administrator

Hi! I'm back to USA, as LPR.
Some people on this board wanted to know more details about my process and I didn't have time to write it sooner, so here is the story.

My husband and I have been living in US for almost 4 years, we both work here and were (still getting used to past tense) on H1B visas. I was in process for getting employment based GC.

The process was in very early stage, still on DOL. In May we won DV2005 lottery. We received NL in early May, we decided to proceed with CP after all horror stories we heard about AOS, even our money hungry lawyer advised doing CP. After we received NL, we filled the forms and by mid May we sent it back to KCC by FEDEX.

We started to gather the documents early. I contacted US consulate in Zagreb, Croatia.

I talked with very nice lady who gave me specific instructions on what I need. She asked for birth and marriage certificate, two police certificates, and medical exam, no older than 1 year. Proof of education, in my case college dipl! oma and military record for my husband. Some proof for financial stuff. She mentioned Tax returns, contracts.

No translations or copies needed. She emailed me a list of doctors. So since my husband and I went to Croatia for vacation in July, we gathered all the documents and did our medicals then. Medical exam consisted of talking to a doctor AIDS and shifilis test and X-ray.

Doctor gathered all results and sent our medical documentation to US consulate in Croatia. Our number was current for October, so I got impatient by the end of August and called KCC. They had my interview date set.

The date was not good for me and my husband so we contacted the lady in consulate she was OK with us moving the date 3 days later than scheduled. We booked our tickets and planed to stay in Croatia for a week.

Our interview was a lot of waiting and a little talking. First we were asked to pay 870USD for both of us, than we waited some more. Then the lady that I spoke with on the phone took ! our documents and made copies.

Since we communicated before she new a lot about us and didn’t spend too much time analyzing every document.
For financial proof she took only letters from our employer, and looked at last tax return. The only strange thing was, she returned us 2 full-face photos (one mine, one my husbands) and asked us for four more full-face photos (2 each).
I had photos with me by chance, and I didn’t even wanted to ask why. Then we waited for the interview with consul. He was young man, asked us how do we like Ohio, he mentioned that he was from Indiana, so we discussed bad winter weather for a while.
He asked what we do (I’m computer programmer and my husband is physician), scanned our fingers, and glanced through the documents.
He asked if we swear that all information in the forms were true, and asked us to sign. Since computer system was down, we had to wait next day to pick up our passports. In passports we got immigrant visa, valid for 6 months and two sealed envelopes.
We entered US in Cincinnati. The officer asked us ! to get our luggage and sit down and wait a little for other officer. We waited for 15 minutes when another officer approached us and asked us to sign I-551 from twice and put our fingerprint on the form.
He stamped our passports just next to the immigrant visa and explained that that is our temporary GC, valid for 1 year. He told us we might expect plastic GC within 6 to 9 months.
We’ll need to get another stamp if we don’t receive GC within a year. No one knew if our SSN will change or when we’ll receive new SSN cards.

That’s my story. I wish all DV hopefuls a lot of luck.