

I am an edge case - gnosis
http://briancarper.net/blog/546/i-am-an-edge-case

======
quant18
The nice thing about living in Hong Kong is that most of these stupid edge
cases have been sanded out of the system already. Probably because they
doesn't just affect immigrants, but "local" people too (the 10% of the
population who emigrated in the 80s, but kept their flats and bank accounts
cuz they're intending to come back sometime). I've never had a problem with
foreign mailing addresses, or my name being too long for the input field (like
in Korea where they give you 4 characters max), or needing a citizen's ID
number to complete transactions (you can use your passport number for
literally everything from government forms down to supermarket loyalty cards),
or any of that nonsense.

It's always a rude reminder of "normal" to deal with businesses and government
bureaux in other countries. Like "another Brian" said in the blog's comments,
the third world isn't even the worst in this regard, cuz at least there you
can rely on personal relationships, or at worst bribes. It's the less
efficient countries of the first world, where clerks generally won't take
bribes and don't care who your friend's daddy is, but will go through their
triplicate forms at the speed they please (and make a series of blocking calls
to you to clarify each piece of information when you don't fit into their
check boxes), and close the office at 4 PM, client be damned.

------
dotBen
Ok, how's this for an edge case...

I'm a Canadian citizen who was born and lived in UK all his life who lives and
works (legally) in the US for 4 years on a non-resident TN visa,

I'm not allowed to be considered even a temporary resident in the US despite
the fact I've lived here for 4 years, oh but _I am_ considered resident for
tax purposes (ie I pay tax here and do a US tax return - but no other
residency benefits).

When I arrive back in the country I have to say on my landing card that I'm
temporally visiting the US and that I'm a resident of the United Kingdom.
However, I don't pass the "residency test" of the UK as I've not lived there
for 4 years. Technically I'm not resident of any country, which is kinda
unsettling. And I'm 'temporally visiting the US' in that I drive out of the
airport in the car that I own here and drive home to my apartment where I live
with all my furniture and all my stuff in it.

US Immigration finds it difficult to accept that I am a Canadian citizen (and
have Canadian passport) yet I've never lived in Canada nor do I have a
Canadian SSN nor do I have an address in Canada nor have I filed a tax return
there (my father is Canadian but I was born in UK).

I can't get any loans in the US as I don't have residency (although I don't
really want a loan) and I can't buy property in the US, although I do have a
US credit rating (I have a US SSN) and I managed to get a US credit card by
already having an Amex when I lived abroad, and they carried the relationship
over to US card (and started to add up my credit score against it).

I believe I traverse a lot of terms and conditions for things like insurance
because I'm not a resident and end up being considered in the same category as
an illegal immigrant - where the companies want to take their money and turn a
blind eye to lack of documentation. Except that I am in the US legally and do
have documentation, I'm just not a resident.

The visa I am on has no route to Green Card and so I will be in this limbo
status indefinitely.

~~~
cperciva
_US Immigration finds it difficult to accept that I am a Canadian citizen (and
have Canadian passport) yet I've never lived in Canada nor do I have a
Canadian SSN nor do I have an address in Canada nor have I filed a tax return
there (my father is Canadian but I was born in UK)._

There's an easy fix for that. Get a Social Insurance Number and file a tax
return. As a non-resident with no Canadian-source income, your tax return
should take less than 5 minutes to fill out, and you won't owe any taxes.

~~~
dotBen
Yeah but why should I do that? I have no business (in the personal,
administrative sense of the word) in Canada.

~~~
cperciva
It would make US immigration happier with you. :-)

------
sounddust
As an American living in France, I can sympathize. Dealing with the
bureaucracy here for any reason is a nightmare.

One piece of advice for those in this situation: get the best American Express
card that you can qualify for. It doesn't solve all your problems, but there
are many cases where it magically just works. One example is ordering things
online: AmEx is much more flexible about the shipping/billing address not
matching up, and as a result I can often use it with a shipping _and_ billing
address from France with no problems.

In addition, their customer service is fantastic, and they can often give you
good advice or help you out when you get stuck in these situations.

~~~
quant18
My favourite Amex customer service story is closely related to this expat
edge-case theme.

I was flying back to Hong Kong from a business trip in Japan. I'm a citizen of
a third country, but live in HK. The Japan Airlines desk agent, and her
manager, refused to issue me a boarding pass, because I didn't have a "re-
entry permit" for Hong Kong. Japan and many other major countries have this
concept for non-citizens, so I'm guessing whoever wrote the Japan Airlines
"avoid Fooland Immigration Department fining us to pay for deporting our
Barlandese passenger, for all values of Foo and Bar" checklist explained it
badly and made it sound like a _universal_ requirement or something. But in
Hong Kong, there's no such thing as a re-entry permit --- they give you one
visa, stamp it "Journey completed" when you arrive, and then let you come and
go as you please.*

This was in the days before WiFi in airports, so I couldn't just surf to
gov.hk and show her the page that says "no re-entry visa required". And it was
a Friday night so I couldn't phone the consulate either. At my wit's end, I
called Amex --- my employer had paid for the ticket with an Amex card. Their
customer service guy commiserated with me for a bit, and said he'd make a
phone call. After a bit of a wait, a Cathay Pacific (major Hong Kong airline)
manager showed up with a copy of the Hong Kong immigration regulations.
Brilliant and creative solution --- and it forcefully demonstrated to me the
value of filling customer-facing positions with creative and talented people
rather than checklist-wielding drones who you don't screen as carefully as
your "core function" staff.

* Years later, the HK gov't changed the wording; now it's a tiny bit clearer that you don't need a re-entry permit:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:n5y5QqS...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:n5y5QqSqxSIJ:gia.info.gov.hk/general/200609/07/P200609070201_0201_18951.doc&cd=1&hl=zh-
TW&ct=clnk&gl=hk)

------
dalore
Some of the comments are just wrong:

> You have to live at least 6 months in the UK to open a bank account or apply
> for a credit card.

I moved to the UK and this was not the case. It was difficult to open a bank
account but not because you need to live here 6 months but because the banks
require all sorts of identification which you normally don't have as a recent
immigrant (stuff like proof of address).

------
mbrubeck
The worst thing was when I moved from the US to Canada one year, and from
Canada to the US the next. Both years I had to file tax returns in both
countries, and various amounts had to be prorated based on the number of days
of the year that I was a Canadian resident. And my Canadian wages had to be
converted to USD based on the exchange rates from each day I received a
paycheck....

And yeah, none of my US banks or credit card companies could handle my
Canadian address on their web sites.

~~~
danbmil99
Moving from NYC to CA involves a bunch of state tax bullshit. Each state is so
broke they have insanely aggressive collection policies, and acc. to my
accountant they can end up both claiming > 11% of your income based on
overlapping residency rules.

------
dublinclontarf
On a similar note, I made a payment to my creditcard back home(from China)
using SWIFT method of international payments(it's an interbank payment
system).

On the form there is a section to leave a mesasge or comment for the reciever.
My credit cards co told me to put only my CC No. with no spaces or nothing
else.

Told my wife all this (wrote it down) and she went to make the payment (she's
Chinese, it's just easier that she does this kind of thing, from a paperwork
efficiency point of view.

So of coarse she also puts my name after the card number. The next week I call
the company, they can't find the payment, dissapeared into their system. POOF,
gone. Will be spending the next few weeks making international calls to chase
that one up.

They're system is sooooo brittle.

------
btilly
The one thing that I didn't hear which I expected to was confusion about
whether forms should be month/day/year or day/month/year. Being a Canadian
living in the USA, I never remember which is which in which place, and just
want to use the ISO standard YYYY-MM-DD instead.

~~~
kasterma
Monday: Mon(th)da(y)y(ear) Doesn't get much worse for a mnemonic, but works
for me.

~~~
GFischer
That doesn't help the original post: he doesn't remember which is for the US
and which is for Canada.

~~~
xiaoma
How about this?

Monday is the 'merican mnemonic.

------
jimbokun
"The friendly folk at H&R Block had no idea how to handle my situation."

I was shocked when I went to H&R block, and all they did was type data into
the software on the screen in front of them. I realized I could do that
myself, and have used TurboTax since, which has worked well for me needs. (I'm
sure if I had more complex need, a real tax accountant would be important, but
I don't think there is any case where H&R Block is the right choice.)

------
cperciva
_No credit_

Not as much of a problem as you think it is. Canadian companies can pull US
credit reports -- like your bank did -- and do so on a regular basis. Not so
regular that every car salesman will know how to do it; but any large company
will have figured out how to handle this, even if not everybody at the company
knows that it's possible.

------
lionhearted
Great post. By the way, I have the answer to this:

> No credit

I had the same problem because I avoided credit cards when I was younger
because I thought it was a bad habit, and I was self-employed so I couldn't
verify any salary. It meant I had no credit and I got rejected for low end
credit cards - a yucky cycle. Eventually a smart bank manager I knew gave me a
plan to fix this:

I went into the bank and got a "secured loan" - what you'll do is deposit
about $1000 into the bank (or whatever amount you want) and get a CD for it
that you can't touch. It'll pay something like 2% in today's climate. Then you
get a loan secured by that CD for something like 2.4% - seriously, the
interest rate on a secured loan is very low because the bank has your CD
sitting there and you can't get it... there's virtually no risk.

Okay, now, have your loan set to auto pay so you don't have to worry about it.
You'll get 12 "paid on time" records in the next year and it'll cost you very
little. Actually, it's a little better than that even, because it's a
different kind of credit from a credit card. Credit cards are "revolving",
this sort of loan is something else... so it'll permanently boost your credit
a little bit for the next 7 years until it falls off your record.

I had no credit. Got a secured loan like this. 3 months later, was able to get
a crappy credit card from Capital One, very low limit, high interest, no
benefits. Just charged some small purchases to it and paid in full each month.
After a perfect year between the secured loan and the Capital One card, was
able to get an AMEX gold card with no limit on which was important because I
was having business-related payments that'd sometimes be a lot in a short
period of time. Also wound up getting two free one way international flights
from the points from the card. So yeah - secured loan is the way to go. The
difference you pay between the CD's interest rate and your loan interest rate
is well worth it to have credit.

~~~
hugh3
Yeah, when I first moved to the US the bank offered me a "secured credit card"
deal whereby I would lend them my money for no interest and they would lend
some of it back to me at some nonzero rate. I told them that they could go
fuck themselves, and if they wanted proof of my creditworthiness they can damn
well phone up my bank in my home country and ask them about me.

Four and a half years later I still have no US credit cards and no US credit
rating. I haven't really found a need for it, though locals occasionally look
shocked at the idea.

~~~
lionhearted
> Four and a half years later I still have no US credit cards and no US credit
> rating. I haven't really found a need for it, though locals occasionally
> look shocked at the idea.

This might turn out to be very penny wise and pound foolish. Sooner or later
you might want to buy a property to live in or for investment reasons, and
oftentimes you'll only realize you want to buy a place six months or a year
before you want to buy. That's not long enough to build a good credit rating
to get a decent mortgage - you're very possibly throwing away thousands of
dollars of your future money to save yourself... like $20 now.

And you don't pay interest on a credit card unless you carry a balance - pay
in full each month. I only spent $150 on a credit card once because it had
excellent benefits and I got $600 of free airfare from that card. I've paid $0
in fees or carrying a balance besides that in my life, aside from that $20 for
a secured loan. Why not build a credit score? - there's no real downside, it
doesn't take long to do, and might make a big difference for you later.

~~~
yason
Just curious, no pun intended: Why is it so difficult to get a credit card in
the U.S., the land of credit cards itself and, for what I've read, where
credit card applications seem to virtually pour in all the time among junk
mail?

Credit cards in Finland are the third payment option: debit cards and cash are
the two most important ways to pay. But you can get a credit card quite
easily, and you will definitely get one if you have regular income.

I got my first credit card when I was maybe 20 or 21. The reason was that I
was going to a vacation abroad and didn't want to carry loads of cash with me.
I just walked into my bank and asked for one; as soon as I told them I was
permanently employed and had regular income, it was no big deal. It didn't
matter I had only started at this job a few months earlier and I had no
existing credit record whatsoever (no loans, no credit cards, no other
credit). I didn't have to proove it, just tell them my income and some other
facts and sign below.

If I had been a Swedish citizen living in Finland, I think it wouldn't have
been no different. You have income, a bank account and an address: that's
probably it. I can easily understand if you had _bad_ credit record but not
having one at all being a showstopper really puzzles me. Most people pay their
credit card bills anyway so any random newcomer to the business is probably a
safe bet.

~~~
hugh3
The problem, I think, is that the US credit rating system is formalised. As
far as I know, in most countries your creditworthiness is secret information
which the banks may or may not pass among themselves. In the US it's all
wrapped up in a three-digit number which anyone can access -- this means that
other indications of creditworthiness tend not to be taken into account.

Come to think of it, the overreliance on the number could be another
consequence of the US's obsession with race: if your bank takes anything into
account _except_ the magical number then you leave yourself open to a racial
discimination lawsuit.

Oh yeah, and the third problem is that most adults without credit histories
seem to be illegal immigrants, who make very little money and can vanish at
any time. There are so many illegal immigrants in the legal immigrants are a
tiny afterthought.

~~~
yason
This is interesting.

So, just guessing, if you have no credit record, then even if you have a
successful business up and running and you can prove that you do, and how much
money you make, and that you have an established life with no intentions to
take a hike to Mexico next week, the banks may be forced to ignore all that
and rely on the credit rating only?

And the illegal immigrant who _is_ planning to scam the banks could do this
money deposit thing mentioned to build up credit rating out of nowhere, wait a
little, then apply for credit cards, max them out, and leave?

------
barrydahlberg
I once had to visit a doctor in Japan. Everything went fine until they went to
print me a prescription and tried to enter my name. After explaining that no,
I can't provide my name in kanji they went ahead with it in English.

My name broke the layout of the form on their screen and when the prescription
was printed only the first half was shown because the rest ran off the side of
the paper.

I guess they don't get many foreigners showing up at the local family doctors
clinic.

------
sjs
No need to quote chequing and cheque. Them words is real.

Gotta love how Americans go against the grain by changing spellings, dropping
letters, etc. Then they try to spin it like everyone _else_ is odd for
spelling it differently. We're on to you! ;-)

~~~
alnayyir
"go against the grain"

Right now on the front page there's a linguistics article stating that it was
the British-English that diverged more, not the American version.

So, let's talk who 'changed' when you drop received pronunciation.

~~~
weeksie
While 'going against the grain' might not be the correct way to phrase it, you
have to reali[sz]e that the entire rest of the English speaking world spells
things like that. England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, etc. . .

As far as the divergence in spelling is concerned that's almost entirely due
to Noah Webster who purposefully spelled things in a more Germanic way because
he found the English spellings with the French influences to be
distasteful.(1)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster#Blue_Backed_Spelle...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster#Blue_Backed_Speller)

~~~
_delirium
It doesn't go against most of your point, but the reali[sz]e example in
particular isn't Webster's fault or an example of U.S. divergence--- it used
to be spelled -ize in the UK too, and didn't really shift completely until the
past few decades. It's still the form preferred by the Oxford English
Dictionary: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling>

On the others, there's a bit more of a continuum than everyone using the
British spellings, though I'll agree the Commonwealth probably tilts towards
more similarity with the UK than with the US. But Canadian spelling,
especially, aligns with U.S. usage in a lot of respects: it generally uses
-ize rather than -ise endings ("realize", not "realise"), and sides with the
Americans on a lot of specific one-off differences ("tire", not "tyre"),
though it sides with the U.K. spellings on -our vs. -or ("colour", not
"color").

~~~
stan_rogers
That depends entirely on whether you were educated before the Canadian Press
Manual of Style declared "ize" to be their preference. They weren't nearly as
successful with the or/our thing, but folks of my vintage or older almost
always use "ise" while kids (from my perspective, thirty-somethings are
"kids") only slightly favour "ize" -- and that's probably just to get rid of
the damned squiggles from the spell-checker. (The rule of thumb is derived
from exercice/exercise -- the noun form ends in "ice", a noun, the verb in
"ise", which contains "is". I believe we Canadians are the only bunch who
actually used the "ice" spelling to any degree, and it was primarily in the
context of exercices at the ends of textbook chapters, which one duly carried
out in an "exercice book" -- call it a notebook if you aren't a fifty-ish
-year-old Canadian.) There has yet to be created an app that ships with a
proper Canadian English spelling dictionary -- I have a text file that
contains nothing but words that get flagged by either US or UK English
dictionaries but are, and have been, standard Canadian spellings. Open it in
the current nightmare app with the best-fit dictionary (US, UK, Canadian or
generic English) and blindly click "add" till the prompt finally goes away.

------
rgrieselhuber
I ran into stuff like this all the time when I lived in Japan. Governments and
businesses have a long time to go before they catch up with the realities of
globalization.

