·:[ Arik’s blog ]:·
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Hello folks

Long time no write, I know; I’ve been busy relocating to the United States, and… well, obviously, just an excuse. I’m lazy, is all.

Currently I am a legal alien in the US. What’s more, I don’t have a social security number.

To the uninitiated: A social security number (a.k.a. SSN a.k.a. SS#) is key to leading a normal life in the United States. Beyond the obvious - you can’t be (legally) employed in the US without one - it is also a primary key to a huge database that contains everyone’s credit history. This credit history is a database of events that happened during your financial existence in the US - if your check bounced, it’s there, if you took a loan and paid it on time - it’s there. For good and for bad, this credit history determines if you are trustworthy.

Needless to say, worse than having a bad credit history is having a blank one, and worse than that is not having any credit history at all… and no SSN means no credit history.

Yet I rent an apartment, opened a bank account and have a phone line, ADSL and utilities (gas and electricity).

Apartment

Renting an apartment was maybe the most difficult task. Finding one was pretty much the same as in Israel: You shop around for an apartment (there are great Internet databases for that, my favorite by far is Apartment Ratings). You see another one and another one and yet another one, until you get the feel for what’s available in your price range. Then you see one that you like and come in to close the deal.

The major difference is that in this area, most apartments are rented by apartment complexes - a holding company that manages 50-250 apartments in a specific area, also called ‘a community’. There are also, depending on the community, facilities common to the community - like a laundry room, a pool, a jacuzzi, a sauna, a gym, a common room - you get the idea.

Another difference is that apartments here are valued by 3 parameters: Number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms and the area (in square feet). In Israel it’s usually the total number of rooms and the area (in square meters). So a 1 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment would be a 2 room apartment in Israel.

Well, here when you want an apartment you pay a holding deposit and an application fee, fill an application, and then (if you’re approved) you sign the lease and move in. For me the application was the most… interesting part, as it had the ubiquitous field ‘SSN’, which I (obviously) left blank. Which (obviously) brought a lot of questions: Why don’t I have one, where did I live before, what am I doing for a living, why, how, when and what. And they’ll have to get it approved with their manager and his manager and all that good stuff.

Eventually, a phone call with my employer - oh, yes, my future employer, since they can’t hire me officially yet - and a copy of my offer letter on the company letterhead did the trick. Except that I had to pay double-deposit. And have a month-to-month lease. But I do have an apartment now, 1 bedroom 1 bathroom, 750 square feet cottage apartment (which means ground level, no one above or below me). Cool!

Energy

Energy here means electricity and gas. Same company for both - PG&E. Very nice people, running a tight ship. I didn’t actually have to have anything installed or turned on - just transferred in my name, so I pay for it. And guess what question they ask you as soon as you call in. That’s right. And I don’t have it. No, I don’t have a California driver’s licence number. Passport? Sure.

Pretty smooth huh? Not really. My passport number doesn’t really induce any kind of credibility, so I have to pay a deposit. Luckily it’s a small one ($150). But it turns out that, yes, if you have a physical address, you can set up an energy account with PG&E even if you don’t have a social security number. Cool!

Good luck trying to pay your bill, though. Can’t use cash, can’t use a credit card. It has to be either a cheque, or an automatic deduction from my bank account. Got to have me one of them bank accounts.

Phone + Internet

The phone company servicing this area is SBC. Trying to fill up their online application quickly brings me face to face with the dreaded SSN question so I pick up the phone and call them. The lady on the line is very nice, and waves off my lack of unique identifier: It’s perfectly okay, it seems, so not have an SSN! I feel overwhelming joy for a moment, and then she informs me that I will have to pay a deposit. Yep, got used to it by now. No problem, just bill me on the next billing cycle.

ADSL? Sure. But since I don’t have an SSN, I have to go on “autopay” on either a bank account (really gotta have one) or a credit card. They do take credit cards! I nonchalantly give my Israeli VISA card number, and after a missed digit and correction - it goes through! I am optimistic. ADSL service will commence in a week’s time.

Bank account

This was by far the thing I feared the most. I have heard about banks tightening up the rules regarding accounts for aliens since September 11th 2001, that you have to have an SSN to open an account, and that most likely I will be denied. I even planned on trying all the banks in the area in search for one that would let me open an account and I would somehow slide my lack of SSN by. Some people recommended that I say I have a ‘temporary’ SSN (no such thing) and give a fake yet valid-looking number, which I was not going to do.

So the other day I stepped into the local bank branch, sat in line and waited. 20 minutes later, a nice smiling lady came to get me. I wanted to open an account - and she was happy to oblige. Then came the expected question, and my now routine answer.

“Oh, not a problem. I was in the exact same situation when I first came to the states. Don’t worry I’ll fix this. Do you have two forms of ID?”

I had a hard time hiding my surprise. Is it going to be that easy? Oh yes. Almost.

This lady had the expertise and the know-how. She really knew her way around the bank’s computer system. While requiring about twice the normal amount of work from her, she has ways to dupe the system into opening an account for me. The SSN field she fills in with a fake number (all SSN starting with a 9 are fake). Most address fields don’t accept international addresses, so she fills a dummy address and the actual address in the extra space for the 2nd address line. She goes back and forth in the system, back and forth, until the system verifies the fake information and lets her change it back to the real one. She let me look at her screen as she does that, commenting on how silly the system is and how she has to cheat it again and again. She feeds in the forms of ID I have, and enters lots of data, and when the system prompts her with a rejection of the data she just bypasses it by feeding the data in some comment field and filling in blank or bogus information, and fixing it back later.

I was at a loss of words, other than the occasional pleasantry. I was facing an internal hacker! A bank employee which has the unique know-how and willingness to bypass the bank’s built in protections and bend the system to her ways. Amazing.

So now I have a bank account, and I can actually pay my rent when it is due. Just need to transfer some funds from my Israeli account, and I’m all set!

Take care