If you can get to the US, opening a bank account becomes a whole lot easier. Last time I was in the US I opened a bank at Chase. I was surprised at how easy it was. All you need is your passport and local country national id (in my case a drivers license).
> Not really. You can use an ITIN. IRS gives them and they are for tax tracking only.
I just went though trying to get an ITIN for my spouse so we could file a joint tax return. After waiting for 5 weeks, they rejected the application because we didn't attach a copy of a previous tax return--which we don't have, so it's a catch 22 if I ever saw one. I'm certain that requirement is bogus on their part, but it meant we had to file for an extension on the tax return until we could get it sorted out. If it's that much trouble when you are a legal resident, I can't imagine the process for a non-resident.
No. My naive thinking was that since we're not claiming any complex deductions (we don't have any relevant assets in the US), I could easily do everything by myself. I'll probably regret that.
I've had several banks hassle me about my TIN, and was outright told that I couldn't use it to open an account because their system simply wouldn't let them enter the number because it was expecting SSN format. YMMV
