Ok So I Got The Visa, NOW LET ME WORK!!!!! (Visa applications - Have you had any trouble getting a visa to visit a foreign country?)

Name: Rocawear

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Product:	Visa applications - Have you had any trouble getting a visa to visit a foreign country?
Date:	13/03/03 (123 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Better conditions, Better pay

Disadvantages: not many

For those of you who may have already read some of my earlier opinions, you will see that I have lived in the United States of America for some time now, about 15 months altogether (Mar 2003).

Being allowed to Work

When I left England, in the winter of 2001, I had a Visa, 2 of the heaviest suitcases known to man, and a one way ticket to a ‘small’ town, Idaho Falls. The reason I left was basically because I had the chance to do something which not many people get the chance to do, to live in a foreign country, especially one that speaks a vaguely similar language!!!!

Thinking that having a Visa, which was the same as my dads and he’s lived and worked out here for over three years, means you can walk into the social security office and get signed up for a social security #, wait 10-15 days for it to come in the mail, and then go out and get a job to help pay for school and petrol and the like ----big mistake!!!
My Visa was special, I don’t know how, but it was special. Because I had the same Visa as my dad, he was the only one allowed to work, and I had to be a dependant, hmmm that sounds kinda stupid to me? How about you?

So for the first 8 months that I lived out here, I lived off $500 (about 35 quid) carefully spending and saving, but only spending when life depended on it!!! Like dates and so-on hehe.

So May rolls around and the immigration people call, they have our greencards ready for us to go pick up, in England. Which worked out good because I already had a ticket (skymiles are wonderful) so I managed to get a trip home to coincide with a greencard meeting.

So I get back to Idaho, all proud with greencard, I’m official, I’m a resident, walk into the social security office, get me signed up for that good stuff.

Getting a Job

Most places in America, especially employers who can manage work schedules around school schedules, have a high turnover, ther
efore everyone in town in is always looking for people to seek employment with their business, so you do a lap of the town, looking for places that you would like to work, then you start applying, a mixture of computer based applications with built in personality checks and then two shops down you have a guy with a piece of paper who just wants your phone number??? The twighlight zonesprings to mind. Around 30 applications later im just browsing through the local sports store, I say local, it’s the smallest and pretty much sticks to football gear!! And I get talking to the manager, and he has someone leaving soon and would I like a job???? Er YA I would, so the apparent writers cramp in my arm has been for nothing!!! Theres a catch though, only 8 hours a week are the hours he has available, uh oh.
The next day a store, kinda like woolworths but decent, calls me and says my application has been viewed and approved and they would like me to start working for them, at 4am 3 days a week, I am informed however that we get a bonus per hour, for being awake at stupid o’clock in the morning, a measly 30 pence per hour. But I need the money so I take the job, and continue to work at the sports store 8hrs a week.

Now having worked in the UK in a similar environment ie. Non stop carrying heavy boxes, unloading trucks by hand, and stacking the shelves for 8-10 hours a day, I was curious to see how they structured the break and lunch schedules. I was pleasantly surprised to find that 15 minute breaks were provided every two hours, except during the truck unload, unless we had it completely empty in under 2 hours, lunches were taken pretty much on the 6th hour mark and as we were simply hired to do the stores dirty work, we weren’t restricted to a 30 minute break, we had about 1hr or so. As apposed to my last job in the UK, in which I worked upwards of 11 hours daily, was allowed a break as long as I had finished one job and hadn’t started th
e next, and lunch or dinner breaks were simply a slice of bread or some fruit as I continued my work.

Seeing this slight difference in approaches to the workplace, I somehow feel more comfortable in my new work environment than my previous work environment.

Overtime is a guarded affair out here though, but if you are allowed to work more than 40hrs a week, you actually get paid overtime, my previous English job required – 17 consecutive work weeks in which you worked over 48 hours, you weren’t paid back pay for the previous 17 weeks and you only started to receive overtime after these 17 weeks, I don’t think so, that’s called slave labor in my book buddy.

I have since started a new job, guaranteed 40hrs a week, double what I was making at the ‘woolworths’ store, and 1 days overtime adds almost 125 pounds to my pay check each week, yes I like overtime out here that’s for sure.

The work ethic out here s totally different too, unlike back in England where you (or at least I did) scramble for a job at 15, the minimum age out here is 16 and employers don’t like to employ youngsters. But if you keep your head down and work to the limits that the employers set, you can go far, I was givin complete control of around 60 aisles and 3 people before my probationary period was up in the store.

And as I said, I applied for 30 jobs and got 2 of them, there was probably another 100 + business’s who were looking for applicants at the time, not like England where I had to move from almost in Scotland to London to get a full time job, all these positions were within 3 miles from my house.

So for those of you who are somewhat tired of working in England, as I was, with poor working conditions, poor pay, and are already looking at leaving England to live abroad to work, seriously consider USA, they are fair, they have a good pay scheme, and it is very easy to move through the ran
ks of a company quickly so long as you knuckle down and don’t spend your days messing around.

I would say that I am definitely a lot happier with the working conditions and the ability to find and maintain a steady job in the USA than I ever was in the UK. I doubt very much that I would move home without negotiating a serious work package first, my life is a whole lot easier now.

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