extrarius

Seems like a seriously gross oversight by a Network Operations Tech, that's actually rather concerning to be honest :/

I have been in your shoes before though (I work in eCommerce for a living), I spent 4 days just last week dealing with what should have been a 2 hour ISP migration because the ISP dropped the ball so I share your pain.

No you don't need to obtain an SSN right away, you can safely file AOS without one. The A# is the Alien Registration Number, this is on the NOA2 you received before your case was sent to the consulate you need that NOA anyway to send with AOS packet. As for the last question, your guess is correct, it is Thailand/Thai, some of the example forms are out of date unfortunately :/

I agree with what others have been saying, I don't think there will be any problem. Also your age difference isn't that huge, my wife and I are 13 years apart (she's older than me) and that never even came up at the consulate in BA during our interview.

Are you saying you can hook up this doojiggy in a foreign country and it makes it seem like you have a local domestic phone way over there?

Considering it's nothing more than a VoIP adapter there's no reason it wouldn't work as such in another country. It just really depends on the internet connection it's being hooked up to (VoIP really should have a decent connection of 3mbps or higher)

I had looked at this once but wasn't really enticed enough to get it, I wanted an option that benefited myself, my wife (fiance at the time I got it) and her family so I ended up going with Vonage simply because they were the only reliable VoIP provider I could find that would allow me to get a local Argentina phone number bound to my account so she (while she was still residing there) and her family could call without using international calling cards and we wouldn't have to pay a fortune to call back (unlimited international calling) (I pay $50/month for the service). The other beauty is we can use the Vonage Extension feature on our cell phones to make international calls via our Vonage plan. Obviously though the same bandwidth requirements as magic jack apply.

This might help, a couple of good searches gave me the following: http://www.customs.gov.ua/dmsu/control/en/publish/article?art_id=1093966&cat_id=1093808

I would recommend to be careful all the way around, as employers are looking at social media sites also.

Yeah but that practice is questionable at best in terms of the law and employment protection for the prospective employee. Besides Facebook recently stated they'd start suing employers demanding facebook account information from prospective employees due to it violating several use policies and account protection policies the company has.

How did they know he claimed to be a US Citizen? What was said to him after the interview? From what I understand he may be deported as it sits now because of his claim.

A logical conjecture would be that since he was applying for a federal government job and he answered yes to the US citizen, when DHS back checked his SSN and it bounced back as alien they probably flagged his file.

Sigh why am I not surprised that Skype is pulling these kinds of shenanigans again? That's a good heads up though for people that heavily rely on it (I have vonage phone service with a local Argentine phone number so my wife and I had no problems staying in contact while we waited out the K-1 but most people aren't able to do that unfortunately). I guess more people will shift to things like Google Voice or WhatsApp.

My wife generally is the one that ends up cleaning the cat barf (we have 2 cats, planning on getting 3 or more this year). But that's usually because said cat (it's only one of them) decides to leave surprises on her side of the bed and the laundry room. Just yesterday she threw up all over the entire length of her side of the bed sigh.

It's not really necessary no, some don't because they either don't see the benefit of it or they don't wish to lose citizenship to another country (since some will make you forfeit). We decided against it for my wife because of her Italian Citizenship (she's dual Argentine/Italian) which we don't want to lose for various travel reasons.

I would use whatever is cheapest. When I helped my wife move we used a round-trip ticket for her (separate itineraries) because it was cheaper than a one-way non-stop (much cheaper). However remember to cancel the return flight (e.g. call the airline) if you get a round-trip ticket. Some airlines have increased penalties for not doing that.

WOW! That is a tough question: I don't think you can add her until your Married. In addition; She has a Pre-Existing Condition.

http://www.opm.gov/insure/health/enrollment/index.asp

The pre-existing condition exclusion is waived if the person is pregnant. It's against HIPAA to exclude someone as a pre-existing condition if they are pregnant.

http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq_consumer_hipaa.html

Yeah again the +4 is just a routing code from USPS and it's a constantly changing one which is why most people should not use it (or list it) especially with the re-structuring going on with the USPS right now.

That really doesn't mean much or cause a problem, the 4 digit number after the first 5 digit zip code is just a regional sort code number that USPS uses to efficiently route mail to a closer location. That information will mismatch a lot of the time due to various changes (district offices closing, incorrect data in the USPS database, etc). I deal with this on a daily basis in e-Commerce and I'll will tell you that the +4 mismatch means absolutely nothing as long as the first 5 digits are correct (and that a large portion of the time, the USPS database is usually out of sync).

I only pay $54/month for 16mbit internet from comcast. The cable television is provided free by the home owner's association.

Yeah we followed the guide ourselves (I cannot seem to find my digital copy but I do distinctly remember). Didn't pose any issues with the Consulate.

[...] Thank you for the information. It has proven difficult to even get an interview due to a lot of companies not sponsoring prospective employees from overseas. [...]

Unfortunately it's a hard truth, even for residents when it comes to the IT industry. The market is extremely super saturated (has been for about 10 years) due to the prolific upstarting of numerous "Computer Expert" classes, certification courses and so forth. So there are more people than there are jobs in the field (same happened with the forensics industry no thanks to television shows like CSI and ITT Tech). The problem with sponsoring IT H1-B is most companies either cannot afford or are willing to deal with the associated costs, and the ones that can (e.g. Google, Oracle, Microsoft which are notorious for using H1-Bs) require extremely specialized skills (Advanced Software Engineering, etc).

Frankly I'm not all that surprised. The health care system here (especially the health insurance companies) is quite corrupt. They really care about cutting costs rather than helping our the people they are covering, I went through a perfect example of this fighting with my current provider to remove my wife's pre-existing condition exclusion (which I did) because they didn't want to cover her chronic migraine syndrome treatment regiments even though she met all the HIPPA requirements for insurance coverage. The whole system IMHO needs a complete and utter overhaul.

Mine used too, by used too I mean I haven't updated it in about 6 years (actually I lost it because I stopped updating it). Frankly I don't think it's all that important to have one, it's one of those things I feel should be left off (like listing previous salaries or salary requirements, which is a great way to not get a job) because the focus should be on our skill sets and prior employment achievements.

Agree with this. Also with updating the revision dates. For AOS for example the forms are dated 2010 as the latest date and they've DEFINITELY been updated since then.

So have at least one or two on the Packet 3 set of forms (Buenos Aires Consulate sends it electronically). I saw some fields missing and some new ones added hence the concern, if someone is not attentive enough this could cause a minor inconvenience.

Updating the example PDF forms (e.g. the G-325A etc) would be nice. A lot of them are either out of date (they don't match current issued forms) or were filled in very oddly. I ran into some minor confusion when using them as a point of reference.

We average about $500/month for 2 people but that's mainly due to imported ingredients and eating out.

We just carried all of her funds, in excess of $20,000. And as MaggieT said it's not a problem, you do have to declare it and you will have to file an additional form at the airport but it's no big deal. We deposited the funds in a joint account that same day.

Well my wife has gained around 5 kilograms since relocating here. It doesn't help that we have places like Joseph's Market and Costco's Bakery lol