Thinking about coming over to the USA to keep me company? Great! Here's how :)

Introduction 

OK, so you want to start a life in the USA. It's not as difficult as it sounds, however you will have to jump through some hoops to make it happen. Fortunately I have identified said hoops and you all get to benefit from my sometimes haphazard experience.

Getting a Visa

In order to work in the USA you need a visa that allows you to work. If you're an Australian like me, John Howard's participation in the war in Iraq means that we're entitled to a special visa known as the E-3 Specialty Work Visa.

The great thing about this visa is that there's 11000 of them available annually exclusively for Australians (as opposed to he H1-B visa, where the whole world has to fight over 65000), which is way more than the anticipated take up rate. The downside to this visa is that it does not officially support the doctrine of dual intent which allows a visa holder to apply for a green card (permanent residency). Having said that, this forum message seems to imply that it's possible to get a green card while on an E-3 visa, though it may be risky. In fact that forum has a lot of information on the E-3 visa.

 In order to get one of these visas you need:

1. A university degree
2. A "specialty" job offer in the field if your uni degree
3. A Labor Condition Application (LCA)
4. Paperwork, information on which is provided here under the question "Q: What requirements and documentary evidence are needed for the application?"

OK, can't help you with getting a university degree, but I have some advice on the others.

When applying for work, make sure you tell your prospective employer that you're an Australian and can work on an E-3 visa. Explain that the E-3 visa is like the H1-B visa, but does not require them to go through the sponsorship process, which is expensive and time consuming. This will hopefully mitigate the disadvantage of not being an American.

With regard to obtaining the LCA, there is a website which your employer can use to apply for and obtain the LCA within minutes. My employer was unable to use the website for some reason and had to apply for it by mail. It took about 3 weeks to come in.

Fill out the paperwork correctly, pay for the visa application fee ($120) at Australia Post and then schedule an appointment with the consulate to obtain your visa.

During your interview, make sure that you do not say anything that would suggest that you intend to stay permanently in the USA. The E-3 visa is a non-immigrant visa, which means that at some point, you are supposed to go home. I read somewhere that one applicant's interviewer said something along the lines of "So you'll have a new US passport soon, huh?" The applicant replied by saying that he had no intention of staying permanently in the US, to which the interviewer said, "Right answer."

For my interview, the interviewer just asked me a few questions about where I grew up, where I studied and where I was going to work. No trick questions... in fact he seemed rather disgruntled with his job and just wanted me the heck out of there. Fine by me. Got my passport back with the attached visa the next day.

GET YOUR SSN!

OK, so you have your visa and have arrived in the USA. The very first thing you should do is go to the Social Security Administration (SSA) office and apply for a Social Security Number (SSN). This number is your key that unlocks everything in the USA. Without it, you can't do jack. They tell you that the application can up to 12 weeks since they have to clear your visa status with the Department of Homeland Security, so it's definitely in your best interest to kick this process off as soon as you can. Once you've put in your application, they will give you a reference number for your application and a phone number you can call to chase it up. I suggest calling them after a week and then every work day to see if they have assigned your number yet. Once they have assigned you a number you can visit the SSA again to get a letter which you can use as a temporary Social Security Card. This means you don't have to wait until your card comes in the mail, which can take a couple more days.

I applied for mine on the 12th of December and on the 21st I had been assigned my number. My card was then mailed out to me before New Year's Day, so the process didn't take too long even with Christmas. 

The other thing you probably will want to apply for is a bank account. You can actually apply for a bank account without a SSN, so go ahead and do that right away too. If you're planning on banking with Bank of America, put me down as a referee and we can both get $50! :) This will allow you to get paid either by direct deposit or by cheque. Technically you can't get paid until you have your SSN, but your employer may opt to estimate your withholding and pay you so you don't have to starve.

Another good thing about the Bank of America is that they offer a Secured Visa Platinum credit card, but don't apply for one just yet. They won't give you the card until they can establish your place of residence with a copy of one of your utility bills (yeah it's a stupid system). More on why this is a good thing later.

The next step is finding a place to live. I would suggest waiting until you have your SSN before applying for a lease, as paying your lease is a good way to establish credit and your credit record is referenced by your SSN.

Establishing Credit 

This is probably a good time to segue into explaining the credit system in the USA. The credit system here is not like that in Australia. In Australia you tend to start off with good credit and as long as you have sufficient income and loan to value ratio, people will lend you money. In the USA it's backwards. You start off with no credit and have to build up a credit score before people become comfortable lending you money. What's worse, is that as a foreigner, your credit activity in Australia does not help your credit, or at least, I was unable to get it to make a difference.

Having no credit SUCKS. Not only can you not get credit cards or participate in 0% APR financing on cars (I'm paying a 17% APR on my car loan!), but service providers can also insist that you pay a large deposit for securing their services because they're afraid you won't pay. For example, I had to pay a $450 deposit to my power company and DirectTV wanted a $300 deposit because I had no credit. AT&T was kind to me, they only wanted $50 for my phone and internet and the deposit counted toward my first bill.

The way you establish credit is simply to incur expenses and pay them off in time. So paying off the lease on your home, car payments, utility bills, credit card, insurance premiums etc all help you to establish credit. This means you need to have these expenses! I'm getting raped on my car loan, but if I didn't have it, it would not be helping me establish credit, which would mean that I may have to pay a higher APR further down the line when/if get a bigger loan, like for buying a house. So I'm getting something for my money. It sucks and it took me the longest time for me to accept it, but it's true. It's something you must do to get started.

Establishing credit is where the Secured Visa Platinum credit card comes in. The way it works is that you get a credit card by paying the bank collateral to secure your line of credit i.e. to get a credit limit of $2000, you pay the bank $2000. After that it works just like a normal credit card. Pay off your balance each month or they will charge you credit card interest. Yes, they charge you interest even though they have your money in collateral. Yet another way you get screwed for having no credit. However, it's the only way you will get a credit card when you have no credit. It's the classic chicken and egg scenario.

Since establishing credit is so important, you want to make sure that all your credit activity goes into your credit report correctly. This is why I suggest getting your SSN before applying for your lease, since this minimises the risk your landlord stuffing up and not reporting your credit activity against your SSN since they didn't have it initially.

Finding a place to live

Just like in Australia, the internet is a great place for finding a place to live. If you're planning on staying in an apartment like me, it is especially a good idea to do your research first.

Before I go any further, I need to explain what I mean about apartment. In Australia, we think of apartments as flats, which Americans call condominiums or condos. In the US, an apartment is like a long term stay hotel where the entire complex is owned and maintained by one landlord.

The reason why you want to do your homework with apartments is that many complexes offer "look and lease" incentives such as 1 month free on a 7 month lease if you sign a lease with them within 24 hours of visiting them. That means the more  time you spend looking into the apartment's reviews beforehand, the easier it will be to make a decision within the 24 hour time line. I signed my lease 2 hours after visiting my apartment because I had narrowed down my list of apartments to stay in to 5, which I visited all in the one morning.

Once you have a place to live, sign up with a power provider (go deregulation!) and then do the usual stuff you would do in Australia. Once you have a BILL (the welcome letter is not good enough), apply for your Secured Visa Platinum credit card.

Buying a car

Unless you're living in a city like New York where public transportation is good and/or it's too expensive to own and maintain a car, you probably want to own a car. If this is you, then immediately after you get your SSN letter, apply for a drivers licence! This is because you cannot buy a car without insurance and you can't buy insurance without a drivers licence. This is another reason why it's important to get that SSN as soon as possible, since every day you don't have your car is another day you're paying car rental.

As for suggestions on buying a car, again use the internet to do your homework on which car to buy. If you're planning on living in Texas, I would recommend buying an SUV/4WD/truck, since everyone else is driving these big vehicles, so if you're going to get into an accident, that is the most likely thing you're going to hit and as you know, if you're going to get into an accident, you want to be as big or bigger than the vehicle you're hitting. OK, it drinks the petrol more, but petrol is cheap(er) in Texas :)

I bought an Acura (Honda) MDX. I love it :)

Insuring your car is not only a legal requirement, it's commonsense. In a country as litigious as the USA the last thing you want is to get sued into the ground. Bankruptcy laws have recently been tightened so using bankruptcy to get out of a lawsuit is not as attractive as it used to be. This means that you will want to get a lot of coverage. I've found the marginal cost of extra coverage is not that much so I have personally bought as much as I could. This means you pay higher premiums... and since you have no driving record, it also means you get raped on premiums (hmmm deja vu anyone?). There is some relief however, you can go to traffic school and get a discount on your premium. Unfortunately most people don't have time to go to traffic school. The good thing is that there is an online traffic school, which you can do in your own time. The drawback is that you still need to actually sit through 6 hours of school (they time you). Oh well, the 10% discount on my premium ($1800 a year!) makes it worth it.

Buying a GUN

It's your legal right as a resident of this country to own a gun, so why the hell not? I haven't done this yet, but in theory you are legal to buy a gun once you have been resident in Texas for 90 days. Again this is based on a copy of a utility bill. My 90 days is up on April 21, so we'll see how I go then :)

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