Slight change of plan

Although London was loads of fun, and I really enjoyed living so close to a bunch of good friends, the weather was getting a bit miserable, and repeated conversations along the lines of “I’m really lucky to be able to work from anywhere” made me think a winter away was in order.

So I was really looking forward to my trip to San Francisco to see friends, followed by a few months in Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, it seems the US immigrations officials didn’t believe that a chap going to a Carribean Island with a rucksack full of flippers, boardies and diving magazines could possibly be going for a holiday, rather than doing gainful work.

We’ve been really careful to make sure that everything we’re doing is above board from an immigration and tax viewpoint, but despite my best efforts, and after 4 hours of interrogation at San Francisco International, I was put back on a flight to the UK, not to return until my O-1 visa comes through.

On the way back, I was considering writing the idea off and hunkering down for the winter in London, but I’m all set up for some Christmas sun now, so decided instead to look for a cheap flight somewhere when I got off the plane.

I’ve always been drawn to the idea of rocking up at an airport with nothing but some innoculations and a passport, and seeing which crazy last-minute cancellation deals the airlines are offering. Word of advice: don’t. Everyone was very boring, and there were no last minute deals to be had – the best I found was £900 to Cape Town.

Instead I decided to tick off another continent, and found a nice cheap EasyJet ticket to Marrakech for tomorrow (Saturday) morning.

Although not quite as warm as Puerto Rico, it should be a more interesting, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll probably stay in a hostel for a few nights at the start of the trip, then get a little apartment, same as I did in Nicaragua, if it makes sense.

Temporary lull in the visa storm

It was getting to be quite touch and go for a while whether I’d manage to make it back out to the US for Pat and Emilie’s wedding (on the weekend of the 22nd August) and Burning Man after it.

Luckily, just as I was about to abandon all hope, two things happened. Firstly, Beth – our neighbour at Burning Man last year – suggested I try to get a second passport as my original was basically “stolen” by the US embassy. I was impressed that the IPS is enlightened enough to allow frequent travelers to easily get a second passport for just this purpose – a lovely change from the glacial pace of other bureaucracies.

Secondly, I got a response from the US embassy about the fate of my original passport. Because the visas we’re going for are quite unusual, I’m relatively young and don’t have a Nobel Prize, they’re checking with the USCIS that they really did mean to approve my application. My lawyer says that in every case this has happened to his clients before, it’s been a simple confirmation from the US, and the embassy grant the visa with no drama. So, it’s good news that this situation has come up before, it’s good news that it’s always ended happily before and it’s good news that they’re not doing a time-consuming full review. It’s even better news that in the meantime they’ve couriered my passport straight back to me; I didn’t even need to get a second one in the end!

So, the plan is to fly back to San Francisco on Monday, across to Connecticut for the wedding, then back to San Francisco to get ready for our desert adventure at the end of August.

Yet more visa shenanigans

Latest update from the wonderful world of US federal bureaucracy.

In February, I applied for an Iternational Tax Identification Number (ITIN). We’d done our research, had all our forms filled out, signed by people at our bank, notarised by US attorneys, etc, etc.. What could go wrong?

Well, it turns out that in the period of us sending off the application, and them receiving it, the IRS changed the rules for what was required.

The pre-March ‘09 version is:

Paperwork from the bank stating that you are receiving
distributions from a deposit account which are subject to IRS
information reporting and/or federal tax withholding during the
current tax year. An acknowledged (signed by the bank) copy of
the Form W-9 that you provided to the bank must be attached to
your Form W-7.

The post-March ‘09 version:

A signed letter from the bank on their official letterhead,
displaying your name and account number, stating that you have
opened an individual deposit account which is subject to IRS
information reporting and/or federal tax withholding on the interest
generated during the current tax year.

Notice that new bit asking for a signed letter from the bank on official paper? Yeah, we didn’t do that, because when we were applying, in February, they weren’t asking for it!

When the IRS opened our applications, they continued to do everything in their power to screw us by deciding to apply the new rules. The rules that had come into place after we’d applied.

So! Our best option now is to re-apply according to the new rules.

Going back to the UK in a big sulk on Monday.

Visa saga part 3: tax records special!

My trip to the US Embassy was quite an experience.

The debacle really started while organising a time to go to the embassy and get the O-1 visa processed. Visa petitioners have to make a pre-arranged appointment (so far, so gravy), these appointments can only occur at 8am (inconvenient, but acceptable), and the appointment “hot-line” costs £1.20 per minute. One pound twenty per minute!? I was living on that much per day in Nicaragua.

On top of that, the ludicrously expensive phone call culminates in you authorising them to take a further $131 as a Machine Readable Visa fee, whatever that is. What are they doing which costs $131? Doesn’t machine-readable just mean a barcode? Specially formatted text, like we have on passports? An RFID tag at a push?

Onto the actual appointment itself. One of the warnings included in the appointment confirmation is that you are required to wait outside “even in inclement weather”, so I was quite pleased to find it a clement, if nippy, morning in Grosvenor Square.

Other warnings include the restrictions on electronics in the embassy: no mobile phones, laptops; even USB sticks are verboten. After enjoying my traditional English queue, the security drone’s eyes lit up when I produced a few coins and a pair of headphones from my pocket before going through the metal detector.

“You can’t take those into the embassy, sir”, he japed. “Ha ha, good show”, I chortled heartily. Unfortunately, the steely, lifeless eyes framed in his frozen, mirthless visage made it all too clear that he was actually serious. The headphones posed a threat to national security.

“Those could be used as a transmitting device”, he asserted with a mind-bending mix of inaccuracy and self-assurance. Not wishing to get down to the brass tacks of just how egregiously incorrect he was, I conceded defeat, and paid £5 (five sterling) to store the headphones in a plastic bag for an hour.

Security checkpoint cleared, I was in the building. After a modest wait, I was called for an interview with a chap from Texas. He seemed perfectly happy with all the O-1 visa stuff; perfectly happy until it came to tax records. As I’d spent a few months in the US last year, paid for in part by my company, it now appears that full tax records for me and the company are required reading for some lucky State Department employee.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we really have any tax records… We haven’t paid anyone any money, and I haven’t been paid any money, so there are no IRS filings. We have an ID for the company and an ID for me, with no documents associated with either. Still! I suppose in a way this is what they’re looking for: proof that I haven’t been paid. It just seems a little fallacious to prove something by producing a lack of evidence.

So this means that I’ll need to come back to the UK again, after my trip to Austin. On the bright side, it should be super-simple from here on – the hard part is over. All I need to do is mail in all the required documents (or lack of them), in a nice big envelope to really emphasise the volume of tax records which don’t exist, wait for them to check that the envelope really is empty, stamp the old passport and I’ll be heading back to Cali.

Quite a week

Even for one with as rock and roll a lifestyle as I, this last week as been pretty eventful. And surprisingly, all good events.

We’ve taken massive steps in partnering with two huge companies, got good coverage in TechCrunch, various venture capital firms are getting very chummy, we’ve sorted out my attendance of the South-by-South-West conference, as well as Microsoft’s MIX event in Las Vegas, pushed out a major new release of the product and, last but not least, I got a visa.

It’s at times like these that I appeal to my rationality and remind myself that we’ve been working, and working hard, towards all these things for a while. There’s no such thing as karma; at least I hope not, or next week’s going to be crap!

US visas: why so easy?

As I expected all along, my O-1 visa came through today, so I am now free to live and work in the United States for the next three years.

To be honest, I’m a little surprised at how easy it is to come by a work visa nowadays: although my case was a no-brainer, perhaps they should think about raising the bar. Perhaps 2 Nobel prizes rather than just 1 would keep out the riffraff?

Either way it is great news and it’s a massive relief for it to be sorted; even not getting the visa would have been better than interminable limbo.

I’m sending waves of good energy and positive karma to my co-founder Amir and lawyer Chris for all their help.

US visas: why so difficult?

More doom and gloom from our visa lawyer, I’m afraid.

A few of the recent O-1 applications he’s made have been denied, unfortunately, despite them having strong cases to make; cases as strong as ours will be…

It’s probably to do with the economic downturn – the pressure to defend American jobs is definitely growing as unemployment increases. The technology sector should be relatively solid, but with news like Microsoft cutting 5000 US jobs, I can see the Citizenship and Immigration Services raising the bar a little bit, whether implicitly or explicitly, deliberately or subconsciously.

I suppose they want to give those laid off MS workers a chance to “get first pick” of all the other jobs out there, and ensure that us job-snatching interlopers don’t stage a bloodless coup of the labour market.

Unfortunately, that makes absolutely no sense at all. For people like me and my co-founders, people whose stated purpose is to start a business, create jobs and grow the economy, being denied access robs a country of the potential upside (albeit small in each individual case) and greatly increases our chances of failure. Oh and if we fail, we’ll unfortunately be taking a bunch of US investment capital to the grave with us, further destabilising the situation.

The idea that not letting us do a startup in the US will somehow give American entrepreneurs an advantage is patently bollocks. In fact, lively, varied, cosmopolitan environments – the sort of environment you encourage and nuture by… well, for starters letting people into the country – give rise to fantastic ideas. Fantastic ideas that US industry would benefit from, not suffer.

Not only that, but barring me from your country is not going to make it any harder for me to put my product in front of your residents. I’m not going to be leaving a hole that your own home-grown entrepreneurs will be able to fill. It’s just going to make my life extremely awkward.

It smacks of intellectual protectionism, and is retarded for all the same reasons as economic protectionism, plus a few more.

What’s the thought process here?

So, these people with good degrees, solid work history, ambition and no criminal record want to come to my country to give jobs to my peers? If they succeed, everyone gets rich. If they fail, a small number of wealthy people lose money they knew might be lost?

Not a chance! Go and blight some other country with your presence and tax revenue!