Your first thirty days

The first week

Get a phone number that works. Nothing else can be done without one: no bank will call you, no landlord will reach you, and no appointment can be confirmed. A prepaid SIM from any supermarket is enough for now, and you can change it later.

Apply for a Social Security number. This is the single longest queue in your first month, and almost everything waits behind it, so start it before you feel ready. You do not need a job offer first.

Ask your chapter which bank in your city opens an account on a passport. It is not the same answer everywhere, and walking into the wrong branch costs you an afternoon and a small humiliation.

The second and third weeks

Open the bank account. Take your passport, your visa documents, proof of where you are staying, and your Social Security number if it has arrived. If it has not, ask anyway; several banks will still open an account.

If you have children, enrol them. Schools here will ask for vaccination records and previous school reports, which is why you were told to bring them. If you do not have them, go anyway: no child is turned away, and the school will tell you what it needs.

Start your driving licence. In most American cities there is no practical life without one, and the process is slower than it looks because it usually needs the Social Security number and proof of address first.

The fourth week

Meet people. This is the one that gets pushed to next month every month, and it is the one that decides whether the next two years are bearable. Go to whatever your chapter is putting on, even if you are tired, even if you do not feel like it, and especially if you have been here three weeks and spoken to nobody outside your household.

What nobody tells you

Most of this waits on something else, which is why it feels slow when you are doing everything right. That is normal and it is not you. The families who found it easiest are the ones who started the slow things in week one and accepted that weeks two and three would feel like waiting.

Nobody has recorded when this was last checked.

Not legal, immigration, tax or medical advice. This is what people who have done it wish somebody had told them.