Sunday, February 9, 2014

One final request for evidence...

Anna finally had her interview with immigration on Friday. We were both hoping to finally be able to put this all behind us and get good news that she would finally get her green card. But unfortunately yet again this was not the case.

I was unable to record the interview because the interviewer told me it was strictly prohibited. It made me wonder what they're trying to hide but the interviewer adamantly refused my request to audio record the interview.
 
I was able to sneak a picture of us all before the interview began though and I think that is also prohibited but what they don't know won't hurt them.

Overall the interview went well. I can't say it was the most comfortable interview. Tensions were rather high throughout the interview process. Anna was very nervous and to be honest the interviewer seemed to be rather rude which only added to Anna's discomfort.

It lasted nearly an hour and they asked Anna and the children many questions. I almost laughed when I heard the interviewer ask Anna if she was a terrorist or if she had ever been engaged in terrorist activities. I wonder if a terrorist would actually answer that question honestly.

Other questions that were asked included if Anna was involved in espionage or if she had ever been involved in the overthrow of a government. Of course Anna was able to answer all the questions honestly with "no". I can assure everyone that Anna is not a terrorist.

Everything seemed to be going fine and we thought the whole interview process was getting ready to come to a close until the interviewer noticed that we were lacking some documentation. We had all the necessary documentation except a document that showed Anna had permission from her ex husband to take her daughter out of Russia and allowing her to live in the United States with Anna.

Anna has documents that allowed her to take Maria out of the country but it isn't necessarily permission from her ex-husband. She had to get a court order allowing her to take Maria out of the country because she had not seen or heard from her ex-husband since Maria was born. 

In fact Anna has good reason to believe that he may even be dead although she didn't have any evidence to prove it.

Unfortunately Anna had left that document at home because she didn't know she would be required to show it at the interview. She was not required to show it at the interview at the U.S. Embassy in Russia so she assumed she didn't need it for this interview.

In hindsight we both realize that we should have brought that document with us to the interview.
But fortunately we have the document. Now all we need to do is get it translated and mail a copy of the document along with its translation to the USCIS and we should be able to finally get her green card. We are hoping to get it sent in this week.

Even with this minor delay we are both feeling very relieved and it feels like a huge weight has been lifted from our shoulders. But we will feel much better when we finally have the green card in hand.



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