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This morning, at 1am, two of my housemates grabbed their sleeping bags and silently left the house. They got into their car and drove down to San Jose to join a growing line of non-resident aliens who hoped to get their work authorization later that morning. Before that, the INS had put six hours of sleeping and waiting on the pavement in front of the INS office in the cold of a Bay Area night. Only one of my friends would return successfully.
Any student on an F-1 visa with good standing is allowed to work for up to one year in the U.S. after finishing his or her studies. For this, you need an EAD card, which stands for Employment Authorization Something card. You can apply for this card only three months before you intend to graduate, and the processing time is currently between three and four months. So if you want to start work after graduation, you have a problem. Also, you cannot travel outside the country, because when you re-enter the country, you need to register as returning for work. If you re-enter as a tourist, your visa and employment authorization is forfeited.
So, tough luck if you want to work right after your studies or want to go on a vacation outside the United States? Not quite: To cope with the problem, you can apply for a temporary EAD card once the initial three months are over. This temporary card is good until you receive the real card: You can work and you can travel outside the country. To get this temporary card, you need to go through the ordeal that my two friends were facing when they lined up in front of the San Jose INS office.
My friends slept on the pavement, they waited with the other people, they probably got some frost burns, and at 7am they rose to the American flag. Having been warned to take it seriously, these non-resident aliens stood straight and with stern faces when the U.S. flag was raised. Unfortunately, one hour later, one of my friends had to leave without the EAD card. He had overlooked one more rule: You can only apply for a temporary EAD card if your start date of work has already passed. Expecting to be traveling before work started, he had moved the date at which work began to after his travels.
What about me? I was lucky. The day before I wanted to hit the pavement myself, I got my EAD card in the mail. It was the same day where I had also learned that I shouldn't go anyway, because I would not be allowed to receive a temporary card. This was because my case had already been approved. While this sounded good, there was a catch: It could take up to a month after the approval, so the hotline, for the INS to send me the card. During this time period I could not work and I could not travel.
Fortunately for me the prediction of having to wait for a month to receive my card did not turn out to be true. It showed up within a few days after approval. I'm free to travel now.
PS: This blog entry got its middle name from the story another non-resident alien wrote for Stanford's International Center. In his report, this poor bloke describes what happened to him after he had made it through the waiting ordeal: He was initially rejected because (like me) his case had been approved and he was not eligible any longer for a temporary card. Without giving away too much of his story, he managed to get his card that day, but not without plunking down another few hundred bucks in cash, on the spot. Due to my good luck, I escaped this fate.
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