Green Card Process

The Greencard Process was and is a very sensitive and emotional chapter in our lives. It required a lot of work, time, effort and emotional stress to go through it.

On this page I would like to inform you about how exactly the GreenCard Process went for us.

At the same time I do wanna point out that I am no lawyer nor would I say that I have special knowledge about immigration laws. So for serious advice always reach out to immigration lawyers!

This is a report of how OUR application went.

  

 

 

 

 

 

One and the most important thing I wanna share with y’all: (because if we had known, it would have saved us a lot of time and frustration!)

Whenever you’re ready to start the process:

DO.NOT.FILE.ONLINE!!!!!!!

If you apply for your Greencard through the Consulate in Frankfurt (which means you’re currently living in Germany), you SHOULD receive your Greencard within 2-4 months.

If you apply online, it CAN take up to two years!!

But we didn’t know better.

We got married in November 2022. After that my husband got a Military Spouse ID card, got me command sponsered and made me his dependent. After i got on his orders, we started the process for the Greencard in January 2023.

We applied online on the USCIS website under the link “Apply for a Family Based Greencard”. There we simply followed the required steps. Its pretty simple. To complete the form I-130 petition took us a while especially since they ask for a lot of personal and general questions. After that I (the spouse) had to fill out my part which is the form I-130A. Once all the other required documents of my husband (the petitioner) were uploaded and we paid the fee of 500 sth $, the waiting period started.

At this point I wanna say: I did look it up, how long the Greencard process would take. And back then it said on multiple websites 6-12months. But the case will be approved since we’re married and I am a German citizen etc.

Which is, why I didn’t expect anything to happen for the next at least 6 months…

So the year passed by. In October (9 months has passed) we started to get a liiiittle bit nervous since we knew his orders will come soon.

October passed, November passed. Nothing happened.

Things started to become real.

Beginning of December we received his PCS papers. We had to leave by the end of the year.

I instantly logged in online and checked my case status, which then said “process takes longer as expected”. This was the moment I realised:

We have a problem.

I looked up the current waiting time for our case and it said up to 18 months….

This when I started panicking. Whats gonna happen with me/us? Is he gonna leave without me? Am I gonna be staying here in Germany or will I still be able to fly with him on my ESTA? But the ESTA is a) just a tourist visa and b) only allows me to stay 90 days. Are they even gonna let me in, once immigration sees that I’m on his orders, but I don’t have my Greencard yet?! My mind went crazy!!

We decided to schedule an appointment with the lawyers office in Grafenwöhr. Cutting this point short: The lawyer couldn’t help us. He was super nice, listened to us and really heard us out. But the buttom line, he didn’t know what to do since we filed online. He only had experience with applications that were sent straight to Frankfurt through Mail and “so far all these cases were approved within 2-3 months”.

So, we were back to no-idea what to do. We googled, we tried to get in touch with the Frankfurt Consulate. My husband got intouch with his Officer in Charge to see if there is any way to extend his stay here. And our family in the States was looking for any immigration office that could provide help from States side. They managed to organise us an appointment with an immigration lawyer from Florida.

This one went a little bit better than our first appointment. However, I didn’t like their suggestions. They basically told us its “super easy to just travel to the States in my ESTA, then stay there for 90 days and on my 91st day we request a change of status, because I now would like to stay in the States with my husband… Then we could finish the process in the States and their office would help us with the process over there” (what would have  cost us “only”~$4000).

Honestly this didn’t feel right. It might have worked, but what if immigration wouldn’t have let me in, since they figured out that I’m on my husbands orders, who’s just PCS-ing to the States…. Who’s gonna believe me that I am only traveling?!

Plus: IT’S A LIE. A transition shouldn’t start like that. Especially since we had no reason to lie. And $4000 seemed to be a huge price for this whole procedure. It shouldn’t be that complicated. We’re married, I’m on his orders. Why did it have to be that expensive?!

Well, its actually not. Our only problem was that we filed online. Every online application lands in this big pool of ALL application from all around the world. So we simply had to wait until it was our turn.

This is, what we decided:

We stayed longer (thank god, his request went through) and we agreed to file AGAIN, but this time through Frankfurt.

December passed, we scheduled an appointment at immigration office on post on January 7th. We wanted to get all our papers ready and mail them to Frankfurt. This time I wanted to do everything the right way!

But life had other plans for us…

On January 1st on 10.30 AM we got the E-mail:

“YOUR PETITION HAS BEEN APPROVED”!

That was a game changer! Now, we had to get ready for my Interview in Frankfurt. Which opened up 12 more steps…

you can check the site out by clicking on this link

To shorten these steps into the most important: I had to fill out another form (DS-260), we had to pay another fee for him (petitioner) and me (applicant). And we had to upload financial and civil documents.

I also scheduled my medical appointment (in Munich). I will tell you more about that in particular in another post.

At this point I think its important to tell you this: You will need a police check from every country you LIVED in the last years. Vacation time doesn’t count. However, I’ve been in Australia for a year on a work&travel visa which was already reason enough for them to request one. So get ready for that. The sad truth is, I got my police check from Australia WAY faster and easier than from Germany. German documents can take up to 4 weeks …. *smh*

So again, long story short: eeeverything takes a lot of time and effort. It is not an easy process and it is expensive!

Right now, we’re waiting  for my interview appointment, which should be on January 29th. I will keep you updates on how things go! Please share this post with people who are struggeling right now. Let me know what you think about my experience and feel free to share yours!

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