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I immigrated into the US (from Canada) to work for a tech company, and a piece of advice I got from our legal dept was: Whenever you cross the border and the gu

I immigrated into the US (from Canada) to work for a tech company, and a piece of advice I got from our legal dept was: Whenever you cross the border and the guard asks you what your job is, answer "Software Engineer". IIRC it was important I answer this correctly because that's the role that I was permitted to work for (under a TN, later a H1B; I'm now naturalized). Saying "programmer" or "developer" may have been fine (I don't know), but I do recall some emphasis on getting this right.

seemack 6y ago
It was important because there were specific job requirements that had to be met in order to qualify for a TN visa. The expertise you were expected to be bringing in as a Software Engineer was architectural level knowledge of coding. The TN visa could be revoked at any time which is why you want to be really clear when crossing the border. I worked for Microsoft and they recommended that I bring my full job description package and lawyer's letter every time I crossed the border The best part was when I had to go to the border to apply for the TN visa. The poor guy had a list of questions to ask and clearly had no idea what any of it meant. "And will you be doing any <...long, dramatic pause> programming?"