I-751, N-400, and OATH - All in one LONG day!

**VENZwife** · 02-24-2009, 10:54 PM

YIPEE!!!!! My wonderful Hubby is now a US Citizen!! Our Interview & Oath experience was one horrible & wonderful day...all at the same time.

We left at 6:45AM Central and drove 4 hours to the USCIS office in Atlanta. We sat in the parking lot for a while (had to kill the 1 hour extra time I had alotted for a possible traffic jam), then went in at 11:45. Our appointment was at 12:25. After passing through the metal detectors & scanners, we followed the signs to the 2nd floor where they did Citizenship Interviews. We handed our appointment slip to a woman behind the glass, and she told us to have a seat and our name would be called. She logged us in, wrote â€œ2nd Floorâ€ on the top of our appointment slip, and handed it back to us, and told us to have a seat and that we would be called in a little while.

They were obviously very busy, because the waiting room was packed. Periodically, they would come out and tell all friends and family of people that were here to take the oath to go upstairs on the 3rd floor to wait.That would clear out some of the space, but there were still a ton of people in there. I felt sorry for the friends and family who had come to watch their loved one say the oath because there was not enough room in the ceremony room for anyone other than the ones saying it. They ended up waiting outside for them to come out.

I began to get excited because I noticed other people that were coming out of their completed interviews were being called back up to get their appointment notice for the oath later the same day!! I was crossing my fingers we would be one of those lucky ones.

After about 1.5 hours waiting, we began to get nervous as we saw several people who had appointment times after ours get called and leave. One couple we had been talking to had an appointment at 1:00 (35 minutes after our appt time), had their interview, got their oath notice, and were about to be called in to the ceremony at 2:00PM. At this point, we went up to the window to find out what was going on.

Apparently the person handling the check-inâ€™s had gone to the bathroom while we were waiting and another lady had checked us in. She had made a mistake telling us to wait on the 2nd floor, and we were supposed to have been on the 3rd floor. Our officer had been calling us for over an hour, and thought we had left! The check-in person told us to go upstairs to the 3rd floor, while he called the officer and told her what had happened. Apparently we were not the only one that happened to because we overheard him telling the officer on the phone â€œHey, I got another one for you that â€˜so-and-soâ€™ messed up.â€

We went upstairs and waited for another 30 minutes. It was just us and two other couples left in the whole big room! All the naturalization rooms were shut down with lights off and by this time it was 2:50. We noticed one of the officers we had seen earlier walking out of the building for the day with their purses & coats! John rushed downstairs and told the man behind the glass that we were still upstairs and had not seen the officer. He acted annoyed and told us that she had come downstairs and called us on the 2nd floor, and that he had sent her back upstairs. He said to go back upstairs and sit down.

FINALLY, we were the very last people in the room and a very gruff annoyed man (not the woman officer who was supposed to interview us), came out and called hubbyâ€™s name. We both stood up to go in, but he wouldnâ€™t let me come back with him. I sat in the waiting room (nervous wreck) anxiously waiting.

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Hubbyâ€™s Interview Experience:

The man was not necessarily grumpy, but he seemed in a hurry and very straight laced and to the point. He said since our I-751 was not approved at the time of interview, that he would be doing the interview for both at the same time. He asked for his name, DOB, etc. and started verifying information on the I-751 form. He asked for proof that we were still married (Hubby gave them copy of our recent mortgage refinance) and copies of our 2005, 2006 and 2007 tax returns (which were already submitted with the N-400 application, but he asked for them anyway). Hubby started panicking when he couldnâ€™t find 2007 (I had them with the N-400 and not the I-741 in the documents we brought), but the officer said he didnâ€™t have time for him to keep looking, and moved on to the N-400 application. He asked ALL of the Yes/No questions in the N-400, including about the Selective Service Registration (which we had a copy of). Then he asked him 6 questions (hubby got all of them correct). They were:

Who is the father of our country?
Who is the Chief Justice Now?
How many voting members of the House of Representatives are there?
Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
We elect a US Senator for how many years?
** I canâ€™t remember what he said the last question was.

He had him write: George Washington was the first President:
Then Read: Who was the first President? (or something like that)

The officer then finished checking off all the little boxes on his form, had hubby sign his photographs for the Naturalization Certificate, and told him he had passed!
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Back to my point of view:

He went in at exactly 3:00 and came out at 3:12, with a different man that the officer that interviewed him. He was smiling, so I knew it went well.

The 2nd man was apparently the director/supervisor over everyone. He apologized for the wait and said he was taking us downstairs for a special ceremony just for him. 2:00 is the last ceremony of the day, and apparently the cut-off for all interviews is 3:00PM. The lights were off in many of the offices and all other interviewees were gone, exept one I-485 interview couple that was leaving & said the same thing had happened to them. The supervisor took our information, shook our hands, then went back into the offices while we sat in the waiting room again on the 2nd floor. About 20 minutes later, a really nice lady who seemed to really know her stuff came out with the naturalization certificate and asked us to verify all the information. It was correct, and she proceeded to take us into the ceremony room (turning on the lights). She took us over by the flag where she had him raise his right hand and repeat the oath. I was SO excited. We were so lucky that they did this special ceremony for him! And that I got to watch it! I took a photo (Iâ€™ll try to attach it to the thread). All the while, the cleaning crew was vacuuming in the backgroundâ€¦

We left at about 3:45 out the back employee entrance (front entrance had been locked), and walked back around the building to our car.

All-in-all the day was exhausting, but everything turned out so wonderful in the end! It was absolutely AMAZING they didnâ€™t make us leave and re-schedule our appointment, much less give us a special oath ceremony! THANK YOU Atlanta! Even though they messed up, they were so nice about fixing it when they didnâ€™t have to!

The worst thing was that we were expecting to be out of there by 1:30 or so, or at least have a break to run get something to eat before the oath. We had only eaten a sausage biscuit for breakfast at about 7AM. We were STARVING and light headed by the end of the day. We were going to go somewhere fancy to celebrate, but ended up stopping at Mellow Mushroom Pizza right around the corner.

We pulled back into our driveway at home about 8:30PM. Exhausted & Elated!!

Hubby went to apply for his passport today!