Comment by cogogo
5 days ago
My wife, a green card holder, applied for citizenship in April and was naturalized yesterday (from an EU country). Not that I don’t believe it could be true but where are you getting the 3-4yr timeline? If that’s accurate she/we may have dodged a massive bullet.
Spouses always get better treatment as there is a voter who would be mad otherwise. They check for scam marriages but otherwise hurry the process through - if they don't a voter contacts their congressman to push the process. That voter will also likely know a lot of other voters and thus influence the next election while someone not married is unlikely to have that local network to use.
This is patently false for one reason - once someone has a U.S. green card and has met the residency requirement to apply for citizenship, the application form and process are the same for everyone, regardless of how they got their green card (through work, marriage, asylum, investment, etc.).
Once you are eligible to apply, the whole process is basically form N400->biometrics->interview (just doublechecking your name and other paper info, takes 5 minutes)->civics test->ceremony.
However, the timelines and process for getting the green card itself is different depending on the nature of your visa, and they will indeed try to check for scam marriages before you get your green card (if you were applying for it through the marriage visa).
Not exactly, if you're married to a citizen the residence requirement is 3 years not 5, and the form clearly distinguishes the 3 and 5 year options (3 years requires extra evidence of marriage and spouse's US citizenship)
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I stand corrected.
I would love to see data that backs this up. While definitely plausible the pathway she followed to naturalization was based on time in country and not our marriage. I didn’t need to push but I’ve generally found my congressman (who is also almost our neighbor) to be pretty unresponsive on any other issue.
My understanding - which may not be correct - is the length of the process primarily depends on your country of origin and secondarily on how you are eligible. Very interested in any source showing that a relatively normal process has pushed out from months to years.
3-4 year timeline makes more sense for Greencard application to Naturalization, that was 4.5 years for my wife. But its not 3-4 years N400 to Naturalization, no way.
Timelines for USCIS depends heavily on where you are, since some offices just have more people to go through than others. So I have talked to people that one step might be 4 months for them and a year for another person.