Was my marriage a Fraud?(Explaining Immigration process, continued...)

Continued from Did i get married Just to stay in the United States?(Explaining Immigration process)

After few months of waiting we finally received a letter in the mail announcing that our interview is on the 03rd December, we were instructed to appear in person for the interview and bring supporting documents (on top of the documents we already submitted with the main application). I also went to the Homeland Department for a Biometrics exam(background check to see if I’m a runaway South African criminal mastermind😏, which I’m not!  or if I’ve committed any crimes in my stay in the U.S)

My husband and I spent a lot of time trying to gather all the documents we could that shows that our marriage is real. This included a copy of our lease for the house we live in, copy of his pay stubs/pay slips, Copy of his employment contract, Tax documents, medical insurance records that shows I am on his health insurance, Life insurance document, Letters (from our Pastor, my previous employer, my friends, etc. to testify that they are aware of our existing relationship as a married couple). We even included Boarding passes from the months we flew back and forth to our different cities while we were still dating (It was long distance😭).

On top of gathering documents our lawyer gave us 66 potential questions they might ask during the interview. Basically what they want to see is if indeed you are married to each other and live in the same household; you would have common answers to these questions..questions like; Where did you meet?, Who gets up first in the morning, What are your spouse's hobbies, where does your spouse work, what is their favourite food, Does your spouse have any siblings (if so, what are their names), did you have a wedding ceremony, who attended your wedding ceremony, did you go on honeymoon, describe the last holiday you spent together, etc. we had to make sure our answers were similar in all the questions but it was not difficult to do so as we have only been married for 6 months.

The day before the interview we drove to and slept at a hotel near the Department of Homeland security which was about 2 1/2 hours away from our house. We went to the interview the following afternoon expecting a lot of questions but the interviewing officer only asked us "How did y'all meet?", my husband replied and then the officer proceeded to ask us to verify our names, dates of birth and address. Since there was already strong evidence that our marriage was not done for the sake of a greencard our officer didn't waste time.  He asked me Security questions as listed on the pic below (to which I replied "No sir") then he told us that our case was approved. We received my greencard in the mail today. Soli Deo Gloria.

Image obtained from: https://mypathtocitizenship.com

2 lessons I took from this:
1. Always abide by the Law
2. Hire an Immigration Lawyer!!!! (Don’t try to be a hero). Having. Lawyer file on our behalf made our case stronger (perhaps because most immigration lawyers don’t often risk their Licenses in order to help clients with questionable cases....)

I Praise God for the opportunity to be happily married and live in this beautiful country😄

Thanks for coming to my TedX 🙏