The News We Have Been Waiting For

Hello wonderful human being, how have you been? We have been doing great, and we have some awesome news.

Spoil alert: I got my green card.

As some of you probably know, I am an immigrant in the United States. I have been living here for almost five years, the first three years I was here as an international student with a F1 visa, and the past two years I have been married to Brandon and we have been going through the immigrational process of obtaining a green card for me.

Because Brandon is a citizen and because we are married, we did the process of obtaining a green card through marriage. Which means that Brandon had to file a series of forms to petition that my green card.

Now, before I continue I feel like I need to make a disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, nor am I an expert on immigrational processes, everything I am saying here is based on our experience and my limited knowledge on how things work. Also, I DO NOT recommend that anyone gets married just for a green card.

Anyhow, as I was saying, Brandon had to petition my green card, so he initiated the process. For this we had to prove we were married and had enough money to support our household without falling under the poverty line. We also had to file documents that proved our identity and that proved we had never committed crimes. Along side these documents, I also applied for a work permit.

Then we had to wait. Which is, in my opinion, the worst part of this process. We filed the original petition (I-130) in January of 2020, in April we received a letter stating that our case was being handled by the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala, so we had to rectify that and change our case to be filed and processed within the U.S.. At this point we filed the forms regarding financial support (I-864), the application to register permanent residency/change of status (I-485), and the petition to obtain an employment authorization (I-765). At the time we had to file form I-944 "Declaration of Self Sufficiency", but that has been since discontinued.

We didn't hear anything from them until August of 2020, when we were informed that form I-944 had been discontinued and one other form had been updated, so we needed to file again with the updated version. We re-filed everything right away and waited for an answer.

We didn't hear from them at all until January of 2021 when they requested our presence for biometrics (taking a picture and fingerprints). We weren't given any information regarding our case.

In March of 2021 I received my employment authorization, and in April I received my social security number. Again, no update on the green card.

It wasn't until last month that we received a letter requesting our presence for a initial interview. For this we had to gather an insane amount of paperwork and evidence.

At the end we didn't end up needing any of these documents, aside from our 2020 tax return, but it was good to be prepared with everything they had asked for.

The interview itself was really easy and quick. We were in the building for about half hour, most of which was waiting time. We were scheduled for a 11:25 appointment we were allowed to go in at 11:10 (we arrived there at 11 am), we were in our car by 11:45.

Like I said, the interview was really easy. The person who did the interview was really nice, didn't try to be intimidating or anything. We did the oath to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, and then the only questions we were asked were to confirm the information we had written in our form I-485 was correct. Brandon didn't have to say pretty much anything, I answered all of the questions, and then we were done.

It wasn't as scary as I had made it to be in my mind, but I am definitely glad it's over. It takes a big weight off of my chest, I didn't realize how much anxiety it was adding to my everyday life by just being an unknown that I couldn't control. Now I feel like I can actually breathe.

So that will be all for today. Until next time, go do something that makes you happy, and don't forget to share your love with everyone around you. Have an awesome day.