Getting a Green Card through marriage to a US citizen

Overview: I am a US citizen. I married a Canadian citizen who was living in the US at the time as an "exchange visitor" (J-1 status). We applied for the Green Card during summer 2009. It took quite a while to fill out the paperwork, mostly because the instructions were poor. The total filing fee (paid to USCIS) was $1365. About 4 months later, the application was approved at our interview, and 2 weeks later we received the actual Green Card.

Interview: I think that everyone who applies for a Green Card through marriage to a US citizen gets an interview from USCIS. This is done at a USCIS Field Office, which are located in most cities (e.g., California has 10, Maine has 1). The interview apparently has just one purpose: to establish that this is not a "marriage of convenience", i.e., a marriage carried out just to get a Green Card. So our job was to convince the interviewer that this was a marriage based on a bonafide romantic relationship. We already had a baby at the time of the interview and the birth certificate (which we brought) had both our names on it. We also brought an album of photographs of us together in various places during trips we had taken over the several years we'd been a couple, as well as records of our shared lease and bank account and credit card. So despite our worries over the fact that I don't know the color of my wife's toothbrush or the names of any of the shows she watches on the HGTV network, our interviewer was convinced we were a real couple. We were never put in separate rooms, although I hear this can occur. At the end of the interview, the interviewer said he was approving the Green Card, and a couple weeks later we received the Green Card in the mail.

Advance Parole: Since the J-1 is a non-immigrant status for academic and cultural exchange, similar to a student visa, my wife was advised not to leave the country while the application was pending. As I understand it, the reason was follows: if she had left the country and then re-entered, the border agent might have asked if she was married and, learning she was, he might have asked if she had a pending Green Card application. The pending application shows an attempt to establish residency, which is not consistent with the J-1, and it might have been grounds to deny entry. So we applied for an "Advance Parole Document", which is a form that allows you to cross the US border while your Green Card application is pending. The Advance Parole Document was approved in less than 2 months. Of all things, it was apparently lost by the US Postal Service. We went through a long process trying to get them to issue us a replacement, and ultimately we got the Green Card (just 2 months later) before the process of issuing a replacement Advance Parole Document was resolved. During our interview at a USCIS Field Office (described in previous paragraph), we learned that the lost Advance Parole Document could have been reprinted on the spot at any USCIS Field Office. It would have been nice if any of the people we spoke with on the phone at the USCIS National Customer Service Center had known this.


Required forms

I-485: Main form. Requires her birth certificate and 2 photos of her. Fee $1,010.
I-130: Petition for alien relative (my spouse is the "relative" here). Requires copy of my passport, marriage certificate, and 1 photo of each of us; I also included our lease with both names and our shared credit card statement. Fee $355.
G-325A: Biographical data form. I-130 requires that this form be filled out for each of us.
I-693: Medical exam (she had to go to a government "civil surgeon" and get a physical; the doctor filled out this form and sealed it in an envelope).
I-864: My income support. Requires copy of my most recent tax return (i.e., IRS Form 1040); I also included a letter from my employer (proof of employment).
I-765: Employment while application is pending. Requires 2 photos of her and a copy of p.1 of her passport.
I-131: Travel while application is pending. Requires 2 photos of her and her DS-2019 (the form required to enter the US as an Exchange Visitor).

Photos should be passport-style. Write full name on back of each photo using felt pen or pencil.

For all the required official documents such as birth certificate, passport, etc, a simple photocopy is sufficient. They later asked us to bring to the interview the originals of everything we'd sent.

Both checks ($1010 and $355) should be payable to US Department of Homeland Security.

Mail the entire package to USCIS, P.O. Box 805887, Chicago, IL 60680-4120.


Detailed notes
On most of the forms, we wrote "[none]" in empty boxes to make clear that we had not overlooked them.

I-485
Part 3A: It asks "were you inspected by a U.S. Immigration Officer" when you last entered the US. Even if you weren't searched, the answer is "yes" unless you snuck across the border illegally.
There are some pretty weird questions on p. 3 (have you ever committed a crime of moral turpitude?).
A copy of her birth certificate was required. Since she's French Canadian, the birth certificate is in French. She made a translation. We got a friend to handwrite the following at the bottom of the translation, followed by his signature, his handwritten name, and the date: "I certify that I am competent to translate from French to English, and I certify that this translation is complete accurate to the best of my knowledge."

I-130
#22: We weren't sure if we should put the local USCIS office (Los Angeles), but we put the office we were sending the forms to (Chicago) and left the two boxes on the right side blank.

G-325a
We left the "File Number" on the first line (A-number) blank on her form, since she would not get an A-number until she got her Green Card.

I-765
#10: Here she had an I-94 number, which we included.
#16: Her eligibility code was "C 9".

I-131
Part 2 #2: We entered "d".
Part 3 #1 & #2: We entered "Unknown" for both (details of intended trip).
Parts 4,5,6: We left these blank.
Part 7: We entered "more than one trip" in #1 and left the rest blank. For the essay explaining how she qualifies, we wrote the following: "I qualify for advance parole because I have a pending I-485 application. I am applying for a multiple entry advance parole document to be able to visit my family in Canada in case of an emergency while my form I-485 is being processed."