I am an edge case
briancarper.net
briancarper.net
It's always a rude reminder of "normal" to deal with businesses and government bureaux in other countries. Like "another Brian" said in the blog's comments, the third world isn't even the worst in this regard, cuz at least there you can rely on personal relationships, or at worst bribes. It's the less efficient countries of the first world, where clerks generally won't take bribes and don't care who your friend's daddy is, but will go through their triplicate forms at the speed they please (and make a series of blocking calls to you to clarify each piece of information when you don't fit into their check boxes), and close the office at 4 PM, client be damned.
I'm a Canadian citizen who was born and lived in UK all his life who lives and works (legally) in the US for 4 years on a non-resident TN visa,
I'm not allowed to be considered even a temporary resident in the US despite the fact I've lived here for 4 years, oh but I am considered resident for tax purposes (ie I pay tax here and do a US tax return - but no other residency benefits).
When I arrive back in the country I have to say on my landing card that I'm temporally visiting the US and that I'm a resident of the United Kingdom. However, I don't pass the "residency test" of the UK as I've not lived there for 4 years. Technically I'm not resident of any country, which is kinda unsettling. And I'm 'temporally visiting the US' in that I drive out of the airport in the car that I own here and drive home to my apartment where I live with all my furniture and all my stuff in it.
US Immigration finds it difficult to accept that I am a Canadian citizen (and have Canadian passport) yet I've never lived in Canada nor do I have a Canadian SSN nor do I have an address in Canada nor have I filed a tax return there (my father is Canadian but I was born in UK).
I can't get any loans in the US as I don't have residency (although I don't really want a loan) and I can't buy property in the US, although I do have a US credit rating (I have a US SSN) and I managed to get a US credit card by already having an Amex when I lived abroad, and they carried the relationship over to US card (and started to add up my credit score against it).
I believe I traverse a lot of terms and conditions for things like insurance because I'm not a resident and end up being considered in the same category as an illegal immigrant - where the companies want to take their money and turn a blind eye to lack of documentation. Except that I am in the US legally and do have documentation, I'm just not a resident.
The visa I am on has no route to Green Card and so I will be in this limbo status indefinitely.
There's an easy fix for that. Get a Social Insurance Number and file a tax return. As a non-resident with no Canadian-source income, your tax return should take less than 5 minutes to fill out, and you won't owe any taxes.
Simply: Don't get all self-righteous. It's a small thing.
One piece of advice for those in this situation: get the best American Express card that you can qualify for. It doesn't solve all your problems, but there are many cases where it magically just works. One example is ordering things online: AmEx is much more flexible about the shipping/billing address not matching up, and as a result I can often use it with a shipping and billing address from France with no problems.
In addition, their customer service is fantastic, and they can often give you good advice or help you out when you get stuck in these situations.
I was flying back to Hong Kong from a business trip in Japan. I'm a citizen of a third country, but live in HK. The Japan Airlines desk agent, and her manager, refused to issue me a boarding pass, because I didn't have a "re-entry permit" for Hong Kong. Japan and many other major countries have this concept for non-citizens, so I'm guessing whoever wrote the Japan Airlines "avoid Fooland Immigration Department fining us to pay for deporting our Barlandese passenger, for all values of Foo and Bar" checklist explained it badly and made it sound like a universal requirement or something. But in Hong Kong, there's no such thing as a re-entry permit --- they give you one visa, stamp it "Journey completed" when you arrive, and then let you come and go as you please.*
This was in the days before WiFi in airports, so I couldn't just surf to gov.hk and show her the page that says "no re-entry visa required". And it was a Friday night so I couldn't phone the consulate either. At my wit's end, I called Amex --- my employer had paid for the ticket with an Amex card. Their customer service guy commiserated with me for a bit, and said he'd make a phone call. After a bit of a wait, a Cathay Pacific (major Hong Kong airline) manager showed up with a copy of the Hong Kong immigration regulations. Brilliant and creative solution --- and it forcefully demonstrated to me the value of filling customer-facing positions with creative and talented people rather than checklist-wielding drones who you don't screen as carefully as your "core function" staff.
* Years later, the HK gov't changed the wording; now it's a tiny bit clearer that you don't need a re-entry permit:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:n5y5QqS...
> You have to live at least 6 months in the UK to open a bank account or apply for a credit card.
I moved to the UK and this was not the case. It was difficult to open a bank account but not because you need to live here 6 months but because the banks require all sorts of identification which you normally don't have as a recent immigrant (stuff like proof of address).
And yeah, none of my US banks or credit card companies could handle my Canadian address on their web sites.
On the form there is a section to leave a mesasge or comment for the reciever. My credit cards co told me to put only my CC No. with no spaces or nothing else.
Told my wife all this (wrote it down) and she went to make the payment (she's Chinese, it's just easier that she does this kind of thing, from a paperwork efficiency point of view.
So of coarse she also puts my name after the card number. The next week I call the company, they can't find the payment, dissapeared into their system. POOF, gone. Will be spending the next few weeks making international calls to chase that one up.
They're system is sooooo brittle.
Monday is the 'merican mnemonic.
I was shocked when I went to H&R block, and all they did was type data into the software on the screen in front of them. I realized I could do that myself, and have used TurboTax since, which has worked well for me needs. (I'm sure if I had more complex need, a real tax accountant would be important, but I don't think there is any case where H&R Block is the right choice.)
Not as much of a problem as you think it is. Canadian companies can pull US credit reports -- like your bank did -- and do so on a regular basis. Not so regular that every car salesman will know how to do it; but any large company will have figured out how to handle this, even if not everybody at the company knows that it's possible.
> No credit
I had the same problem because I avoided credit cards when I was younger because I thought it was a bad habit, and I was self-employed so I couldn't verify any salary. It meant I had no credit and I got rejected for low end credit cards - a yucky cycle. Eventually a smart bank manager I knew gave me a plan to fix this:
I went into the bank and got a "secured loan" - what you'll do is deposit about $1000 into the bank (or whatever amount you want) and get a CD for it that you can't touch. It'll pay something like 2% in today's climate. Then you get a loan secured by that CD for something like 2.4% - seriously, the interest rate on a secured loan is very low because the bank has your CD sitting there and you can't get it... there's virtually no risk.
Okay, now, have your loan set to auto pay so you don't have to worry about it. You'll get 12 "paid on time" records in the next year and it'll cost you very little. Actually, it's a little better than that even, because it's a different kind of credit from a credit card. Credit cards are "revolving", this sort of loan is something else... so it'll permanently boost your credit a little bit for the next 7 years until it falls off your record.
I had no credit. Got a secured loan like this. 3 months later, was able to get a crappy credit card from Capital One, very low limit, high interest, no benefits. Just charged some small purchases to it and paid in full each month. After a perfect year between the secured loan and the Capital One card, was able to get an AMEX gold card with no limit on which was important because I was having business-related payments that'd sometimes be a lot in a short period of time. Also wound up getting two free one way international flights from the points from the card. So yeah - secured loan is the way to go. The difference you pay between the CD's interest rate and your loan interest rate is well worth it to have credit.
Four and a half years later I still have no US credit cards and no US credit rating. I haven't really found a need for it, though locals occasionally look shocked at the idea.
This might turn out to be very penny wise and pound foolish. Sooner or later you might want to buy a property to live in or for investment reasons, and oftentimes you'll only realize you want to buy a place six months or a year before you want to buy. That's not long enough to build a good credit rating to get a decent mortgage - you're very possibly throwing away thousands of dollars of your future money to save yourself... like $20 now.
And you don't pay interest on a credit card unless you carry a balance - pay in full each month. I only spent $150 on a credit card once because it had excellent benefits and I got $600 of free airfare from that card. I've paid $0 in fees or carrying a balance besides that in my life, aside from that $20 for a secured loan. Why not build a credit score? - there's no real downside, it doesn't take long to do, and might make a big difference for you later.
Betting on credit is like betting against the house in Vegas.
The folks who get in trouble with credit cards are the ones who look at the bill, see "Minimum payment", and write that number on the check. Up until recently, that number was a lot more prominent, so maybe people who had no idea what credit was could be forgiven for this. But they're the ones who get in trouble with debt. People who understand that having a credit card means paying it off in full each month usually end up coming out ahead (via cashback) of where they'd be if they always pay in cash.
I can't count the number of smart, successful people I've personally seen hit a minor bump in the road and then get behind on their revolving debt. Just a few months of penalties and interest quickly eclipses anything you'll gain through incentives, and makes it progressively harder to get back to even.
A checking account autopay would only have added an NSF fee to their problems!
For me, it isn't worth the gamble. You have to take enough risks to get ahead in life as it is. Why reduce your odds with unnecessary risks of convenience?
There is a really simple way to avoid getting behind on your payments: don't buy things that you can't cover with the money in your checking account, and pay your bills on time. Heck, if you can't do this with a debit card, you'll get socked with overdraft fees that are on par with what the credit card would get you for.
I don't want to argue with you about it here. This isn't the right place and maybe the debt trap is something you have to witness firsthand to appreciate. I would submit that if it were as easy as a checking autopay, then this wouldn't be happening: http://www.mybudget360.com/american-middle-class-debt-serfdo...
Credit cards in Finland are the third payment option: debit cards and cash are the two most important ways to pay. But you can get a credit card quite easily, and you will definitely get one if you have regular income.
I got my first credit card when I was maybe 20 or 21. The reason was that I was going to a vacation abroad and didn't want to carry loads of cash with me. I just walked into my bank and asked for one; as soon as I told them I was permanently employed and had regular income, it was no big deal. It didn't matter I had only started at this job a few months earlier and I had no existing credit record whatsoever (no loans, no credit cards, no other credit). I didn't have to proove it, just tell them my income and some other facts and sign below.
If I had been a Swedish citizen living in Finland, I think it wouldn't have been no different. You have income, a bank account and an address: that's probably it. I can easily understand if you had bad credit record but not having one at all being a showstopper really puzzles me. Most people pay their credit card bills anyway so any random newcomer to the business is probably a safe bet.
It's not hard for most people - it's only a problem if you don't have a credit history at all, aren't in college, and can't prove a stable salary. But for those people, it's really the suck - and that's a lot of our demographic. Freelancers, business owners, and self employed people often have a very hard time getting their credit started.
> I can easily understand if you had bad credit record but not having one at all being a showstopper really puzzles me. Most people pay their credit card bills anyway so any random newcomer to the business is probably a safe bet.
I thought about that too. The credit card companies have very sophisticated metrics and algorithms though, and they seem to think lending to someone with no credit is a very bad idea because they're incredibly hesitant to do it. My best guess is it's a defense against fraud.
That would solve those problems where paying with a credit card is almost a required practice. Actually getting credit is another issue but I would guess most people use credit cards as the medium for transactions and not for getting credit itself?
Come to think of it, the overreliance on the number could be another consequence of the US's obsession with race: if your bank takes anything into account except the magical number then you leave yourself open to a racial discimination lawsuit.
Oh yeah, and the third problem is that most adults without credit histories seem to be illegal immigrants, who make very little money and can vanish at any time. There are so many illegal immigrants in the legal immigrants are a tiny afterthought.
So, just guessing, if you have no credit record, then even if you have a successful business up and running and you can prove that you do, and how much money you make, and that you have an established life with no intentions to take a hike to Mexico next week, the banks may be forced to ignore all that and rely on the credit rating only?
And the illegal immigrant who is planning to scam the banks could do this money deposit thing mentioned to build up credit rating out of nowhere, wait a little, then apply for credit cards, max them out, and leave?
The next thing we knew we had a card with a $500 limit. :-)
(The limit was raised fairly quickly thereafter.)
If you want to play their game yes, but I would refuse to pay the bank just for the privilege of paying them more money.
If the bank isn't willing to give you a low limit, high interest credit card, take your checking account, etc elsewhere.
My name broke the layout of the form on their screen and when the prescription was printed only the first half was shown because the rest ran off the side of the paper.
I guess they don't get many foreigners showing up at the local family doctors clinic.
Gotta love how Americans go against the grain by changing spellings, dropping letters, etc. Then they try to spin it like everyone else is odd for spelling it differently. We're on to you! ;-)
Right now on the front page there's a linguistics article stating that it was the British-English that diverged more, not the American version.
So, let's talk who 'changed' when you drop received pronunciation.
As far as the divergence in spelling is concerned that's almost entirely due to Noah Webster who purposefully spelled things in a more Germanic way because he found the English spellings with the French influences to be distasteful.(1)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster#Blue_Backed_Spelle...
On the others, there's a bit more of a continuum than everyone using the British spellings, though I'll agree the Commonwealth probably tilts towards more similarity with the UK than with the US. But Canadian spelling, especially, aligns with U.S. usage in a lot of respects: it generally uses -ize rather than -ise endings ("realize", not "realise"), and sides with the Americans on a lot of specific one-off differences ("tire", not "tyre"), though it sides with the U.K. spellings on -our vs. -or ("colour", not "color").
Hey, I'm half American and half Australian so I don't really have a horse in this race (or perhaps I have two) but the provincial attitudes of some Americans when it comes to language and dialect differences is annoying.
I live in China and have spent most my adult life in a Mandarin/Hokkien language environment. Spellings and usage here generally follow the US, but very few people could even be considered to be fluent speakers. Hong Kong does still use UK spellings, but Taiwan and Singapore have considerably more US (and in the case of Taiwan, Canadian) influence. Japan and Korea also favor US spellings. So do Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and a lot of other places you may never have visited.
Maybe you see the attitude as "provincial" because you haven't seen much of the world yourself!
In any case, from a purely pragmatic view, the US usage is standard. I know the minority of native speakers on the other side dislike it, but let's face it. Just about everyone on earth is exposed to Hollywood and US television. Even in former UK colonies such as HK or India, North American usage is widely understood. The same can't be said for Irish/British/Welsh/Australian dialects.
It was the Americans, and Webster in particular, who decided to go around rationalizing the way things were spelled. It was the English who decided to go non-rhotic. We're both changing the language, and we continue changing the language every year!