help please

hi got married last july and since then my american wife tracey has applied for numerous jobs and keeps hitting a brick wall no NI number. i can see you need a job to get one but she cant get one. local soc sec office is less than helpful and very unfrindly could someone give some advise please

technically she only needs to be actively looking for work to apply for NI--- some offices say she must be working however she should argue the point....i don't have the site off the top my head by do some searching and print out the info to bring to the office and paperwork to support that she is actively looking for work.

I agree some employers are hesitant to hire without a NI--- hang in there it is tough but she will find something!

Helena

If she can't find an employer without a NIN then I recommend using an agency. They're used to things like this and will give your wife a temporary number until she can get her permanent one.

Good luck.

The Leeds social security office refuses to give you an appointment (to interview for obtaining the NIN) until after you've been already working awhile & can produce a few pay stubs.  Since I held a very short term job and then done some temping, I've received (probably more than one) temporary NIN assigned by the employer. The first employer I had was skittish about employing me without the NIN & unsure of their procedures of what to do -- so I gave them the phone number for the social security office to call & verify whatever they needed to know themselves. Honestly, I don't understand why the social security offices make it so difficult to get this, particularly when it's all about paying income taxes, etc.  I just resigned myself not to care -- they certainly don't (they can't even be a*sed to answer the telephone a good bit of the time).

Here in Huddersfield you can't get an appointment with the people at the Job Centre (the interview people) unless you have a month's worth of pay slips.  I had only done 4 days of temping work (thankfully, one day a week, so at least I had a month of slips ) and yet they STILL questioned me.   I was getting pretty wound up there, cause as people have said, you don't NEED to actually be working, just looking.  And here I was working, and had the documentation to show for it, and I was asked if I was still working, and 'So I could call up right now, and they would say that you are on their books...?'  Grrr!!     Then when I asked the guy some questions, questions that I thought were my right to know (uh, being this is MY LIFE that's under the microscope) he told me that 'if you ask your bank that be ready for them to close your account without any warning'  and 'I'm not hired and it's not my job to answer your questions'

All I wanted to know was that if the bank had no LEGAL reason to request my NIN number (we kept getting letters from the bank saying please give them my NIN number, which I didn't have yet, but yet we kept getting letters), then could I please tell them that they had no right to my NIN number and could I ask them to stop sending me letters.    That was the response that I got.   

I just kept smiling and bit my tongue until I got out of there (then I went on a rant) 

Good luck, it's frustrating, but you will get there in the end.  Like Ashley said, the agency that I went through to get my whole 4 days of work didn't bat an eye when I said that I didn't have a NIN yet.  They just used a temporary one.