How to move to America....

If you want to move your whole house, your wife, and your 3 children to America, and you want to make life easy, there is one simple answer - TAKE A LOT OF MONEY! I imagine that many of you who follow me to America will be young, single and carefree, and will simply take one suitcase of possessions and a few hundred dollars in your pocket, you'll arrive on October 1st as the visa allows, and you'll stay in a cheap motel until you get your first pay slip. Well, that's probably what you may think will happen, but there are a variety of issues that will make life complicated even for people like you that don't have to organise the whole mess of problems that arise when you are shipping 62 boxes of goods, and need to arrange schooling for 3 kids, need a proper house to live in, or need stuff like cellphones, cable, landlines and insurance policies. So whatever your personal situation is, and however easy you think it is going to be, read on and find out what problems will be about to make life much more complicated, and more importantly much more expensive, than you might otherwise have imagined. In England I decided to sell my house in anticipation of moving to America (back when I thought the process was going to be an easy one) back in February 2007. So I had been in a rented house for well over a year by the time I actually found out for sure when I really would be making the move. The original lease was for a year, with a six-month opt-out, but after the first year the tenancy was held on a rolling one-month contract, so I knew leaving that property wasn't going to be an issue. Once I had received written confirmation that my work contract could be closed by June 30th 2008 I handed notice in on my tenancy and prepared to vacate the property. My wife investigated the many methods for shipping goods to the US and we picked one company that could move those items we deemed essential to take, but not essential enough to carry on the plane with us, which in the end proved to be 62 boxes of clothes, photos, paintings, books, and other accumulated crap. The rest of the house, namely the beds, cupboards, cutlery, crockery, sofas, TV's, video's, computers, cars, garden furniture, kids toys, goldfish, and EVERYTHING IN THE WHOLE DAMNED HOUSE either had to be sold, given away or trashed. We put an advert out in a few places for a garage-sale, and hoped that we would recoup some money against the costs of shipping, and flying the family out to America. In the end I have to say we did exceedingly well, and sold a heck of a lot more stuff than I imagined we would, reaping enough money to cover the shipping costs for the 62 boxes of crap we apparently needed to take with us! The rest was either given to friends or family, to charity, or to the final people to turn up just before we got on the plane, who were the trash removal people, who took away a whole van load of stuff that we hadn't managed to get rid of. And even though we felt we had left the property in the same manner in which we had found it, the bastards at the letting company still found enough excuses to keep our months security deposit, and even had the cheek to say we owed them more money on top of that! Anyway, we then got in a pre-arranged very large taxi which took the 5 of us and 10 suitcases to spend one night in a hotel near Heathrow Airport, before getting on a plane to Los Angeles, California. In LA we had arranged to be met by a similarly large vehicle to take us all to our hotel in San Diego. Unfortunately the idiots at the taxi company hadn't believed me when I had said we would be bringing 10 suitcases, so it was a ridiculous journey on the freeway with luggage between seats, ontop of children, and even inbetween the two front seats, but atleast we made it there alive. So we check in to our hotel, with our 10 suitcases, and get a good nights sleep, having been awake for the best part of 24 hours since there had been a couple of hours delay back at Heathrow which I had forgotten to mention. I should add that I had booked this hotel for 7 nights, assuming that I could probably get myself a rented house in that time, but I was wrong, and at $369 a night I didn't want to spend too long in the hotel if I could help it! The first thing I did was meet up with a couple of realtors to get a look around the area I was expecting to be living in. As it turned out the rental prices for the posh part of town were way above what I wanted to pay, so we looked a bit further out of town, and eventually WAY out of town, until I started seeing properties in my price range that matched what I was looking for in terms of quality and size of house. Finally, after a week or so of looking at properties I put an offer in on one, we then haggled a little bit to-and-fro, and eventually agreed on monthly figure. However, since I had no Social Security Number (SSN), no credit rating and no previous rental history in the US, there was a big problem being allowed to rent. Luckily, and this is my personal bit of luck, the outgoing resident was the owner, who was very keen to move out, and he allowed us to sign the papers without the usual credit checks, which must be a big problem for most immigrants. So we finally moved in after 3 weeks in the extortionately priced (but very lovely) hotel, and moved in to our beautiful rented house. The next day the local gas/electricity company came round to turn off the power supply because I hadn't gotten around to organising the change-over - oops! The man kindly gave me 24 hours grace, and I rushed round to the San Diego Gas and Electricity company to get myself connected. Again, a lack of Social Security Number proved a problem, but they accepted a deposit and two forms of photo-ID (UK drivers license and UK Passport) and I was through another hoop. Then I wanted to organise cell phones for my wife, myself and my eldest daughter. I went to AT&T and chose phones and all was going well until they wanted my bloody Social Security Number! The manager made a call to their connections department that said they could go ahead as long as I gave a $500 for EACH of the phone lines. Fine, whatever, I'm seeing the way this has to work now - no SSN = BIG DEPOSIT. The same with Broadband, the same with Cable, the same for everything, except for a few things where even a deposit wasn't enough - either a SSN or nothing (hence we have cable and not DISH, since they won't talk to you without a SSN). Opening a bank account is also a big problem, and transferring money from your local currency in to Dollars may either prove very difficult or very costly. Banks wont allow you to use your US address unless you have an SSN, so they are required to send all statements and credit cards directly to your foreign address to begin with (strangely they can send check books to your local address, but they are a lot less useful than an ATM card). Again, once you get your SSN number they can get you to fill out a form and then they can use your US address. The next thing my wife and did (and I recommend you do this quickly too) is book the written test with the Department of Motor Vehicles. I shan't bore you with the minutiae of how to book the test, and what it involves, but for California atleast I found the wonderful website excellent: http://www.hep.man.ac.uk/u/christina/driving.html Having passed the written test we were immediately issued temporary Californian drivers licenses, which came in very handy on many occasions for proof of address, and also meant I could buy a car if I wanted to (I don't think you cant buy one without it). As it happens I wanted to lease a car to begin with, but without a SSN it wasn't possible, and even with one it's probably difficult as foreigners will have no credit history - so I am sticking with the hire car for the time being and will lease one when I come back in October once I get my flipping SSN! When I do lease a car I am sure I will not get the best loan terms as without a credit history they score you at zero, so forget all the adverts you see on TV here for 0% finance. I have now taken and passed my driving test! (August 13th 2008) Because my current sojourn in the US is based on a holiday visa which expires in under 60 days, I couldn't be issued with a proper driving license as it would already be about to expire. Apparently the duration of your driving license matches the term of your visa. So when I return in October I have to go back to the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) and fill out another form and then they will issue me with a year long license. After that I will have to renew it each year - it's free, but it's another aggravation. Of course once you obtain permanent residency then you will get a longer term license. OK, that's enough for the minute. I've given you a good idea of some of the problems that will arise in respect of getting a house organized over here. I still need to add a lot about the issues arising with obtaining the Social Security Number and more importantly (well equally importantly) the full intern license, but I'll save that for the next entry. The only other thing I wanted to add was that we also had to organise getting our three children enrolled in schools. Now our circumstances are (again) a bit different because we decided to put our kids in to private education. We visited two excellent schools, one near where we had first expected to reside and one nearer to where we had ended up living, had interviews at both, filled our the forms at both (for a big fee), were accepted by both, and then decided for a variety of reasons to go with the school nearer to where we lived. The process was quite onerous in terms of paperwork and expense, but both schools were extremely helpful and guided us through the process as best they could. I can't speak for how easy it might be to enrol children at a public school - but I imagine there is an equally painful amount of paperwork, and I bet you'll need to show them a Social Security Number!! Farmacyst