L1 experiences post POE
 

Well, we made it

Left Madrid at 1230 on the 26th, flopped into the hotel at 10pm (PST) the same day near SFO.

POE was done in Philadelphia, the line was pretty long and it was a trainee that processed us. Both she and her supervisor were incredibly nice. Basic questions about length of stay, what I did for a job and where. They asked for our marriage certificate and didn't want to see any of our supporting documents (ie blanket petition etc). All in all i think it took about 10 minutes we had the privilege of being the trainee officers first L1. :thumbsup:

A lot of people were taken to secondary questioning (with spanish flights apparently that is pretty normal, a lot of people with generic names) as well as a few Indian couples as far as I could see.

Either way, we were through in under 1 hour from getting off the flight.

Setting up in SF was pretty easy going

Car: rented through company, waiting for leased car
Bank Account : with Bank Of America - very easy to set up, just provide passport and either a birth cert or credit card as secondary ID. Have to go into branch directly to update SS number
SS number : waited the 10 days, our name was not yet in the system - the nice guy at the SS office recommended waiting 1 more week, just in case but he said that it'll be really straight forward and we should have our numbers well within the 6 weeks processing time

my wife has started the EAD process with our lawyers, they are good and said that she should have it all by december.

all in all, we're settling in nicely to life in San Francisco. We love it here

Re: L1 experiences post POE
 

We moved out at the end of July on L1B/L2 (me) and initially stayed in Cupertino in temporary accommodation near my husband's work, though have since moved up to San Francisco (always our intention) and also love the city, though do miss lots about England too.

Sounds like you have everything in hand, but if you have been in and out of temporary accommodation at all don't forget to make sure you keep all the agencies you've been dealing with up to date with your address changes e.g we got into a muddle with the DMV as we moved half way through buying a car and registering for a license/test and our registration paperwork went to the old address and was a hassle to retrieve, and we hope the licence plates come to the new one!

My EAD took about 6-7 weeks to come through so I'm now looking for jobs. Hope your wife's comes through quickly too and good luck with settling in :)