E-3 Visa Experience…

So after finding Andrew Pollock’s blog entry and Yasser Hamed’s info incredibly useful, I thought I may as well post some updates on a slightly more recent E-3 visa application experience.

For those of you who don’t know, the E-3 visa is a US visa that is only open to Australian residents. It’s essentially the same as the H-1B visa, apart from the fact that your spouse can also work in the US, it’s indefinitely renewable, and so far at least, you can’t apply for the green card while in the US on an E-3.

There’s a nice summary available on the Sydney US Consulate site. Things may be different with other companies, but Google seem to be rather familiar with the whole process and pretty much organised everything I needed. The two things that seem mandatory for the company sponsoring you to provide are a statement in support of your application and a Labor Condition Application approved by the US Dept of Labor, which is normally used for the H-1B applications. It looks like the bureaucracy has caught up with the existence of the E-3 now and it’s actually an option on the form, so you no longer need the company to scrawl E-3 across the top of it.

As far as your tasks go, you need to fill out the DS-156 visa form online for each person applying, and it will then generate a pdf for you. I missed a couple of non-mandatory questions, and filled them in in pen later which didn’t turn out to be a problem. Males between 16 and 45 years old will also need to fill in the DS-157 visa form. As Andrew noted, the photos you are required to attach aren’t the standard passport photo size we have in Australia, they’re 2 inches by 2 inches. I had no trouble finding a photo place that understood the requirements of a “US Visa photo” rather than a passport photo. Oh, and you need to pay the Machine Readable Visa fee at any Australia Post outlet. It was A$130 for each applicant, and must be paid in cash, we couldn’t even EFTPOS it, which was kind of annoying.

Once you have all this together, you can then book an interview at a US Consulate. You kind of have to jump through a few hoops and pay to get a PIN that lets you book up to three interviews online. There are some rather strict restrictions on cancelling this interview, so I wouldn’t advise booking unless you’re absolutely sure you can make it. My wife and I had to both turn up, but the kids didn’t have to. From memory I think that children under 12 aren’t required to be there.

The actual interview was a breeze really. I was expecting it to be much more onerous, as you’re supposed to show that you can support yourself in the US, and that you have sufficient ties to Australia that you’ll eventually come back here. Perhaps this was due to being a family with two kids (yay for the nooclear family…), but they didn’t quiz me about any of that, just asked what I’d be doing for Google. I decided not to mention that I’d be working on the Google Death-Ray, which was probably a good move. It probably helped that I’ve ended up pulling out of my Honours year in Philosophy, and so I’ve been issued with my B.A degree. From all accounts you’ll have to argue your case a bit more if you don’t have a degree but have significant industry experience.

The security at the Consulate is rather hard-core. You run through a few checks, and you can’t bring any electronic devices or backpacks upstairs with you. If you need photocopies of anything, you’ll have to do them beforehand, as there are no facilities at the Consulate, and they won’t do it for you. You’ll be leaving all your passports with them, and you can no longer make an appointment to come and pick them up after processing, you absolutely have to bring along a self-addressed envelope for them to be posted back to you.

All in all it was reasonably simple apart from filling out the forms and waiting around at the Consulate.

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