AOS stands for Adjustment of Status or in short green card processing. My K1 (fiancee) visa when I get here in the US is equivalent of a visitor’s visa and since I married a US citizen and wanted to stay here, I need to adjust my status. We got married way back in June of this year and filed for my AOS last July. It took us almost a month to gather the requirements as we had a hard time getting my vaccination record transferred into the INS form.
Oh boy, that was really hard. Firstly, my husband is working (8 to 4pm) and the offices location’s here are 50 to 100+ miles from our house so we can’t do it during the lunch break of my husband. He always needs to file a leave whenever we would file something or whenever we have an appointment. One of the AOS requirement is the transfer of the vaccination record into their form. It goes this way, when we had our medical exam in Manila, the results are given to us and Saint Luke’s staff specifically instruct to keep it for further use here in the States.
This form is not sealed but with all the signature’s of the doctors and the clinic’s name. Now, the AOS require us( the filer) to transfer the data of this form into their form (the I-693a).
They call it, the vaccination supplemental form. Before you can let the surgeon transfer this, you need to get the TD Shot. TD Shot is not available in the Philippines that’s why I never had the shot during my medical exam. So anyway, since Carlo is in the AF, I had mine in the base and it’s free. Some says, the cost of TD Shot ranges from $10 to $35.
So I had my TD Shot, and the next thing that we need to do is to transfer it into the I-693a form and have it sealed by the civil surgeon designated by the USCIS. I thought all of the designated civil surgeon knows the process….I was wrong. The first civil surgeon’s clinic we went, they know NOTHING at all with the entire process. I would say nothing because they (the staff) insisted me to get the whole medical exam and told us that it is the process. They even said, we’re doing it the wrong way. End point, we ended up very frustrated (plus the fact that we always deal with the boarder patrol when we go to other cities - everything went out of our way on that time) and went home accomplished nothing.
The next day, I started calling all the list (in our area) of the civil surgeon the USCIS displayed on the website. I think, I’ve got my luck on my 10th call, all of the 9 calls I’ve made are a bad one I may say. Bad one because they don’t know the process.
Fast forward…I’m already done with my biometrics (fingerprinting and picture taking for green card) and we’re just waiting for any RFE (Request for Evidence) or my interview schedule. Hopefully I’ll get my green card soon as I’ve already memorized the four corners of our bedroom 
and quite honestly, I’m getting bored and tired doing NOTHING. You know it’s so hard to adjust shifting from a full time career person to a full time NON WORKING person.
I’ll provide the list of of requirements on AOS (for k1 visa holders only, i don’t know to the spouse or k3 is processed) next post .
