[nylug-talk] OT: German talking

[Miguel Gonzalez Castaños]

Peter C. Norton escribió:
> On Wed, Sep 12, 2007 at 12:26:00AM -0400, Eric Bachman wrote:
>   
>> Yes, live humans translate much better than Google!
>>
>> I would suggest: plan some time to review your spoken English. With your 
>> background,
>> I'd assume that after 1-2 months in the states, you would be able to 
>> converse in English.
>> My guess on jobs is that yes, they are to be found.
>>     
>
> The visa situation, however, is difficult. If you have skills it's
> possible that a company will want to sponsor you for your visa (there
> is a mild shortage in high-end unix admins in NYC) and that can be a
> difficult barrier.
>
> If you want to send me a resume (aka a CV) in private email, I could
> tell you, for instance, if my employer would be interested in your
> skill set.
>   
I second that, the visa situation for H1b visas is difficult, the yearly 
cap is reached quite soon (there were plans of rising the cap?). The 
paperwork is filed in April/May and visas are handed in 
September/October, so the best time to come to the US is 
January/February, maybe under the waiving program of tourist, that 
allows Europeans stay up 3 months in the US as tourists. Sooner or later 
you would need to come phisically to the US for an interview, so since 
you need to improve your English, that could be a good choice.

If you have money, you could come to the US, take some English lessons 
while you are start looking for a job. If you convince an employer to 
hire you and go for the visa process (it's lengthy), then you will 
return to Germany to go to the US embassy to get your visa. My 
impression when searching for jobs in the US was that the most of the 
companies willing to sponsor working visas are concentrated in the San 
Francisco area and in NY. Myself I was looking around the Washington DC 
area, and that's very tough since there are a lot of government agencies 
and most of the companies that work for them require security 
clearances, which although not impossible, for a foreigner is more 
difficult to get.

Those are the main steps, of course I skipped the low-level details.

Good luck

Miguel