Showing posts with label Immigration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Immigration. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

A New Scam

I hadn't seen this scam before:



The attached cover e-mail was more illiterate than this.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Career Update

I now have an interview lined up here for early next month. The original deadline for the job was early this year but they advertised for a whole bunch of positions and put together a very high powered interview team which would be very hard to get in one place together any time. And then I went travelling for almost 6 months. So it has taken 8 months to give me an interview in the end. They will be interviewing higher level positions for a while yet so I don't think my absence made much difference. We'll be doing plenty of prep for the interview closer to the date. The hardest question I think will be why I want to join this group when I have applied for jobs with other groups here and failed to be appointed. I don't need to give them a presentation. Presentations have been my weak point in recent job hiring processes. Not the interviews.

I am not actively looking for positions outside Australia but there is a constant flow of ads for jobs around the world that comes through the various networks. Now there is an ad for a job in the US in a highly desirable location geographically (in our opinion) where maybe Snork Maiden could also get hired on grant money as she has connections. It would put me back to the same point I was at in 2002 when I moved to the US from Australia and I am really not keen on making the move back to the US. But maybe it is something we should look at? The problem is though they are open to more senior candidates than many job ads are I wouldn't be offered tenure and Snork Maiden's position would also be very precarious and we would have no rights to live in work in the US until 5 years plus it would take to get a green card (given my previous experience). At least this time I could apply for a green card for Snork Maiden together with myself in one application. Last time around my application was already in progress before we met and we didn't marry until moving to Australia. If we stick things out another year here in Australia she can become a citizen here already. So there is an incentive to do that.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Permanent Residency

Congratulations to Snork Maiden who got her her permanent residency in Australia today! We've been here just over 2.5 years. So in 1.5 years she can apply to become a citizen. You need to be in Australia for 4 years and be a permanent resident for one year to qualify. Compare this to the US where I was 4 years into the process and still hadn't got my green card and I would have to wait 5 years after getting that to become a citizen. One of the reasons we moved to Australia is that I didn't want Snork Maiden to have to go through all of that long process from scratch.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Annoying Changes to Australian Immigration Rules

After the previous government raised the residency requirement in Australia to 4 years from 2 for those seeking to become Australian citizens, this government has now lowered it, but only for athletes it seems. Travel rules might have been relaxed more generally for other potential migrants - details aren't clear. I'd like Snork Maiden to become an Australian citizen as fast as possible. The change to travel rules is sensible, but why should athletes wait less than others just so Australia can win more medals. It's a cynical move. They should just slash the period back to what it was for everyone who qualifies to be an Australian citizen.

Friday, August 08, 2008

Arkmile Calls Off its Wind-Up Action

Challenger and Arkmile call off their legal action against each other and Arkmile drops its call for a meeting of shareholders and promises not to call one for another 12 months. What did Arkmile get in return? Nothing apparent. Why did they agree to that?

Picked up my passport with a Chinese visa in it. Has a nice picture of the Great Wall engraved into the background like this:



Saw my first snow of the winter - on a mountain range in the distance as I crossed over the lake to the Chinese Embassy and back. When I asked Snork Maiden what it felt like to have winter without snow, she just giggled :)

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Applied for Chinese Visa


I finally got everything I need together and went to the Chinese Embassy (pictured above) today to submit my visa application. This is the first time I've had to apply for a visa for a short-term visit to a country. I've applied for visas before for long-term stays, studying, working, and immigrating to the US and Israel. To get a tourist visa for China you need to provide evidence of which hotels you'll be staying in during your trip or get an invitation letter from relatives etc. if you'll be staying in a private residence. So I had to submit:

A two page application form
Photograph
My passport
Letter from Snork Maiden's mother confirming I'll be staying with them
Copy of our marriage certificate
Copy of Snork Maiden's passport (to show she's a Chinese citizen).
$30 fee.

Compared to other experiences I've had dealing with consulates and interior ministries the place was deserted. Two women behind the desk - one reading a book and one who dealt with my application - and one other guy sitting in the waiting room. Out the front of the embassy across the street is a permanent Falun Gong demonstration (it was there in 2001) consisting of one guy huddled against the cold sitting beneath huge banners proclaiming "Falun Gong is Good" and other slogans and facing him one Australian security guard manning the main gate to the compound.

I have to return on Friday to pay and pick up my passport with the visa.

It's interesting that the PRC charges Australians who apply here $30 and Americans $155. Citizens of all other countries are charged $50. The fees are similar at the Washington Embassy. $130 for Americans and $30 for everyone else. The fees aren't correlated to what each country charges Chinese seeking visas. Australia charges over $100 to Chinese wanting to visit Australia while the US charges $131 which is not as big a difference. Interesting.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Snork Maiden Granted Temporary Visa

Some good news - Snork Maiden got a letter today from the Australian Immigration Department granting her a temporary spouse immigration visa for the next two years. At the end of two years they will grant a permanent residence visa, subject to more evidence. As she has a 457 work visa valid for the next two years the only practical change in the meantime is that she will now be eligble to get subsidised government healthcare through Medicare. We can stop paying $A230 a quarter in health insurance for her as soon as she has a Medicare card.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Immigration



Another goal completed, Friday, when we visited the Department of Immigration in Canberra to turn in Snork Maiden's immigration application and pay the $A2,060 fee. When processed they should award her temporary residence status in Australia. As a temporary resident you can work and receive government healthcare (Medicare). You can't receive other government benefits. After two years, our savings in health insurance should pay for the fee. Also after two years, they should grant her permanent residence in Australia and all rights apart from the ability to vote. Another two years on she should be able to obtain Australian citizenship with the obligation to vote and an Australian passport that allows visa free travel to most countries in the world. Still, today we were discussing maybe stopping off in another Asian country on our way back from China later this year. With an Australian work visa, getting a visa for Thailand, Singapore, or Hong Kong should be easy and the embassies are here in Canberra. I've been to both Thailand and Singapore as well as Malaysia. I'd like to visit Hong Kong some time, but no rush. Snork Maiden is most interested in visiting Thailand, I guess because that is the most exotic for someone from China.

The stockmarket finally has turned for the upside on Friday. This week, my trading was not at all good and by Thursday I was running three positions at close to $1,000 losses in each case. It was a rather anxious week. Friday night I got rid of a US futures position at a profit and my Australian futures (via a CFD) and US short options positions significantly improved. I'm not even calculating our current net worth or investment performance at this point in the month as I know they are so bad. I think Wednesday (Thursday in Aus) will be the low point for a while in the market. Wednesday was "Weird Wollie Wed" - the Wednesday of the week before US options expiry week. It seems the market often rises from there into options expiration and my model is now unequivocally pointing up.

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

W-2 Arrived

My W-2 arrived today all the way from the US (together with statements from Ameritrade and HSBC). So soon I can do my US taxes. My records should be good enough to fill in the investment side of things - given the IRS doesn't have any record of my investments and transactions in Australia, accuracy down to the penny is not necessary. Hopefully, this will be my last US tax return. As I was only a temporary resident in the US on an H1-B visa I now revert to a non-resident alien. Taxes are deducted at source on my dividends and I don't need to pay capital gains tax or tax on interest in the US. If I had gotten a green card I'd have had to submit US tax returns and be subject to full resident US taxation until I fell out of permanent resident status. Which is why I didn't go ahead and complete the green card process.

I'll also do Snork Maiden's taxes. Her W-2 arrived at her former office in the US. It should be forwarded to us soon. The Australian tax year ends 30th June and taxes are due sometime in October. So we'll have this fun all over again later this year :)

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Tourist Visa

I got my tourist visa or rather "visa waiver" and am back in the US in Snork Maiden's town. They asked me a lot of questions and I showed them my outbound itinerary to Australia, my resignation letter etc. I was the last one back on the bus. That's a relief. When I arrived some Egyptian guy was waiting and he was still waiting when I left. Next step in the moving plan is dealing with all the administrative stuff like changing addresses with financial institutions etc. I'm thinking now to exit my apartment at the end of August (I'll give them some excuse about visas) and fly back here and then on September 12 fly back to my hometown - I have a hotel booked for that night there anyway - and then on September 13th fly out to Australia. The flight would be cheaper than rent and utiltiies for another month. We can't reschedule the flight to leave from here (Snork Maiden town).

On another note, volatility in the stockmarket has now declined to a level where I am much more comfortable trading again. It hasn't been a matter of the daily moves but the intra-hour volatility or intra-5 minute volatility even. Now it is much easier to figure out where the market will be heading in the next few minutes. I am beginning to try more trades and make more money at them again.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Montreal

I'm in Montreal. I took the Greyhound Bus up from Burlington, VT this afternoon. I told the Canadian Immigration agent the whole story - how I was an H1B, quit my job, and was planning on re-entering the US tomorrow. She took my I94 (the little form that gets stuck in foreigners' passports when they enter the US) and let me in to Canada. So, so far, so good. This is actually my first blog post from outside the US. Haven't been out of the US or off the east coast for a while now. Since December 2005 actually. I usually travel more than this. The hotel I'm staying at is called: Hotel Montreal Espace Confort. It is just around the corner from the bus station on Rue St Denis, which is one of the nicer streets in Montreal. I'm not a big fan of Montreal - this is my fourth visit here. I get hung up on the language issue. If I speak English people often seem grumpy and annoyed and if I try to speak French they speak back in English. I can't win. I liked Quebec City more. France itself is a whole other story at least away from Paris. Most people I met there were happy I was trying to speak to them in French. Anyway, the hotel is very new, clean, modern design, and a good price in a good location. If you are happy to share a bathroom you can get it for $C50. I paid $C89 for a better room. There's an even more frugal option for this exercise - do the round trip by bus in one day - it's only 2 1/2 hours each way. But I didn't feel like doing this and thought it best to leave the country on the day I officially quit and then come back the next day in case there were any complications.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Submitted New Resignation Letter

I just now e-mailed in a new resignation letter with a resignation date of 13th August. I also e-mailed HR to ask if there is anything I need to do regarding my H1B. I want to keep it with TIAA-CREF for the moment. I booked a hotel in Canada for Monday night and will take the Greyhound bus up there. Tuesday, I will try to return to the US as a tourist. We will see what will happen.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Back to Visa Issues Again

The HR Department at my university won't approve my leave due to concern that immigration will take a "dim view" of it. The head of HR gave two options: Appoint me to a fixed term appointment from 1 July 2007 to 13 September 2007 or that I resign retroactively from 30 June and do the "B Visa", which practically means leaving the country and trying to re-enter again as a tourist. The problem with the first option is that I might need a new H1B. So now I've e-mailed the lawyer again on that. If it does need a new visa, it's not a practical route. Likely I will end up having to try to go to Montreal and back... At least now all the stuff I want to ship to Australia is on its way and Snork Maiden would "just" have to drive 150 miles each way to pick up the rest of my stuff if I got stuck outside the country. Everything else could be handled from there.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

I Wasn't Paid

today, which is great news. So I am effectively already on unpaid leave from my job. I went to the local immigration office this morning. Luckily there was no wait and I got the form for a change of status to a B Visa. The officer though advised not to resign before receiving the new visa. This can take up to 45 days apparently and looks pretty bureaucratic. Given I am already on unpaid leave and BCIS are unlikely to ever check with all the other things they have go on seems I can just write a letter with a September termination date and keep going as I am. But I am still waiting for my lawyer's response to my findings this morning before going ahead.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Terrminating Green Card Application



Just faxed this letter to Sydney. Hope it does the trick. There is no point in pursuing a green card if I don't intend to stay in the US. For one thing I would have to pay US taxes on my worldwide income. Big hassle. And a big hassle getting completing the last few steps to get the visa.

We met with the immigration lawyer today. After much back and forth discussion she told me to go to the local immigration office tomorrow and ask a couple of questions. If the answers are positive I'll apply for a tourist/business visa and resign my job tomorrow. If the answers are not positive then she'll look at another option. She agreed that there are risks to trying the leaving and re-entering the country option. Snork Maiden headed back interstate to get the medical for her Australian visa done. Did some more bad trades (the model was short on a massive up day) and some more packing...

Friday, June 22, 2007

Avoiding an Immigration Pitfall

I suddenly realized today that if my employment terminates on June 30th my H1B status does too. There is no grace period to leave the country for H1Bs though apparently they allow "reasonable time" to allow people to find another H1B sponsor if they are fired. I should be OK statuswise as I have been approved for a green card. The only problem is I want to terminate that process and my lawyer thinks I should do that soon. The last resort would be to travel to Canada and re-enter as a tourist (using my British passport to avoid any border hassle). But I have come up with a creative solution - if my university terminates me at the end of September instead and puts me on unpaid leave from June 30 then there will be no visa issue at all and I won't even have to bother my long-suffering lawyer again. I floated this in an e-mail late today. We will see what the response is tomorrow. Been drafting up my moving plan and resignation letter. The latter will have to wait on a resolution of the timing issue. Snork Maiden finally sent in her formal acceptance to the Australian employer yesterday. It was held up by a slow HR department rewriting the offer letter to change the start date from September 1st to October 1st. She also asked her boss to suggest temporary accommodation - he stayed at the University across the street when he arrived in the city - exactly where I stayed 11 years ago in early October when I first moved to Australia to work at that university. So if we end up staying there at first this time it will be a case of deja vu.

Yesterday I started trading again after getting back from the trip to Massachusetts. I started by just buying 5 QQQQ puts in my Roth IRA account. Then I shorted some NQ contracts and my first trade netted $600 or so. But later today I reshorted after the market had risen a bit. But too early. The market rose a lot more from there. I also shorted too many contracts in total. The Kelly criterion says that I should trade 3 contracts in my IB account but I was short 5. I covered 2 at a 9 point loss after hours. This is my real job now as far as making money goes so I need to be more careful and consistent. Everything else I'm doing will either be career development or for "fun".

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Bureaucracy

On May 16th the U.S. Consulate in Sydney mailed a letter to my lawyer here in the U.S. with the date for my interveiw for green card visa. Just one problem (well more than one). The date: 8:00AM on May 20th. Not only is that date passed, even if I was in Australia it would be hard to meet it as first I need to visit one of their approved doctors for a checkup as well as pay various fees. And that was Sunday morning, which makes it look like either a mistake or an error (wrong month?). My alwyer says they send out these ridiculous appointments all the time, so perhaps it is simply a placeholder and they expect you to negotiate a real appointment with them? I'll pick up the packet of info from her on Thursday when she holds her regular "office hours" at our university's human resources department. Then I'll need to schedule an appointment with the consulate.

The appointment will have to be in several months time as I haven't yet done the criminal background checks in all three countries I've lived in apart from the US. I will ask them if I need to do the ones other than Australia when I reschedule as those two were places I lived more than 10 years ago and their procedures are real hassles. I've delayed doing them, partly because they are huge hassles and partly because I still don't know where Snork Maiden will get a job. The Europe job now seems to be out, but we are still waiting to hear on the Australia one. Meanwhile she has an interview with one in Arizona on the phone from Beijing. Her interviewer will actually be in Europe. This guy was my department head in my first academic job in Europe (now he is in Arizona). Would be funny if Snork Maiden's first academic job is working with the same guy I worked with on my first academic position!

So I've told my friends in Australia that either they will see me when I come to pick up my visa or when we move to Australia. Either way it should be in the coming year!

Monday, May 21, 2007

Financial Disclosure

Ron Paul's financial disclosure statement. Apart from cash, he mainly owns real estate, gold stocks, and bear funds. A surprising (to me) statistic I saw in the Weekend Edition of the Wall Street Journal (print version) was that only U.S. 282,000 tax returns reported owning a foreign account. Non-resident taxpayers don't need to report this, but H1-Bs are supposed to file as U.S. residents. Another big group with foreign accounts must be U.S. expatriates who also have to file as U.S. residents, wherever they are in the world. Then there must be plenty of green card holders who retained or opened accounts in their home country. Add to them the U.S. citizens who opened a foreign account but live in the U.S. which this article was discussing and the number would have to be bigger than that? I think someone isn't being honest. I didn't realize I was in such a tiny minority by checking that box.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Organizing

That's the theme of the moment.

1. Have everything I need to fax in the stuff to set up the transfers from my Australian account to my US accounts. But seems there is a need for a security calculator - two factor authentication. We'll have to see if they'll send that here to the US. The representative told me they will phone me after I fax them.

2. Almost have all the forms and info for the next stage in my green card application - getting police records from the 3 countries I've lived in apart from the US. Britain wants me to mail them original IDs with my date of birth and name! I think Aus looks easier now they finally sent me the forms. Israel wants me to come in person to the consulate in NYC - that will have to wait till next month.

3. Ameritrade e-mailed Snork Maiden yesterday and said that we didn't sign one of the forms for her Roth IRA. If she can get it faxed to them by today maybe we can get the 2006 contribution in. Though you only need the postmark on the letter with the check, apparently the account must be open before the deadline too to make a 2006 contribution. Hopefully, she can sort this out today, though it is a big hassle. I understand this. I have been procrastinating on these police records.

4. Looks like my brother is going to come visit us, so when that's fixed some travel planning.

5. Snork Maiden had a phone interview yesterday with a university in Europe. By next Tuesday we should know if they want to hire her.

I haven't been doing any trading the last couple of days, though I could have made some money yesterday if I did because I would have been long. Will wait till I feel comfortable. This is going to be a busy couple of weeks though as the semester nears it's end.

P.S. 1:55PM

We failed in the race to make a 2006 contribution to Snork Maiden's Roth IRA. Ameritrade are giving her a lot of trouble because she is still on a foreign student visa. We told them that she is now resident for US tax purposes but they want us to mail in a signed copy of the W8-BEN, fax the signed application form, and send a photocopy of bank statement! Anyway there was something they said couldn't be faxed. Anyway, we can now wait a while to see if a 2007 contribution is going to make sense.

P.P.S. 9:14PM

Commonwealth Bank e-mailed me to tell me I was approved for online international money transfers. Another one says they are sending me the "token" - a calculator used in two factor authentication. Let's see when it arrives.

Friday, March 30, 2007

Trends in Losses and Wins

Crazy day... Can't tell you all the craziness or I'd blow my cover as it's out there in the news media :) On top of that, Snork Maiden got an interview with a university in Europe for a post-doc type of position. Pays better than any US post-doc but prices and taxes are high there. I reckon 50/50 she'll get it. Maybe better than that as one of her former grad student colleagues is on her interview commitee. And she is more expert than he is on this topic. Good chance, therefore, that we might move to Europe where I am also a citizen. Give up on the green card quest here. And give up my tenured position here...

Been juggling all kinds of grad school applicants, from China, US, Chile, Pakistan, and Ghana today - getting close to the crunch date when people have to give decisions to universities about whether they are accepting offers. And I'm a graduate studies director. Trying to do deals on scholarships and tuition waivers etc. Some US students will be visiting campus tomorrow. And tomorrow evening I'm going to go visit Snork Maiden in the next state over.

OK, so here is the stuff that is in the title of this post:



All my losses and wins in NQ trading. The size of the losses and wins is on a per contract basis - each trade though might have from 1 to 8 contracts. There is a definite upward trend in the losses, which is good news. You can see the "blow-ups" though. I just need to get rid of them and I will be fabulously successful :P The t-statistic for NQ trades is now 1.87. I figure I've traded about $13 million of underlying value for $6400 in profit at an average gain of $17 per contract... Starting value of the account was $10,000. I also lost $2000 in Australian Dollar and SPX (ES) trades. Wins are at $23.2k for $95 per winning contract on average and losses at $16.8k for $130 in loss per contract. I'm making money because 2/3 of the contracts I trade are profitable.

It's been a tough month for trading but at this point at least I am up on the month and only have 3 QQQQ put contracts outstanding.