[sridharaca]

Hi,

My background is Chartered Accountant from India. I gave CPA exams through CO. I cleared the last exam in Dec. Now, I have passing grades for all 4. I do not have SSN as I am on a dependent visa.

During the course of time, we moved to CA (residence) due to spouse’ job. I appreciate if you can help me answer the following questions:

1. Without an SSN, can I take ethics exam either for CO or CA?

2. I will be living in CA, so is it better to transfer my scores from CO? If yes, will they be accepting my current scores give that I am a foreign national (I met education eval. requirements for CO. During that process the evaluation pointed out that my credentials meet CA requirements as well)

3. If I transfer my scores before getting CO license, am I required to do practice hours? (I had my independent practice in India).

4. I am not sure if I will have SSN before all my current scores expire (Earliest score expiry Aug 2011). If not, what are my options? I really don’t want to go through this ever again!

5. Are you aware of any companies who are willing to employ foreign nationals by processing work visa? I heard the options are minimum to none. Is this true?

I appreciate any insight on this

Thank you

[suzzette1]

@sridharaca you can call the CA Board of Accountancy regarding your questions. I am a licensed CPA from the Philippines and this does not qualify me to get a license here in CA unless I was supervised by a licensed CPA in the US. I believe the expiry of scores that you are asking is on the 18 month period wherein you should passed all the 4 section of the CPA exam or else you will lose your credit. Here in CA, I am not aware that if you passed all parts there is an expiration period.

Regarding the working visa, I was petitioned by my employer from the Philippines in 2002 as an Accountant and it took me almost 5 years to get my green card. The disadvantage of this is that you have to stay with the company until you finally get your green card. With the tight economy now, I guess BCIS is not keen on approving working visa petition because there are a lot of US citizens that are qualified and out of job. Just stick with your wife's working visa, most of my co-workers families (dependents) finally got their SSN as soon as the green card of the petitioned employees were approved.

BEC 2/8/10 - 75 (studied hard & prayed less)
REG 5/15/10 - 88 (studied less but prayed hard)
AUDITING 8/9/10 - 79 (studied hard and prayed hard)
FAR 11/30/10 - 79 (studied hard and prayed hard) Thanks GOD! I'm DONE

[sridharaca]

Thank you suzzette1 for your comments. I did speak with CA board and they recommended that I be qualified from CA as if I were a new CPA exam applicant- which means, I needed to meet the eval. requirements. I am currently working on getting the eval together.

Again thanks for your insight.

[Author]

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