Green Card Interview

When you apply for lawful permanent resident status in the United States, you will be required to appear for an interview with a U.S. immigration officer, before you could get a Green Card. However, obtaining lawful permanent resident status in the United States is quite difficult.

You will be interviewed by an immigration officer for a few minutes and you just need to be honest and polite to them, to get through the interview. Arguing with the officers will lead to trouble. Never try to hide any fact and if you do so, your application for permanent residence may be denied. Furthermore, you need to provide significant documentation to establish your eligibility. 

If your interview is successful, you will be granted lawful status, by the USCIS officer and you will become a permanent resident on the very same day. If you had applied for a Green Card based on marriage, you will be granted conditional permanent resident status, after the interview. After you complete the interview successfully, the USCIS officer will start the process of ordering a Green Card for you.

There are certain cases where the USCIS does not require the applicant to appear for an interview. In such cases, USCIS will mail the decision to the applicant. Once your card is ready, USCIS will mail your Green Card, around six months from the date of the interview, to the address that you had provided, in both cases. And remember that this may not be applicable if your interview was not successful. 

If your interview was not successful and if your application for permanent residence was rejected, you may correct the deficiencies and file the application again. But if you are considered ineligible to enter into the country, you may not be able to file the petition again. You can still request a waiver and provide additional documentation required by the USCIS.

If the USCIS considers your request, you may be granted lawful status in the United States. There is no certainty that you will be granted lawful status in the United States. USCIS officers will decide on your case only after reviewing your supporting documents and after you are personally interviewed. The interview is an important part as the immigration officers decide on many cases only after the interviews, but certain applicants are granted permanent residence without interviews.

If you had received a conditional permanent resident card, you must remember that you need to apply to remove conditions on that card before your conditional status could expire. You need to apply to remove conditions, 60 days ahead of the date of expiration of your status.

Moreover, if you live in the United States as a Green Card holder for five years and more, and if you wish to become a U.S. citizen, you may file Form N-400, to apply for citizenship. To get naturalized, you will have to meet certain requirements and you need to be a person with the good moral character without any sort of criminal background.

Certain green card applicants will soon be required to undergo in-person interviews. This new policy will go into effect on October 1, 2017. This step could further slow down the green card process which is already slow.

The requirement is a part of President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13780, “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States,” which seeks to strengthen the screening of visitors and immigrants coming to the U.S. and improve the detection of fraud.

In-person interviews will be required for those attempting to adjust their status to that of a permanent resident based on employment. This requirement also applies to the family members of asylees and refugees who apply to join the principal refugee or asylee applicant. According to Carter Langston, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) spokesman, the agency will expand the categories of immigrants who will have to undergo in-person interviews in the future.

Earlier, applicants belonging to the above-mentioned categories were not required to appear for an in-person interview with immigration officers. Now the USCIS has made it a requirement for these applicants to attend interviews for their green card applications to be adjudicated. USCIS is more likely to add more categories of permanent residency applicants and those applying for other types of benefits to the list of applicants who will need to attend in-person interviews.