A frenchy moving to SF: J1 Visa

Photo by Artur Westergren on Unsplash

I recently got my J1 Visa and will depart for San Francisco soon, thought I would share my J1 Visa experience with others in the hope that it will be useful to someone else.

Step 1: Finding work and a sponsor

The J1 Visa is split in different categories: the “Intern Visa” for performing a (paid or unpaid) internship, the “Trainee Visa” for performing a (paid or unpaid) training and the “Work and Travel Visa” if you want to do a seasonal job. I have the “Intern” variant and will focus on it in this post.

In order to get your visa you will need to find two things:

• a sponsor, in order to get your Visa you will need to find an entity that will act as a “sponsor”, this is required by the US law and will provide you with different services such as your Medical Insurance. In my case the sponsor is the CIEE, I used Parenthese Paris to help me for my visa (linked to the CIEE).
• an employer, you can’t even apply for a Visa without one, although your sponsor may propose you to find some job offerings for you. Your employer may or may not cover the different fees for you so be sure to check that.

Step 2: Paperwork

Now that you have your sponsor and employer you will have to fill many different forms (your employer will need to do that too). Time for some paperwork! What you need to fill may depend on your sponsor but you should have something similar to me.

1. Sponsor specific forms such as an application document and fee disclosures. You or your employer may have to pay the sponsor at this step (careful it isn’t cheap in most cases).
2. The Training Plan, this is definitely the most important piece of paper you will have to fill, normally your employer should do it for you but you better give a hand, it will mention what you will do during the internship, how much you will be paid and if you have some non monetary advantages (like a room to stay). Don’t forget that the J1 Visa is focused on cultural and experience aspects so don’t hesitate to focus on that when filling the Training Plan with your employer.
3. Additional documents to upload or send: you will likely be asked for things like a proof of your enrollment in a scholar institutions, your identity documents, proof of residency etc…

Pro tip: don’t hesitate to help your employer fill the Training Plan, this will show your motivation and speed things up.

Step 3: Waiting

Once the paperwork is done you will have to wait for your application to be evaluated and approved (or rejected but if you do things rights it should not happen). In the mean time, your sponsor may call you in order to verify that you can speak English, no need to worry they only check very basic stuff, in my case they contacted me and asked me some questions which I had to answer (in English of course 😉).

You’d better use this time to grab as much informations as you can regarding things like the city where you will stay, the lifestyle, how to move there, what you should think about…

Step 4: More paperwork

If everything went well you should receive a notification (after some time, I think it is one month in most cases) that your J1 Visa application has been approved! Time to party 🎊 🥳 , but not too much because this doesn’t mean your Visa is approved (heck).

Your sponsor approving your Visa application doesn’t mean your Visa is or will be approved.

Indeed, you now have to fill more papers (enjoy!) in order to get an appointment at the US embassy (or consulate) so that they can deliver you your Visa. Your sponsor will also send you some very important documents such as your DS2019 (or DS2020, DS2021 etc…), DS7002 and some papers regarding your medical insurance as well as some stuff to get a Social Security Number (SSN) later. You will need this documents to go to the embassy or arrive at the airport so be sure to have them on you when you take your plane.

Pro tip: always scan and keep a digital copy of this extremely important documents.

So now that you have all these papers you need to fill your DS160 form, they will ask you to upload some identity documents, what you will do on the US soil or even if you want to do some illegal stuff, they will also require you to quote two people (not from your family) that can confirm what you said on this form.

The most surprising questions, in the “Security and Background Information” section

You should lock a good part of your free time to fill the form, it is long and the website crashes all the times (click the save button before changing to a new page). Now you can follow your sponsor’s instructions and get your meeting at the US Embassy (or Consulate, in our case this is the same thing).

Step 5: Interview at the US Embassy

Honestly, that’s the most stressful step, at least it is the last one before getting your Visa. Indeed, you will discover you need to bring a lot of stuff with you: proof of resources (to confirm you can pay for your expenses once on the US soil), proof that you are returning to your home country… I had some troubles to find a good document to prove I wouldn’t try to stay there once my Visa expires, as I am a freelancer in France I took my INSEE record showing that I have an enterprise located in my home country.

Now, it is time to go to the Embassy! Be very careful to bring only what you need, if you bring a laptop or a big bag with you they won’t let you in (at least at the Paris Consulate). In Paris, they will search you two times at two different places, Americans don’t joke about security (and that’s a good thing).

Once you have passed all the checks (provided you took the right documents with you) you arrive (and wait for) the interview, you will be relived in no times, all the papers you carefully prepared, all the stress you encountered will be futile. Let me give you the example of my interview:

1. “Hello, why are you going to the United States?”, just tell them you are going on a J1 visa for an Internship, I started explaining more stuff and the guy interviewing me almost stoped me.
2. “Where will you perform your Internship?”, I bet he already knew it, my guess is that they want to check you know what’s written on your documents.
3. “What will you do?”, same.
4. “Congrats, your visa is approved you will receive it soon”, sorry?

No jokes, this is how it went. I am pretty sure it goes differently for everyone but really, you have nothing to fear if you did the right things before.

The interview at the embassy is simple and pretty straightforward if you come with everything you need.

Step 6: It is over!

And now, you can party 🎈🎉, for real this time. They will keep your passport and send it to you with your visa inside, just wait for it a few days.

Your sponsor may send you a few more stuff, in my case I had to do what the CIEE calls “the orientation” which will present you the different documents, give you some tips in case something bad happens etc… This all happens online.

If you haven’t done it already you may want to book a flight and prepare your bagages because that’s it, you are going to the USA for a long time 🛫🇺🇸. You should be authorized to arrive a few days before your visa is considered valid, in my case I preferred to arrive when my visa starts, let’s do things right 😉.

Things to do once you arrive

Just listing some stuff you will have to do ASAP when you are on the US soil, your sponsor may give you more or less the same list:

1. Register yourself in the SEVIS system by calling your sponsor.
2. Ask for your SSN number, you will need for various stuff later.
3. Open a local bank account, I think it is mandatory plus you don’t want to pay those absurd fees when receiving international payments that your bank makes you pay.
4. Get a mobile phone number on one of the main providers such as T-Mobile, ATT or Verizon, you don’t want to pay absurd fees if using your main phone number. In my case my french phone provider would even consider it an abusive use if I keep my SIM card more than 4 months abroad and terminate my subscription.
5. You may want to move money between your home country and the US, the naive way to do it would be to make a simple international transfer and pay exorbitant fees. Instead I would suggest you setup a TransferWise account, this will allow you to pay ways less fees when making an international transfer as they send your money transfers in the local currency and handle the conversion for you.

It is over! Hope this article will be useful to someone, maybe I will do a next one later. Don’t forget to clap and follow if you want more.