If you're preparing for a marriage-based interview, one of your main questions is
going to be, "What kind of questions are they going to ask us?" I know there's
crazy stuff online out there about them asking about the color of your toothbrush or whatever.
I have never seen that. There are some things that the immigration officers across
the country like to ask to see if the relationship is legitimate. There are a
few main categories that are super important that you have reviewed ahead of time so that you are
prepared for your interview. A big caveat a lot of people who are in legitimate relationships think
"We've been living together. We're totally in a legitimate relationship.
Why should we practice or prepare for this at all?" That's a huge mistake because
this is a very short window of time that you get to present your relationship to someone in person
and sometimes, just being off by one question sets this tone where the officer
takes it the wrong way and puts you in a bucket. "I think these people
are [in] a fake relationship." And then, they give you a really hard time.
Even though you've been together in a relationship for a really long time,
or maybe not so long but you feel really close, review these
main categories so that you don't find yourself in a tough situation
and feel under a lot of stress. You want this to go as smoothly as possible.
There are two main categories of questions.
They're always going to ask questions about the actual application that you filed. For the petitioner,
the US citizen, those are the questions on the petition itself. That's the application
that you signed and they're going to ask you about the information that's on there.
For the immigrant, say this is an adjustment of status interview, in most cases
that's what the joint marriage interviews would be, then you would be
answering the questions about the green card ,the I-485 application, that you filed.
They're going to go into a lot of your immigration history, whether you're a terrorist, et cetera.
Lots of crazy security questions and things like that. About your criminal history and
your background and things like that. You both should be completely familiar with what was on
those applications. Typically, there's a lag time of at least a few months in between when
you file and when you have the interview. Sometimes, it's years depending on which office you're at
and the time frames for processing. You want to take a look at that.
If there's anything that's changed since then, you need to be prepared to discuss it.
If you moved addresses, you should have updated it with USCIS.
If it's something more complex, like you got arrested or something more
serious happened, you should definitely get legal advice about the best way to handle that.
You want to prepare by looking at the application. So you remember
all the places you lived and the jobs you had and that your partner had and the important dates
and things like that to the best degree possible. You want to review those.
The other category would be the actual questions about your relationship that they're going to ask at the interview.
There are several categories that they tend to focus on. What the officers will
typically do is they'll start in one of these categories and they'll follow the
breadcrumbs and see what information they can get out of you until they have enough details
that they think, "I don't think they would have practiced this. This is really specific."
And then, they will test it against the testimony of the other partner.
One quick thing I want to mention before we get into those important categories is that
in some offices, the officers frequently separate the couple and they interview one
person and then the other person and compare their answers. In other offices, they seem to be a lot
more lax about that and they typically interview people together.
This video being the current status of things, we've been seeing both things at different offices so
just be aware that either thing could happen. For categories that you should
definitely review ahead of time so that you're prepared for this interview:
First of all, the trajectory of your relationship is super important. A lot of times
people have different perspectives on life and what has happened and that's totally
normal. Science proves that that's how our brains work and so, you might find that you and your
partner actually have slightly differing memories of how you got together and what the timetable was for that.
Immigration is not really as up on the neuroscience, they always think you're trying to
trick them. You want to review, "When did we meet?
[What] month and year?" and "How long until we
we're dating exclusively?" or "How did we decide to get married?
Did someone propose?" That sort of thing and then talk about the leading up to the
wedding itself and honeymoon or party that you may have had
as part of that event. You want to talk about all of those different phases and
get on the same page. A lot of times, I find there's one member of a couple who's like
"I think it was two years ago" and the other person's like "On October 12th exactly
at 3 PM, I looked up and there she was". It's okay if you have different styles.
If you could at least get on the same page about the time of year that it was,
the season or the month of the year, that would be ideal. First, trajectory of your relationship.
Review that together. The next thing you want to review is each other's families and family history
so they might get into the siblings that you each have and where they live and if
they have kids and who you've met of each other's families, who you've just talked to
by phone, who you've had the opportunity to meet in person. Things like that about your families.
Where you're from, who's around, who you have a relationship with now. I would definitely
go over that. You don't have to remember all 72 first cousins of your spouse if
you haven't met them. It's some things you might not know but try to
review what you do know and who you have met. Be on the same page with that.
The next thing you want to review is your daily habits: what time do you get
out, what's our usual process. You're familiar
with that just from your day-to-day lives but you want to go over that because you
wouldn't want to get in a situation where you had a different perspective
on that and it was taken the wrong way. Review your commutes and your
job schedules and if you ever work overtime and if you ever work on the weekends and how you
tend to communicate with each other throughout the day. Things like that. Just day-to-day life.
About your house and your environment and things like that. Your daily routines.
The next thing is finances. You really want to be on the same page about your financial lives. Some people have
their finances separate and just a few things joined together. Other couples will
only use one joint account. Immigration tends to think of it in a
little bit of a 1950s way, where they think that the most
true relationship situation would be to have one joint account that you pay everything out of.
But people have different arrangements. What you really want to make sure is
that you're telling the truth. If your arrangement is like, I have an account
and my spouse has an account and then we we pay certain bills this way
or that way or we put money together to pay the bills. You just want to be upfront about what it is
and you both need to know what the situation is. Other financial discussions that you'd
want to have would be, how much your spouse has paid, when they're paid, how they're paid.
I hear that asked a lot. They also sometimes ask questions about the bank account statements
that you submit. Which is why you want to be careful about what you submit because a lot of
information is in bank accounts. All the stuff that you're buying over
time, it really shows the rhythm of whether this account is actually being used by both members and
the couple or if it's just one person's using it primarily or you just made it because
you heard online that you're supposed to have a joint account and that's all you did.
You definitely don't want to try to argue that that's your sole account if it's clearly not
because you can tell. I would review all your financial information accounts. You have different
vendors that you use for the house, things like that. Sometimes, one member of the couple
is the person who's in charge of that in your relationship and so the other person who's
not really in charge of that should still have an idea about it for the purposes of the interview.
And probably for life. It's good to know who your cable company is or whatever.
Your phone company or something.
The last thing that you definitely want
to review is major holidays from the past year and vacations and what you did on each
of those. What did you do on each other's birthdays, what did you do
on Valentine's Day, any other major religious holidays you celebrate together.
If you've taken any vacations, anything like that. We're recording this in 2020 and
people have not been able to travel very much at all. So maybe less relevant than typical.
But I'm still hearing people asking that question. And so, you really want to think through
how you celebrated different major milestones in the past year or so. If you review all those
things and you're legitimately married, then you'll have a pretty good chance at doing
well at your interview. If you need any help, please let us know. There's a lot of noise
out there about craziness and I do not see that these are the typical questions
that we tend to see most often as attorneys that do this every day. Good luck to you.