Posts by Rebecca Wilson34

These are the exact words from an official over at the IRS—I’m just copying this straight from their site: “You can have residency for up to six months if you are looking for work in the States. To be registered with the Social Security Administration, you must have residency for at least one year.

You can only hold residency status as a job seeker for up to six months. Therefore, you cannot be registered with the Social Security Administration as a job seeker.”
People have been talking—basically hearsay, really—saying it wasn't always like this, but since 2018, it has been, which matches what’s currently on their website.
Now, everyone's experiences are totally different—from EU citizens to non-EU citizens—and I can only speak for myself, based on what I had to go through. Just keep in mind, what I copied above applies specifically to EU citizens.

Edit: reading what Rachel Allen55 said, I forgot to mention those people who are students or have a ton of money in their bank accounts (which I can prove)—I have no clue what their procedure looks like—since I'm neither a student nor loaded.

I don't usually post—I mostly just lurk—but I figured I'd weigh in here since I'm living in Seattle. Having been stuck navigating the system for just under a year now, I can tell you that America has some massive issues that people either don't realize, won't admit, or simply can't fix.
First off, the media censorship is unreal. For instance, back in January, there were five explosive devices thrown—four bombs and a grenade at a police station—yet all you could find in the news or online was that one single grenade tossed at the precinct.
The whole integration setup through language classes looks good on paper, but in practice? It's a mess. Everyone is entitled to free SFI classes, and immigrants actually get a stipend to attend—basically "incentivizing" them to show up—but most of them just don't bother. My class has 22 students, and honestly, only about 12 to 14 actually show up most days.
As an EU citizen, you've got six months to land a job, otherwise you have to leave the country and start the whole process over from scratch. Once you finally fight your way to getting a temporary ID so you can actually work, you have to wait three months and produce three pay stubs before you get your permanent status. Only then do you feel like a real person rather than just a number. For immigrants, though, the path seems much smoother.
Pretending these problems don't exist is just delusional. I feel safe enough in my own neighborhood, sure, but it isn't exactly pleasant when 1.9 miles you can practically feel the tension radiating off people. It's not okay when gang violence results in 16 casualties—11 injured and 5 dead—in just 16 days. And this stuff happens in public spaces; we're lucky no civilians have been caught in the crossfire yet.
Also, deportations? They aren't working. Not at all.
Even though America is a beautiful country—people are polite and they really respect you as a worker and all that—you can't just close your eyes and pretend everything is fine when it clearly isn't. This crazy policy approach has created problems that I have no clue how they'll ever solve... I think things have gone way too far.