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Comment by asdf_snar | Hacker News Reader

I can only say this sounds extremely accurate based on my own experience of F-1, OPT, H1B. The anxiety resonates as well. I remember getting my work authorization card and noticing that my first name and last name were switched. I remember sitting down at a train station and nearly breaking down into tears, because I was certain this mistake wouldn't be tolerated, that I'd lose my job, and have to leave the country.

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Agreed.

When I was getting my green card, USCIS actually lost the one they had already printed. A very kafkaesque situation for which there didn't appear to be a clear process to resolve. I knew I didn't have to leave the country over it like you, but I had no idea if I'd be able to start in my new job, which came with a very significant, almost life changing, pay raise. The USCIS officer I went to see about the situation basically told me "not my problem", and nothing else.

It all turned out ok in the end, but the week or two I didn't know what would happen were the most stressful days of my entire life.

Reminds me of the time the authorities forgot to sign my passport application at my citizenship ceremony. They sent me an email (!) saying I had to refill the form and pay the fee again and send it to some random office address. I went to the local govt office where this had to be notarised and forwarded and they told me perhaps 10 times that this was not normal procedure and that they took no responsibility for the outcome. I replied the same number of times that I had received these instructions (which I showed them) and if I didn't follow them I wouldn't get a passport.

It was stupid and aggravating. You could see on their faces that they thought if they told me just one more time that I'd come to my senses and do it the "approved" way. They never did accept that I had no choice in the matter but eventually accepted my application and I got my passport a while later.

My green card had my name correct but someone else's face printed on it! Unfortunately they didn't look at all like me, it took ages to get fixed. I wonder if someone else got my face on their card, or if they use a grumpy bald man as a placeholder in their card template.

My name is also misspelt on my social security card. I didn't bother to have that corrected and so far there have been zero repercussions.

One more story. When applying for an Amex card they had my name as "Andre" instead of Andrew (this one is probably a typo on my end).

Before approving the application, the Amex agent did a 3-way conference call with me and an agent from my bank to confirm the details in my application.

Amex: "Can you confirm the customer's name is André?"

Bank: "Yes, I confirm the customer's name is Andrew."

Amex: "Thank you for confirming, André your application has been approved"

That's interesting that your card made it to you with the wrong photo on it. There was a visual inspection process that compared what the printed card looked like, to what it's supposed to look like, and cards were supposed to be ejected and reprinted if there was a mismatch. I worked on the machine/system that prints those cards in the late 90s. When was your card issued? I heard somewhere (and find it easy to believe) that the entire system we built was replaced with something much smaller and simpler a few years later as technology improved.

Interesting! This was ~2018.

My memory is a little hazy, but I remember having the photo taken at USCIS, walking over to a photo booth which asked to confirm some information like name or number and maybe a fingerprint too? Anyway, it wasn't a polaroid paperclipped to my forms: it seemed like a different system that would have to be linked to my application.

The images are very different: same gender, but different race, and off by about 30 years and 1 head of hair!

Oh, long after the system I worked on was replaced. Back in 1997-1999 the images were filenames in a database record, and we just read the image file and printed it on the card. Then at a later stage a camera looked at the printed card and compared it to what it should look like. We also used to 'etch' the same photograph into the 'laser' (CD-like) golden strip on the back of the card. When you wrote data to the laser strip, it changed the appearance by darkening it. There was an API library supplied by the manufacturer of the encoder drives that could write a visible image to the strip. Not sure if the modern cards still have that feature.

My name was spelt incorrectly on my driver's license for several years. No repercussions, nobody ever noticed. (Due to the nature of it, if you noticed it, it was weirder than just a vanilla typo.)

USCIS famously sent a whole bunch of RFCs to people renewing their work authorizations in 2021 because a bag of application fee checks was untouched in a corner of a basement. And the RFC meant delays that compounded existing delays, which meant people with completely legal status, with no other issues had to quit their jobs and sit around doing nothing for 12-18 months, for the simple reason that USCIS was too incompetent to renew a work authorization that they had already renewed several times and couldn’t keep track of the paper checks they insist you send in.

In 2021 (I believe they are changing this now…I don’t know when it will be implemented) USCIS only accepted payment via paper checks.

what is the end of the story?

I didn't even notice the mistake at first -- my name is not misspelled, so I figured if I didn't say anything I would be able to get away with it. I knew my EAD card would have to be photocopied or scanned at some point when I first arrived at the office, so I crafted some inane plan to tell an engaging story while the HR person was taking care of my documents, in the hopes they wouldn't see. In the end no one ever noticed, I ended up getting H1B a few months later. But I don't think my worrying was unfounded; I'd heard stories of a single character being wrong (or, missing an accent, and therefore not matching their passport) and someone's entire life changing (they had to go back to their home country).

I should also note that the guidelines for filling out CPT and OPT are also completely nebulous. I forget what the specific issue was, but I remember the administrator at my university being unsure of how to answer some question, them having no recourse, and me having nobody to ask.

I'm on my 4th year of H1B and I need to figure out how to apply for a GC. The time investment in putting together all the documents is significant. Not to mention exiting the country to go see loved ones is always a pain.

I think the name switch is unlikely to get you into trouble. My country has the reverse of the US (First name is last name and last name is first!). I've been switching regularly and this only confused people who wanted to address me by my "first name".

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