If you are about to marry an immigrant to the United States — or are an immigrant about to marry a citizen — in order to legally obtain a green card, you will potentially need to attend a Stokes interview. Alternatively known as a marriage fraud interview, the point of this contact with immigration officials is to prove your marriage isn’t merely for the purpose of getting one participant a green card.
To that end, these interviews get very granular and personal. In order to prove that your union is bona fide, you should definitely prepare ahead of time for some of the questions they will ask the two of you. Some will be very basic, like where the two of you met and where you went on your first date together. But as the interview progresses, they get much deeper because they are designed to weed out couples who do not know each other intimately and are trying to make a fraudulent marriage. Below are some of the questions you could be asked:
- What day is trash picked up at your residence?
- Who does the laundry?
- What kind of mattress do you have?
- Are household bills paid online or via the mail?
- How many windows are in your home?
- Which is your side of the bed?
- What time does each of you go to bed at night?
- Who gets up first?
- What color are your fiancé’s eyes?
- What kind of toothpaste, bath soap and shampoo do you use?
- Where do you keep your toothbrushes?
- What type of birth control are you using?
It’s understandable to be nervous
No matter how well you know your spouse (and vice versa), it is still possible to get some of the questions wrong. Maybe your spouse’s eyes change from green to blue to hazel dependent on their mood or the clothing they are wearing. You may never have paid any attention to the mattress or counted double windows as singles. Most interviewers allow for simple mistakes in your answers. What they are looking for are patterns of duplicity between the spouses or potential spouses.
Your Pittsburgh immigration attorney can help the two of you prepare for your Stokes interview so things go as smoothly as possible.