RSI, PPS, SSN and NINO
I never became a citizen of the US when I lived there. Because I was already a member of another club that gave me enough grief. One called Ireland.
But I was a “Permanent Resident” of the US. I still am. Even though I don’t reside there.
In common parlance that means I’m a Green Card holder, and am entitled to live and work there. And working there means having a Social Security Number.
With a head full of important things such as the 6 main functions of the Irish Central Bank (a teacher taught us the acrostic mnemonic “George Bernard Shaw’s Lad Liked Men” as a memory aid) and the lyrics to early Dublin pirate radio station jingles, I decided not to learn my SSN when I lived in America.
And this was fine. Until the day the INS - or whatever they’re called now - questioned me on re-entry into the US a few years back.
-What’s Your Social Security Number?
-I don’t know. It’s got lots of fives in it, and some fours. And a seven. I think.
And if the nice little room in which he put me had a window I would have been able to watch my connecting flight take off.
So now I know my American SSN number. But something had to give. In my head also were the Irish and British equivalents, the RSI number and the National Insurance Number.
For some reason my brain dumped the Irish number, choosing to allow me to tell you still the number I had in Britain for the brief period I spent there almost 2 decades ago.
In the new Ireland things are now positive where once they were accurate. When I left Ireland I had an RSI number. RSI stood for Revenue and Social Insurance. It made perfect sense as a description even if it does have negative connotations in the form of referring to insurance which clearly implies there is something necessary to be insured against. Something not good, that is.
But while I was away there has been a boost to national self-esteem and the RSI number has been renamed to be a PPS number. Personal Public Service. This is nonsense.
The number is personal. Really? Tell me, do you have a number that isn’t personal? A number for something of yours that isn’t for you? And public? Of course it’s not a public number but then that’s not what it means; the public really goes with the service and the personal is thrown on to make it a 3-letter acronym because people can’t remember any more letters and less just flummoxes them.
Luckily in modern Ireland there is a government website though, and it tells you how to get your PPS number. But search and search, and scour through FAQs, I couldn’t find how to retrieve an existing PPS number that you’ve forgotten.
So leave the site and use a search engine. It finds the answer - back on the site you came from. And helpfully it tells you what you need to bring to your local social welfare office for them to look it up for you. So I collect my passport, the long version of birth certificate, my mother’s maiden name, and my father’s preference in sausages.
Helpfully again the website has a Locate section so I thought I’d find out if there was a social welfare office built any nearer to me in the 8 years I’ve been away. From the drop-down menus I select Dublin and my postal district, only to be told there is no office here so choose somewhere else. In effect the Locate function was a directory dressed up as a search, but you could only find what you were looking for if you knew where it was.
And I did so I went there. On the door was a note saying if you were looking for a new PPS number that you weren’t going to get it here at your local social welfare office, oh no, you had in fact to go to a Social welfare office 6 miles away. And as I walked in I pitied the immigrants who had successfully negotiated the website to work out that this was where they needed to be to be issued their PPS number.
And it didn’t instill much confidence in me for my quest to get my old number looked up.
-Howaya, I’m a returned emigrant and I’m trying to work out what my PPS number is because I’ve forgotten it with being out of the country for several years.
-What’s your RSI number?
-Isn’t it called a PPS number now?
-Ah yeah but it’s really your RSI number, ya know?
-I see. I have my passport and birth cert here.
-Yeah you’re going to need your passport and your birth cert.
-Here they are right here.
-Ah no, it’s a quarter to 4 now and we close at 4.
-The website said it could just be looked up if I gave certain information.
-Ah yeah it can. We can do that right here, we just need your passport and birth cert.
-That’s why I brought them with me now, but you want me to come back?
-Yes, and make sure you bring your passport and your birth cert.
-I’ll do that. Thanks very much.
So when I got home I called an old employer and they told me.
See Related Posts, Kind Of:
• Emigration Assistance from Ireland
• Job Hunting in Dublin in the 1980s
• Customer Service in America
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