Greetings,
Some time ago my employer decided it might be better if I were to move to the US from the UK. I’ve made this blog with the intention of covering my experience moving to and then living in the US.
As those of you who know me are aware I’m not entirely unfamiliar with the US and work takes me there reasonably frequently. The 11h trip being somewhat trying and also meaning even if I jump on a plane immediately (as I have had to do in the past, so far my personal best is without warning finding I had to catch a plane that was already in the 3hour recommended window and having to get to heathrow and indeed get packed before the thing took off all while I was jet lagged from getting back from Japan the day before) it takes a day for me to get to a customer. So about two years ago someone decided it might be a good idea for me to be a bit more local to our big customers who are mostly based in California.
After the possibility was raised it sort of fluctuated in and out of certainty and eventually nothing was said for about a year. This turned out to be due to the company being merged with another during which time they couldn’t really think about moving people and couldn’t tell me as the whole thing was confidential. Once the dust settled from the merger and things started to get back to normal again our now Californian pay masters floated the possibility of moving me as well as a few other people. Now all of this was pretty light on detail nothing was ever put on paper and it was all a little uncertain.
For various reasons most of the other people that were being considered for moving declined or the process fell through for one reason or another and things went quiet again to the point that I assumed it had been cancelled for me too. By this point I was fairly fed up with the whole thing having the uncertainty about whether I would be relocating around the world was not very conducive for long term planning, any big investments like a new car or any big decision was not really possible. It was floating in limbo for a while and coming to the end of that even if it meant staying here was a good thing.
Then out of the blue they came back saying they were going to move me and wanted a yes no answer of whether I was interested or not. Again this was with no details on what the package was which was pretty annoying, how can you make a decision like that without knowing what sort of deal you are making, what sort of salary what benefits how much of the moving costs would be covered etc.
In the end after a lot of thought I decided it was a good opportunity that I was interested in and gave them a tentative yes with the proviso that my final answer would depend on what the package.
It then went quiet for maybe three – six months or so and it felt like it was the same old story again but in early september 2009 they came back saying they had arranged an immigration attorney and were starting the process of getting me an L1B visa (which is an intra company transfer visa basically allowing me to do the same job I do here in the US). I did some phone calls and then began the process of the application which involved writing several documents about how great I am and how no one in the US can do what I do … which surprisingly is totally true you can’t really beat nearly 9 years of experience working with a somewhat esoteric code space.
That process took ages and the US immigration people were constantly asking for more details and yet more information but in January 2010 I got back the bit of paper saying it had all gone through. They also finally produced some paperwork on the offer which seemed pretty reasonable bar some problems understanding how american tax works the american holiday system and a load of other little issues of just having no clue how it all worked over there.
As it turned out the visa form I received turned out not to actually be the visa, no that whole process was just the pre approval allowing me to apply for the visa. The system is incredibly bureaucratic and their web pages describing what to do are labyrinthine, I had to puzzle it out from a multitude of other sources and searches through the embassy website. I now had to make an appointment with the us embassy for an interview to try and get the visa. You have to phone a £1.20 a minute phone line to make an appointment then pay another 130 dollars in fees then fill out more forms mostly containing identical information and done in adobe acrobat such that half the time it erases the whole form when you press backspace.
So anyway I now have my appointment at the embassy set for Thursday I’ll have to lug my myriad of forms and photos and yet more fees over there with my passport to see if I can get the next step in the process done. Visa’s assuming it’s approved then take 5 days to six months to come back … and there is no way to check how long it will be.
It’s an adventure I suppose.
