From Germany to San Francisco
After arriving in the US, one thing you probably have to do is find an apartment. For the first couple of weeks after your arrival you will probably stay at a hotel or in an apartment from your employer; either way, you will need to find a place to stay and feel home at — the earlier the better.
I had a very nice place to stay when I arrived, and still, because I knew it was temporary I didn’t really feel at home. So finding an apartment was one of my top priorities.
SSN, short for Social Security Number; that’s the magic number in the US. You get your SSN printed on a Social Security Card. This card is not an ID card though, because Americans are independent and the government is not supposed to clearly identify its citizens. So instead you get a card that just happens to have a unique number on it to clearly identify the person it belongs to, without being an ID card. Do you see the difference between the two? No? Me neither. Either way you need one in order to be able to work. This post describes how to get one.
This will probably be one of the most anticlimactic posts on this blog. It is about how I arrived at San Francisco International Airport for the first time and then entered the United States with my H-1B visa.
I was in the US in December for two weeks to meet with my colleagues and to set up some things in advance before my relocation early January so that the first couple of weeks wouldn’t get too stressful.
One of the things I wanted to set up in advance was a bank account. It takes time for your debit and credit card to arrive and it also makes sense to start building a credit history as early as possible, as this is quite important in the US.
If you want to work in the US, chances are you need a work visa. As far as I know there are some special rules for Canadian citizens but if you are from other countries you need to apply for a visa.
A lot of the process to get a visa was unclear to me until I experienced it. In this post I am going to explain how the process was for me. There may be other options to get a visa but the one I am going to explain is what friends that relocated to California experienced as well.