So my wife and I had our 'petition to remove the conditions of residence' immigration appointment today. Rather nervewracking to say the least, you must bring with you: documents that prove you're still married - mortgage, insurance, car ownership - all must be in both names. Bring photos that prove you stayed together. Here's how it works:
They give you a 'green card' (although it's actually not green) that expires after two years.[1]
90 days prior to that expriation date, you have to apply to remove the conditions of residence. That is, prove you're still married and you didn't run a scam to get in the country. So we did that ages ago, years ago. We get our appointment letter last week and they still wanted all the frigging "proof" documentation & photos again. How many more times, arghhh.
Because Phoenix is somewhat close to the ol' Mexican border you can understand why the local immigration office is just a tad busy.
So after years of waiting, we had a 15 minute appointment where we swore to tell the whole truth and nothing but - we had to raise our right hands and everything! The INS agent turned out to be dead friendly and spent most of the 15 minutes chatting about England (the ol' homeland) as she used to be in the Air Force and was stationed quite near my home town of Cambridge. Didn't look at any of our "proof" documents or the photos or anything.
So now I'm here to stay. Which is a good thing as my wife cannot leave (Air Force you see) and I'd kind of like to stay with her!!!
[1] I know there any many types of immigrant visa's, my situation applies to our type of visa i.e married to an American citizen - other types of visa's have different requirements.
