Immigration Blog

Transcription: Hi, my name is Rebekah Grafton, I’m an immigration attorney at Fay and Grafton in Raleigh, North Carolina and I’m a certified specialist in immigration law in North Carolina. I am outside of the USCIS office here in Durham, North Carolina, Roycroft Drive, getting ready for an interview for a client and I thought now would be a good time to talk to you a little bit about what you can expect your USCIS interview. Of course, it all depends on what kind of case we’re here for. Usually what we’re here for interviews for our naturalization cases, adjustment of status cases so folks who came in on a visitor’s visa or came in some other way and are now applying for their green card based on a visa petition that was filed or sometimes it’s a visa petition for someone who’s already been removed or has a removal order and is now married to a citizen and we can try to resolve that. So the substance of your interview is really going to be dependent on what kind of case it is, but usually what happens, at least here in the Durham office is we ask you to try to be here about 30 minutes before your interview and they usually get everybody lined up about 15 minutes before their interview to get you checked in. On the second floor of the building is where we wait for your interview to be called and the officer will come to get us when they’re ready for you. The officers usually are reviewing your case for 10 to 15 minutes before they call you back for interviews. So that’s why it’s really important when we prepare your case that we make sure that we let them see that snapshot of your case, your family so that they feel good about your case before they call you back for your interview. There’s a lot of various things that we do to kind of set you apart. I try to make it not so much paper and a little bit more of your story. In a naturalization case, they are doing your tests. You do have to take the English test and civics test. The English test is you have to read a sentence and write a sentence and the civics test is a verbal question. The 100 questions are available online and they’ll ask you 10 of them and you have to get 6 right. Other than that, they’re going through your application and they are making sure that you’ve got your lawful permanent residents lawfully and that there were no problems with that. So we do want to make sure we’re very thorough before we file those cases. On your adjustment of status, they’re usually looking at making sure that visa petition is approvable, that if it’s a marriage based case, that it’s a bonafide marriage, that everyone entered into it for the right reason, or if it’s a family-based case, making sure that we’ve successfully established that family relationship, or if it’s an employer-based case that that employment relationship still is established. Everybody here at the Durham field office is usually pretty friendly, but of course, we do recommend you have an attorney present because some complicated issues can come up at the time. If you have an interview coming up and you want to talk to us about going with you, you can go to our website at faygrafton.com and schedule a consultation. We’ll want to see a copy of everything that you filed and we always attend interviews with our clients because I do think it’s best to have representation during these cases. If you have any questions, you can reach out to us at faygrafton.com or give us a call. Thanks.

Transcription: Hi, my name is Rebekah Grafton, I am an immigration attorney at Fay and Grafton in Raleigh, North Carolina. I’m a certified specialist in immigration law. I wanted to answer a quick question that we’ve been getting in our office a lot lately and we’ve been getting a lot of calls from lawful permanent residents who may have been offered a job abroad and they’re looking at what they can do to try to maintain their residence status even after they depart the United States. This is the same situation if they have a spouse that’s moving abroad and they want to go with them abroad without losing their green card. As I’m sure and hope that you know, if you are a lawful permanent resident in the United States, you are required to maintain your residence in the United States. And that means living here more than you’re living somewhere else. This can present a challenge for someone who has got a great job offer. They’re looking at moving abroad, even if it’s a temporary move. They don’t want to risk losing that green card that they spent so much time working hard to get. So when I meet with someone like that, what I always want to look at is what kind of job it is. There is sometimes the possibility of doing expedited naturalization, which means we can actually do naturalization for you before you leave the United States. Even if you haven’t been a green card holder for five years or three years if you’re married to a citizen. So we always want to look at the job, who you’re working for, what you’re doing to see if you can qualify for the expedited naturalization. We also want to look at how long you’re going to be gone for and possibly doing a reentry permit for you, which will allow you to leave the United States for two years at a time without abandoning your residence. It is important that your long term intention is to return to the United States, but there’s a lot of ways that we can preserve that green card so you don’t risk losing it, and you don’t have problems at the airport when you’re trying to travel back. One of the common misconceptions I hear is that as long as I don’t spend more than six months at a time, I’ll never have a problem. That’s not entirely true. So be careful and don’t just try to come here every five and a half months for a week-long vacation because that’s not going to work to maintain that green card. So if you have any questions, we’re always happy to answer them. You can schedule a consultation at faygrafton.com and then we can look at your specific case and what we can do to help. Thanks.