October 20, 2002
The long story: Serge and I pulled into the border at 2:30 and told the agent at the gate that we had a K-1 visa. She asked a few questions, and said, okay, go ahead. She was just going to just admit him! I said, "he needs to process his paperwork," and she's like "Oh! Well, you need secondary inspection." DUH.
We knew that we wanted them to write his A# in the passport because for some reason Montreal hadn't (although apparently they don't always; like everything else in this process, it's one inconsistency after another). As the agent was looking through Serge's paperwork, I said, "He has an A#" and she started to look for it. It was written on the approval from Montreal, plus Serge had a copy of the original I-797 approval, so she looked at that, and wrote it on the I-94.
Then she took his paperwork back to her computer, and we waited while she typed a bunch of stuff in. We thought she was entering him into the computer, but later, we discovered that if she had, it had not registered yet with the computer system the Social Security office uses. Anyway, the agent came back and asked for $6 US for the I-94 and gave us a receipt. She also printed the receipt on the I-94 and said we were all set. I asked if she had given Serge work authorization?" and she flipped over the I-94 and there it was, hand-written on the back of his I-94, along with his A#. She said "get to work, young man!" and laughed and he said, "but I want to be a mooch!" And we all laughed.
The only problem, which we didn't realize at the time, is that we should have asked for the work authorization STAMP, instead of the handwritten authorization. So far, it has caused us no problems, but it can. So if you use Port Huron, ask - at the beginning - for the work authorization STAMP. It's better than the handwritten authorization.
FYI, the visa was stamped as follows ("quotes" indicate written in by hand)
US Immigration
080 PHU 2119
OCT 20 2002
CLASS "K-1"
UNTIL "Jan 19, 2002"
(The "Entries" number on the visa,
His I-94 front is as follows:
Departure Number (XXXXXXXXX XX)
US Immigration
080 PHU 2119
OCT 20 2002
CLASS "K-1"
UNTIL "Jan 19, 2002"
Family Name (written by hand)
First (Given) Name) "Sergio"
Country of Citizenship "Canada"
Birth Date (Day/Mo/Yr) " (written by hand)
The back of the I-94 has his A# and "Employment Authorized" handwritten, as I indicated earlier. The receipt for $6 is also stamped on the back, like a cash register receipt.
The agent then sent us over to Customs, which is the right hand side of the counter (INS is the left hand side). The agent there asked a few questions and stamped Serge's carefully crafted lists of what he was bringing (just the stuff he didn't have the movers bring, and a bunch of things for the wedding, including 150 bonboniere!). We were out of there in about 10 minutes. I will ALWAYS love the Blue Water Bridge and I highly recommend it as a border crossing.
One other thing - we had most of his stuff (furniture, etc.) shipped via Corrigan moving. Despite warning them that we didn't think his stuff could come in until he had, they insisted on trying on Friday (we entered on Sunday). As expected, they were not able to bring it over the border without a copy of his I-94, so it spent the weekend in Windsor instead of in Detroit. When we got to Ann Arbor, we faxed a copy of the I-94 (front and back, after carefully removing it from the passport) to Corrigan, which they used to enter on Monday and the stuff was all delivered and installed by Monday at 3:00.