badlad

hi all

i stumbled across this forum whilst researching my move to the USA.

in a nutshell im seeing a america lady and its getting quite serious. im looking to move to the us where will be getting married.

ive read up on various sites about the green card / permanenet resident / citizen but my main concern is actually getting work in the USA.

im a serving police officer and wouldnt mind appying to do this in the usa when ive been there a little while and have a lay of the land, in the mean time tho i was hoping to do something like temp work or even manual labour work in california.

so my question is , is there much work out there ? i know the usa is being hit by the recession pretty hard as are most countries but in my experience if your willing to work you can usually find it, however i dont want to get over there and find that finding work is impossible. i should have a spousal green card so i will be legitimate and dont really want to be doing cash in hand stuff if i can help it.

many thanks

si

ian-mstm

Be aware that there's a difference between "getting work" and "getting work in my area of expertise".


Eventually, but not for a long while, you'll be eligible to serve in the US. Most law enforcement agencies require you to be a US citizen before serving, although there are some that require only permanent resident (= green card) status.


If you're not too fussy about what you do for a while, yes... lots of work.


If you arrive on a K-1 (fiancé) visa, you won't have a GC for at least 6 months after marriage and after submitting your adjustment of status (AOS) paperwork. However, you will likely have work authorization about 90 days after submitting the AOS paperwork.

By the way, there's no such thing as a "spousal green card"... it's just a "green card" regardless of how you came by it.

Ian

kens1036

Hi

I was a police officer in California before taking an early retirement and moving to France in 2004. The previous post is correct, you will need to be a US citizen to apply to a police department in CA and most other states. CA has the most stringent training standards and requirements of any state in the US; Even police officers moving from other states with years of experience have to attend a 6 month POST (Peace Officer Standards and Training) training academy. You most definitely will. In addition, most agencies tend to cap the maximum applicants age at around 35 although this is never really publicized. Unless you were on one of the armed response teams in the UK or have such a high level of specialized training (ie; specific training related to terrorists incidents, etc) your best bet is to re-invent yourself and try something new. CA is a crazy state with surpisingly high-levels of crime and violence. As a solo patrol officer in a relatively crime free city of 100,000, I carried a semi-auto pistol, a pump-action shotgun and an AR-15 assault rifle in my patrol car. CA cops are the best trained and equipped, but they need all of the tools and training to deal with crap on a daily basis.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Ken

penguinsix

It is also worth pointing out that California is basically the "Greece" of the United States. It's nearly pointless to relocate there if you are looking for a government job (i.e. police officer, teacher, etc). There are huge layoffs and massive cuts underway.