US Immigration - appropriate control or mindless bureaucracy?

I'm British, and my fiancee is Australian, which means that every other year while we're in the US we have to go through two rounds of immigration pain - having done this four or five times now between us, I hope our experience (and mistakes) can help someone else.

Now I'm all for immigration control - within reason. This blog focuses on the borders between countries, communities, societies - but that doesn't mean those borders are always bad. Having immigration control and conditions means that only those truly motivated will apply. That's a big help - you want motivated, focused and determined people in your country - and hopefully those sort of people can bring something of value to the country in terms of their skills.

However, I'm often forced to assume that the US immigration policy is designed to only test that people are willing to put themselves through a tortuous path of bureaucracy, and who can afford to go through the arbitrary cycle of required paperwork.

Let me give you my fiancee's situation as an example. As an Australian, she can apply for an E-3 visa, thereby avoiding the pain of having to compete with hundreds of thousands of other people for an H1-B visa. In theory there's barely any contention ratio for the pool of E-3 visas, and it should be easy to get. Right? Wrong...

My fiancee is an Occupational Therapist (OT). In order to get an E-3 visa, you must have an actual specific job offer from an employer in America. I was already living in California, so that meant we needed a job offer from a California Hospital. To work in California, OTs must have a licence from the California Board of Occupational Therapy (CBOT). But you can't get that without two things:

• Your licence from NBCOT (the national OT board) - which requires taking an OT exam from within the US
• A social security number

Now here's the kicker - many things in America revolve around your social security number, and very rarely does any bureaucrat give any consideration as to what happens in the situation where someone is not American. Surely everyone of any worth is American, right? Well if you don't happen to be American, and therefore don't have a social security number (SSN)...well...it turns out you need a visa before you can get your SSN. But before you can get your visa you need a job offer. And before you can get your job offer you need your OT licence. And before you can get that you need your SSN.

Uhhuh - that's actually how it works. The official, formally recognised process for immigration involves an unresolvable Catch 22 situation. Joseph Heller would be proud of you America!

So we tried to resolve this situation by getting a job offer from an OT recruitment agency - we had a legal letter drawn up to say they would definitely give her a job once her visa is approved and she can then get an SSN and then her license. A great idea, we thought. Only it turns out jobs through recruitment agencies are not acceptable for visa applications, as the agency makes a cut of money and that's against the regs...

So our visa application was rejected, and tucked away in the small print there was the small statement that people with a rejected visa application may not enter the United States. That's right - I was in California, and she was legally barred from entering the country to see me.

4 months later, a different job offer and everything was sorted - but surely this is not what immigration control should be designed to do? You want to have high value, motivated people enter? Whether they want to do Occupational Therapy or pick grapes, what should matter is whether they're motivated, can fulfil a job position and improve the US economy. Australia solves this problem by issuing credits - depending on the current climate you get a different number of points for different skills - reach the point threshold and you're in. Now that's the way to do it - simple, straight forward and sensible.

I hope Obama's administration does something to improve this. America if you make it too hard for talent to enter the US it will go elsewhere - China, Dubai, wherever. And don't think you don't need anyone from outside - this is a global economy, global society full of global industries. Embrace the world, or be left out in the cold.

Al

If you're looking to immigrate to the US on an L1B, L1A or E-3 visa please feel free to contact me, providing you realise I am not a lawyer...