Working in USA and background checks

WellSureNow

Hi all - newbie here. Thanks in advance for any help. I am an Irish citizen married to a (wonderful!) American and we are both currently living in Ireland. It is likely my wife will take a job in the US next year. As I begin to try and get a sense of the various jobs I could apply for/watch out for, I notice a lot of job descriptions mention background checks as part of the application process.

Does anyone know how this would work for an Irish citizen? As in obviously we have Garda clearance in Ireland, but how do they link in with the USA? I plan to get resident status asap on arrival and then look for work, but wondered how they can carry out a check on me as a 'new' person to the country? I assume they liaise with the Gardaí or is there something I should bring with me in that regard?

My concern is that it will be a disadvantage (i.e possibly seen as too much hassle to do) by a prospective employer. Equally, not all jobs I might apply for require this, but nice to know the process anyway. Cheers.

Dave1442397

I remember getting a fairly standard letter from my local Gardai stating that I had no criminal record, etc, but I never needed to give it to an employer.

I work in the financial industry, so I always get checked and fingerprinted at a new job. I was never asked for anything from outside the country. I guess they assume that if I passed the checks to get a green card, there's nothing to be concerned about prior to my entering the US.

WellSureNow

Thanks for the reply - yeah I guess that makes sense actually.

silja

FYI, you cannot go over, apply for residency status, then look for work. You need a spousal visa called CR-1 to get your greencard, and the process takes almost a year, so you will want to start looking into that now. The good thing is, as part of that visa you will need to get a Irish police cert (and any other country you lived in for longer than 6 months), and you can take copies of that with you for work background checks once you move over. That being said, the above answer is correct in that they usually do a background check based on your social security number and/ or US drivers license, so you should be fine there, other than for some government and government contracting jobs where you may need to be a US citizen.

jman0war

Background checks are not usually performed by the company doing the hiring, rather it's contracted out to a vendor.

Unfortunately many of those vendors are not well trained for performing a background check on a person from abroad.
So it usually takes more time.

In one case that i know of the vendor had a list of countries they had contacts with, but Ireland was not one.
Therefore, no background check was possible, therefore no job.

You'll find it's hit and miss.
It might be better in Boston and New York where people have actually heard of a country called Ireland.

But deeper in the heartland, don't assume.

spideog7

Depends on the job and what they mean by background check. In general I've found (personally and anecdotally from other immigrants) that any checks on folks who have gone through the immigration process are completed much quicker than on US citizens, simply because all of the information they could possibly want on you is already in a DHS file somewhere. These were federal background checks so I'm assuming they have access to this data. Could be a placebo effect but it makes sense to me.

él statutorio

It depends on the company.

My company had a standard background check policy, but when I inquired it was more a covering their ass exercise (previous employee being nuts and carrying guns around). I told them I could get a Garda report saying i had never been in trouble with the law etc but they said it was not needed as it would be meaningless anyway. Long story short I didn't need one.