How I became a U.S. citizen

 Short story, I did an internship for my last year of study and married a beautiful American.

Here are the details...

I grew up in a little town north of Paris "Groslay". My parents divorced when I was 6 and my mother remarried to an American when I was 10.

When I talk about my step father, I usually call him "dad". He is more of a father than a step father to me.

Every year, we were spending a week or two in USA to visit my dad's family. I have always considered them my family without the "step" in it. 

And for some reason, I have always loved the culture 🤷. I loved going to burger king, getting a refill coke at any restaurants, the landscapes, I loved when people were asking "how ya doing?" like they really cared about it. We don't usually ask that in France to someone you don't know.

I guess as a kid, you don't realize the chance you have to be in France, you are just spoiled with food, history, manners, health... And as soon as you travel, everything looks better elsewhere.

While in USA, we mostly stayed in NJ in LBI or drove to the Outer Banks in NC, where we could rent a freaking big house that could host the 20+ members of the family. I was also able to surf. Oh man, I love surfing!

Those vacations made me felt more comfortable in the US than in France. One day, my uncle brought me to Hooters! I was 14. And that day, I told him with my strong French accent:

"This is it, I made up my mind, I am going to live in America!"

Well, it took me 10 years to find the opportunity!

While studying At Epitech, to become a software engineer, for my last year of graduate program, I had to find a part time job for 6 months that would then may be become a full time internship for the 6 other months of the year. I was able to get a couple 3 offers but one company had 2 locations, one in Paris, and one in ...... MIAMI.

I then started my part-time job as a web developer at PrestaShop and asked after 3 months there, if I could do my internship in Miami.

The American dream

March 2012, I moved to Miami Beach with a J1 visa for 1 year. I rented an apartment for $950/month 2 blocks from the beach. I was finally starting to live the American dream with only $1700 a month. All the details on getting the apartment and the struggle will be explained in another post.

During the summer, some of my friends came to visit me and as we were in Miami, they insisted to go to a night club. That is where I met Rachael. She was one of the bartender of the "set" nightclub. We fell in love and 5 months later, for Christmas, we had to take the biggest decision of our life. My visa was ending and in march I would have to leave back to France. Rachael also wanted to finish her study and do her graduate program at BU in Boston.

Will you marry me?

In order to stay together, We had one option, we could get married.

I could have also tried to find a company that would get me a work visa. But the job would have to be in Boston and I only have 3 months to find the company willing to get me a work visa. Go find that company in 3 months from another state.

We got married in February 11th 2013.

Let's now get that green card!

It is a lot of paper work, but after one interview with my wife and the USCIS, proving that we were in love, I got my EAD employment authorization card in June. From March to June, I was not allowed to get paid, so we were living under my wife's income waiting for that EAD. I remember having tears, I waited 3 months to get that card.

As soon as I got the EAD, I flew only one time to Boston to do 3 interviews, and got 2 offers out of the 3. It took me less than a month to get the job. I am lucky to be a software engineer! Boston is also a great city for engineers. My green card arrived one month after the EAD card. It was a 2 year conditional card. Basically if you have been married for less than 2 years and apply for a green card using your American spouse, you get a conditional card.

Boston here we come

I didn't like the job that much, but I knew it was only for 2 years. Rachael is from San Diego and I love surfing. Our goal was to move to San Diego and build our family there once Rachael is done with her studies.

California here we come

1 year and half pasts, it is now time to find a job in San Diego. That was hard! I started looking for jobs in January 2015 and got a job offer from GoFundMe at the end of April. I will always remember that day, the CTO GoFundMe at that time told me all the benefits, I couldn't believe it, they even financially helped us moved cross country. I was the 51st employee, it has now been almost 6 years that I work there, I have never stop loving working there. I am very lucky. Any way, After moving to San Diego we bought our house and made our daughter Violette.

I had to remove my conditional on the green card, that was easy, I just had to provide some proof that our marriage was still strong. Pictures, bank account, house and now a daughter.

After 3 years of marriage, I could technically become a citizen. But for some reason, nothing was really motivating me to become American.

Since I am a little kid, I have always wanted to fly. I knew I had to save 10k to start working on my pilot license. In September 2019, I reached out to an instructor to get more details about his pricing and process... He didn't want to teach a foreigner because of the paper work he had to handle. I kinda freaked out and that motivated me to become an American haha. Well I also wanted to have that double nationality, getting more options for family. And I still love America! Side note, I started my flight training in a school which allowed foreigners like me.

Here we go again, more paperworks

So on September 2019 I started filling up a form, pay USCIS, went to get my fingerprints in November 2019, get the interview scheduled on March 2020. It was an easy process, really, except that Covid-19 was around.

My interview got postponed. Despite all the restrictions, we decided to visit my family in France. And right when we are in France, the USCIS scheduled the interview for a week later. I had to postpone that one.

I was finally able to get my interview in October 29th 2020. A couple of Days before "Election day".

The interview went fine, as long as you memorized the hundred questions/answer, you are good. Some of the questions at the time were as easy as: what ocean is on the west coast of USA?

Those questions might have changed and we now have 20 questions instead of 10.

Because of Covid-19, I didn't have to become a citizen a couple of days later at the oath of Allegiance Ceremony. They canceled the ceremony, and so once you do your oath during the interview, you basically get out of the room as American.

I voted on the same day I became American