things that the little alien brought to the interview

I've promised this for a very long while, because I always see other fellow aliens asking, "What do I bring to the interview?"  Really, apart from the list that USCIS provided you with on the appointment letter, this is a very open-ended question.  How much you have to bring depends on your interviewing IO: I've seen people online claim that their interviewing Immigration Officer didn't even ask for their birth certificates, while mine actually took the time to flip through 4+ years worth of photographs in our scrapbook.

This Alien had waited 4 months between the fingerprinting appointment and when she got her interview appointment letter.  As a result, the Hubby and I did all kinds of crazy things to make sure the interview went well so that we could be done with the waiting game.  The result was that we turned up at the Los Angeles field office on the day of our interview carrying so much stuff that we looked like hobos.  We were pretty fancy looking hobo's though, with dress shirts and dress pants and make-up and all, and this Alien thinks that she looked very glamorous even if she had been lugging around all the hobo-stuff:

Just for the record, I actually do have a purple eyeshadow palette, and I think I actually did use it for my immigration interview.

Anyways, here are the items that we brought:

1. Binder of immigration documents and supporting evidence: We bought a binder and a stack of clear plastic pockets.  We then painstakingly put each page for the below documents into a plastic pocket, and then wrote up a content page at the end of it:

a. Copies of the I-485, I-130, I-864, G-325A's submitted with the initial application (I did not include the I-131 and I-765 with the initial application)
b. Copies of all NOA's and I-512L received from USCIS
c. Copies of the Hubby's and Alien's birth certificates, biographic pages of passports and driver's licenses (to show common address)
d. Copies of the Alien's F-1 visa, I-94, all I-20's and employment offer letter
e. Copy of marriage certificate
f. Copies of Hubby's and Alien's shared lease agreements, car registration, tax return, medical and vehicle insurance, utilities bills, trip itineraries
g. Copies of all INT-1099's and W2's relevant to tax return in 1f
h. Copies of the Hubby's and Alien's diplomas from The American School
i. Copies of 22 photos that the Hubby and Alien thought were most representative of their relationship
j. Copies of most recent paystubs and bank statements to show that the Hubby and Alien met the income/assets requirements for the I-864
k. Copies of the Hubby's tax returns from past years
m. Copies of all pages of the Alien's passport as an addendum

2. Originals, where applicable, of items 1b through 1m

3. Scrapbook with photos following the Hubby's and Alien's relationship from Dec 2009

4. The Hubby's and Alien's "BOX", containing silly things that the Hubby and the Alien picked up from their milestones and trips together:
a. Amusement park maps
b. Keepsakes from the beach or forest, like a rock or giant seashell or pine cone
c. Commencement program booklets

Here's how important each item is: Our interviewing IO asked to keep most of the documents from item 1, scrutinized everything in item 2, flipped through item 3 after he explicitly said that he thought the relationship seemed bona fide, and completely ignored item 4.

Hopefully this gives some fellow Aliens some ideas for what to bring to the interview :)  That's all for today, my fellow Aliens!

Spilling the beans on stupid things prospective employers say to non-immigrant aliens!

Long hiatus, but that is what a job search does to this little alien!  Now that I have lost my ties to my previous employer, I'd like to talk about stupid things that a prospective employer can say to you when all you have is a sad F-1 student visa.  I guess I want this story out there so that Fellow Aliens who are running into dead ends or unreasonable employers can take comfort in the fact that they aren't alone :)

When I attended the Fall Career Fair in my senior year of college at The American School, half the prospective employers that I talked to said point blank that they did not sponsor any kind of work visas, so an F-1 visa wouldn't cut it, sorry.  One guy even went so far as to tell me to "come back to us in the Spring Career Fair if you somehow find yourself with a green card".  Did he think that green cards grew on trees?

Eventually I found half an offer with Company X, except the hiring manager wouldn't give me a full offer because having "only" a Bachelor's Degree, I had to prove my worth because they were a bunch of very clever MBA's.  Basically, knowing how the job market was like for F-1 visa holders, they knew how to give me as little as they could, with me still clinging on to them harder than dear life.

My hiring manager also asked about how long I was intending to stay with the company, and how I thought the logistics would work out since my OPT would run out in 29 months even with the STEM extension.  I made the mistake of telling him that because I was looking for a long-term relationship with an employer, my hope was to stay with them in the long term and have them sponsor me a work visa, and maybe a green card if my work merited one.

So I worked for the next 4 months or so with no benefits and no PTO accrual and a salary that wasn't even enough to cover rent, food and gas.  Thankfully my immediate manager at the time was a decent human being who let me take time off even without PTO.  Eventually, the deadline came for them to give me a proper full time offer as my initial contract was ending, and I was given an unreasonably low salary offer.

Of course I was pissed, and did not hesitate to state so.  And was promptly told that it was the way it was because:

(a) It takes 5 to 8 grand to sponsor a work visa (which was annoying but still OK with me), and

(b) With the job market the way it is, especially with how hard it is to find a job with an F-1 visa, they thought this was a reasonable salary.

The 2nd reason made me lose it, because it felt like someone I was trying to give most of my waking hours to was backing me into a corner.  After thinking it over for half an hour, I told them that I was no longer interested in having them sponsor me a work visa.  I was supposed to get married soon anyway, and no longer saw a point in establishing a long-term relationship with them and would therefore like to go down the route of working with my husband-to-be for immigration if we both still felt like we wanted to stay in the US after we tied the knot.

My salary offer was then promptly raised.  Not by much, but enough to placate me.

Naturally the fiasco soured my relationship with my hiring manager pretty badly.  Not wanting to run into another hiring manager who would use my visa position against me, I waited until my green card was in hand before I started throwing out resumes again.

So I now have a new job with a pretty accommodating hiring manager who didn't try to screw me over, and I lived happily ever after.

That's all for today, my Fellow Aliens!

Settling into a New Culture: The Culture Shock

I think the term "culture shock" is one of the biggest misnomers I've ever heard.  Yes, there is a cultural element to it.  But no, it does not come as a shock, I don't know of anyone who woke up one morning, sat bolt upright in bed, and gasped," OH MY GOD I'M IN AMERICA."

It is a lot more subtle than that, and I know I spent months and months denying I ever experienced it.  I am a socially awkward kid, and it took me a year before I started getting comfortable with who I was in the US.  I mean, I was the joker kid in my social circles in high school, and during my first year in the US I was too terrified of talking because I was scared someone would laugh in my face over my accent.  Not to mention the fact that this fear was solidified in my very being when one of the first people I talked to in the US didn't understand something I was saying to her after repeating it back to her 3 times.  She also very kindly reminded me that she still didn't understand what I was saying each time by snapping, "What?!"

I remember the extent of my fear of talking.  I worked a campus job during my first summer in the US, and there were days when I'd turn up to work and say nothing to my coworkers except for "Good morning" and "Good night".  They probably found me really weird.

One of the biggest things I had to get used to was recognizing that I could no longer live in my own bubble and pretend that I was invisible to everyone else.  That worked fine in Singapore, I mean, after all we have 5 million people squeezed in an island that's only half the size of Los Angeles proper, so I was essentially invisible in that crowd of people.  So it was perfectly acceptable to walk around and not make eye contact with people you were walking by.  And because everybody was so busy in the metropolitan city of Singapore, it was also perfectly acceptable to walk up to a shopkeeper and say, "1 teh-ping (iced tea)" and nothing else.

Coming to the US, ordering a sandwich at Subway suddenly felt like an overwhelming, daunting task.  I was supposed to smile at the sandwich maker, ask them how their day was going, and then ask for the ingredients.

Here's how I would've done it in Singapore: "6-inch Italian, oven-roasted chicken, Provolone, toasted, lettuce-tomato-peppers-onion, Chipotle Southwest."  No facial expressions required.

And in the US I suddenly had to pull the muscles on my face to make a smile, and ask the sandwich maker, "How's it going?" And then after the usual niceties, it would've gone something like, "Could I please get the 6-inch Italian with oven-roasted chicken?  Could I please have Provolone?  Toasted, please.  Could I get the lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and onion?  For the dressing could I please get the Chipotle Southwest?" It felt terribly tedious.

The good news is that it only gets better.  The new cultural practices started feeling like second nature after a while, I didn't have to think through everything I said to feel like I could fit in, and I wasn't horrendously self-conscious.  And the Little Alien lived happily ever after in the USA.

That's all for today, my Fellow Aliens!

Travel during AOS: Getting an Advanced Parole

Fortunately or unfortunately, I have never traveled while trying to undergo my AOS.  My employer Company X paid for a lawyer to expedite processing of my Advanced Parole (AP) application, or my I-131, and I also made the Director of my team work with the lawyer to justify why my inability to travel overseas would cause "extreme hardship" to Company X.  However, due to a comedy of errors, I ended up not making the trip as I only got my hands on the AP about 5 days after the plane had left the US, by which time the trip was half-over anyways.  Ooooops.

I say that I can't decide if it was a good thing or not, because I obviously didn't perform a professional duty I was supposed to, which is a bad thing, but at the same time, it was pretty nice to not have to travel that far away right after Black Friday shopping.  Additionally there were a lot of executives going on that trip, and I wasn't interested in half the Executive team remembering me as the "awkward kid who's terrible on planes".

No, I don't like plane rides.

In all seriousness, once you shoot off the AOS package, you can't travel until you get your hands on the I-551 (more commonly known as the "Green Card", but USCIS likes to sound fancy and sinister), unless you have an AP document, or an I-512.  Even with the AP document, re-entering is a benefit, not a right -- you can  still be refused re-entry if the Customs officer at the Port of Entry finds you inadmissible for some reason.

I remember seriously considering deferring my AOS application for 3 months because I wanted to go back to Singapore to celebrate the Chinese New Year in late-Jan 2014.  Then I decided against it because the Hubby and I were tired of being stressed out over not knowing if Singapore or the US was going to be our final home.  And then the AOS packet went into the mail in late-Oct 2013, without the I-131 because we were so sick and tired of filling out forms by the time we were done with the mandatory forms, and suddenly I was fixated on the idea of going home for the Chinese New Year.  Then I had to travel for work so an AP fell into my lap just like that, and I didn't want to jump on a 20-hour flight home anymore, so I never went home for the Chinese New Year although I had everything I needed for it.

It's pretty apparent that I didn't cope very well with the stress of the AOS application.  On the bright side, there was never any risk of USCIS deeming that I had abandoned my AOS application by leaving the country.

That's all for today, my Fellow Aliens!

The Little Alien's AOS Packet

I think a very good way to see the Adjustment of Status (AOS) application is to see it as a job application, except you get a Green Card instead of a job offer at the end, if your application is successful.  I mean, come on, you even have to include a cover letter with your application, and there is an interview for them to determine if you deserve the Green Card or not.

Fortunately, the cover letter for the AOS packet is literally just a laundry list of items that you've included for the AOS packet, so there is no need to fluff out a story about how you'd make a good Permanent Resident.  Somehow, I don't think USCIS would have cared if I had included this in my cover letter: "I would make a good Permanent Resident because I am very hardworking, I mean like, I got a Bachelor's Degree and wash my bathroom every Sunday morning."

Here is my AOS packet Cover Letter a.k.a. Laundry List.  I'm including it for 2 main reasons:

1. To show very explicitly what forms should be included in the I-485/I-130 packet: USCIS can't seem to just tell us right off the bat what forms they need if you want to do your AOS through marriage.  First they're like, "Oh you need an I-485."  Then you get the I-485 and fill it out like a good Alien, and they're like," Teehee, just kidding, you need an I-864 too."  USCIS just doesn't seem to get that people who are filing for AOS just want to file for an AOS, and not participate in a stupid game of treasure hunt:

2. To give Fellow Aliens ideas for evidence that can be included to establish a bona fide marriage: I always see Fellow Aliens asking, "Here's my list of evidence I want to include with my AOS application, do you think it's enough??"  Unfortunately there is no fixed answer to that question, and as I've said before, whether or not your evidence is enough is partially dependent on luck.  All I can say is, whatever evidence we had included was sufficient to not warrant a Request for Evidence (RFE) for the particular officer reviewing our file that day, so I hope it helps some sad lost Aliens who are trying to put together their packet.

Our evidence fell into 2 main categories: evidence establishing financial co-mingling and evidence establishing an ongoing relationship.  I suggest including some evidence from each category if possible.  Of course, there was more evidence we wished we could have included, like:

- Joint bank account statements
- Having credit card statements from our banks listing each other as authorized users
- Wills listing each other as sole/primary beneficiaries
- Medical Powers of Attorney
- Wedding pictures (we didn't have a ceremony)

Fortunately, a lot of Aliens don't have a perfect list of evidence either, so we were still OK.

That's all for today, my Fellow Aliens!