual gigantic government complex we've been going to. We knew something was different right off when we saw no line. Assuming there was a line somewhere, or that we were in the wrong building, we timidly asked the guard if we were in the right place. Indeed, we were. We immediately went through security and got on the elevator.

The fingerprinting office was new, clean and uncrowded. These are three things we were not used to experiencing in our immigration odyssey. She took a number, filled out a sheet, and we waited. About five minutes later she was called. And about five minutes after that we were done.

They even provided her with a comment card. That pretty much blindsided us. They actually wanted to know what we thought about the experience. We left the building stunned. I was drafting complimentary letters to Tom Ridge in my head.

*That* is how a big, bureaucratic operation should run.

We returned to the US after finally going on our Honeymoon which we'd postponed for a year.

At this point, I've learned not to be so pointlessly nervous during re-entry. We always play by the rules, so there's really no reason to get worked up. There is a standard procedure which is inconvenient in that we never know how long it's going to take, but that's the extent of it. We've since learned not to bother to book a car service- they always wind up leaving after 30 minutes sitting outside the airport.

As usual, the INS officer places her passport in a folder and she's told to go to the INS office. We go there and wait. And wait. And wait. The room is filled with people, some with situations like ours, others in big trouble because of false or expired passports. Others because they lacked visas. There's nothing to do but wait our turn.

That turn is going to take a while it seems, because there's one African man holding up the entire process for everyone in the room. He's lying- it's obvious to everyone in the room, especially the INS officer quizzing him. He's leaning on the counter talking (rather, mumbling) in circles. The officer asks questions, the guy answers, the officer points out a major hole in his story, the guy has another answer, and so on. Everyone is frustrated. It's obvious the guy is going back to Africa at some point, he just doesn't seem to know that yet.

An hour later it's our turn. The officer takes her Advance Parole, looks at it, stamps it, and we're free to go.