Originally Posted by PreciousCargo
(Post 3094749)
That's a bummer about the kid issue there. I as well have kids and that's important to me as well. But cant kids be enrolled with the schools and stuff on base there?
I would like to continue flying UH60s but I dont mind flying fixed wing either obviously. I understand I'll be a drone douche more than likely but for the pay (unless it's worse than i think) is pretty worth it and the stability factor. If I wanted to fly what bases should I request? Will I get any time to practice before the check ride with CBP? I havent flown a cessna in sometime and flying an Astar for a check ride for the first flight sounds a bit scary to me. Also I am only multi engine ATP rated and helicopter commercial. No single engine commercial is this gonna be a problem? Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk you will not have time to practice before your check flight. I would suggest renting a Cessna at a local flight school and get some stick time. No single engine commercial shouldn’t be a problem. |
If you look back over this entire thread, the whole PR base seems to be a very mixed bag. Some immediately dismiss it (have they been?) and some say it is great.
I wonder if it would be possible for someone to reach out to a current AIA in PR and get them to weigh in on the topic as it stands TODAY. I haven't made any contacts down there yet, or I would inquire. All I was told in February at my interview was that they are always looking for pilots there, they will give you a contract date as to when you can leave, and you will get an additional 25% pay on top of the new 35% locality. You can also use the AFB school (Rames) for your kids. That is the latest info I have as of Feb 2020. That all came from the HR rep at the conclusion of my interview. have you been to Aguadiila recently for AIA? Are you from PR? Not attacking you, just curious. |
have you been to Aguadiila recently for AIA? Are you from PR? Not attacking you, just curious.[/QUOTE]
PR is a mixed bag plain and simple. I can tell you how great it is but you might not have the same experience. These are the two most important things you must do in order to enjoy your time here. 1) learn Spanish to at least a basic functional level. 2) accept the local culture for what it is. PR Is not the US, its a Latin American county that happens to be a US territory. All the information you received and shared is 100 percent correct and up to date. |
PreciousCargo
An important line item federal civil servants stationed in PR may want to inquire is the tax implications. I haven't heard of any override in pay, given PR is paid at "rest of US" locality rate, which is frankly uncompetitive as all get out. PR levies income tax to the tune of 33% for every dollar above 60K, which puts it at the highest bracket of any place in the US that taxes federal+state. As a federal civil servant you're given a tax credit on your taxes paid to the island coffers, to offset your federal tax burden. Essentially it always exceeds your federal burden so you end up owing nothing to the fed on your 1040. But it is not an insignificant tax burden. You're probably going to take home the least amount of all CBP locales. This "25% extra for PR" pay is news to me, would love a source to that claim. Housing costs are fairly CONUS-like, based on other DOD agencies' footprint in the Isabela/Aguadilla MSA and the Lufthansa employees now in the area. IOW, it's not inexpensive living for the after-taxes income, for someone accustomed to "rest of US" non-coastal CONUS housing COL. Just something to understand about the decision to work in PR as a non-Act20/22 type. Good luck. |
They give 25% of your base GS pay up to 5 years for CAMB Retention Incentives.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk |
Which I’ve always been told isn’t intended to be a “bonus” for going there, but to help offset the tax burden (I believe your traditional TSP contributions are also taxed around 9%?). It was one of the first policies they implemented to get people in the door when the shortage first hit.
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This has probably already been answered, but does this count prior active military service towards the Federal Retirement?
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Originally Posted by Apejackson
(Post 3097868)
This has probably already been answered, but does this count prior active military service towards the Federal Retirement?
The biggest immediate benefit is the years count for annual leave accrual. Often new hires get vaulted straight to the 6 hour or 8 hour categories (normal new hire is 4), per pay period. Makes a huge difference in your quality of life. Long term, it can add thousands a year to your pension at 1% per year bought back. |
Originally Posted by DustoffVT
(Post 3097929)
yes, with caveats. Title 10 active duty time can be “purchased” back at a rate of 3% of your lifetime military pay. Title 32 guard time (even AGR) isn’t eligible. If you retired from the military you’re not eligible.
The biggest immediate benefit is the years count for annual leave accrual. Often new hires get vaulted straight to the 6 hour or 8 hour categories (normal new hire is 4), per pay period. Makes a huge difference in your quality of life. Long term, it can add thousands a year to your pension at 1% per year bought back. |
Originally Posted by Apejackson
(Post 3097951)
Thanks for the info. What would that process look like? I was enlisted for 8 years. If we call it $100,000 Military pay (total guess, I have no idea) I would “pay back” $3,000 to get 8 years credit toward Federal Retirement?
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Just a quick update for those currently still in the pre-employment process.
I recently finished up the check out flight/in person interview in OKC. They have said that January and February classes are full at this time and they did not give me a specific EOD date yet. Hope this info helps for those still working through the application process. |
Originally Posted by MrAirplane
(Post 3098342)
Just a quick update for those currently still in the pre-employment process.
I recently finished up the check out flight/in person interview in OKC. They have said that January and February classes are full at this time and they did not give me a specific EOD date yet. Hope this info helps for those still working through the application process. |
Originally Posted by dapuckstopper15
(Post 3098345)
Good information. Thanks! I was wondering if anyone had received a final offer as of late. Did you pick your duty location?
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Originally Posted by MrAirplane
(Post 3098353)
I did yes. Fixed wing only guys are getting sent to either Sierra Vista or San Angelo as far as I know.
Could you share you aviation experience up to date? |
Originally Posted by MrAirplane
(Post 3098353)
I did yes. Fixed wing only guys are getting sent to either Sierra Vista or San Angelo as far as I know.
OK yeah I remember that email coming out about asking applicants whether they would except those locations. I didn’t know those were the only two options at this time Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk |
Originally Posted by USMCFLYR
(Post 3098357)
MrAirplane -
Could you share you aviation experience up to date? |
Originally Posted by dapuckstopper15
(Post 3098359)
OK yeah I remember that email coming out about asking applicants whether they would except those locations. I didn’t know those were the only two options at this time
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk |
Originally Posted by Apejackson
(Post 3097951)
Thanks for the info. What would that process look like? I was enlisted for 8 years. If we call it $100,000 Military pay (total guess, I have no idea) I would “pay back” $3,000 to get 8 years credit toward Federal Retirement?
For military buyback the agency will assist you, through a standard form, to request your total pay assessment from your branch. Once CBP has the figure (3% of total), you may pay that by lump sum, or by having any amount automatically deducted from your CBP paycheck. The balance will not earn interest the first two years. Interest begins accumulating your third year and every year thereafter. In an unbelievably good deal, the interest is simple interest applied to your remaining balance at the end of each year. So you would not accrue interest the first three years on you balance. If you are married and die during service, your spouse will have the option to pay off the balance and receive your retirement benefits for time spent in CBP plus the eight years military. By the way death benefits are awesome. Assuming you do not meet your demise while employed, sill hit the 20 year law enforcement gate to receive a law enforcement retirement, the eight years will only be good for 8%. If you leave government service prior to 20 years, you may receive a refund for retirement payments or may elect to receive a partial non law enforcement retirement beginning at (I think) age 60. Its a no brainer. |
Skylike -
Unless CBP is different from other gov’t avenues, it isn’t just years of military service, to get leave credit there are only certain periods of service that qualify. Is it not the same in CBP - maybe because you are LEOs? Also - at least with everyone I serve with - buying back your time isn’t worth it if you are retired officer or senior enlisted I think I hear E-7 might be the breaking point? For those that don’t know, if you are retired and buy back your time then you forfeit your military retirement pay. |
I was considering Apejackson's eight years enlisted. I should have been more general for others on the forum and included this caveat.
If you have already RETIRED from active duty, you start federal civilian service for leave purposes as someone with no prior time would. You are already being compensated for your military time. If you are retired, you may still buy back your military time but I cannot fathom any scenario that would make it financially feasible. You give up your current military pension for future civil credit. I was speaking for anyone who has regular active duty military (or Coast Guard) time and DID NOT retire. If you were enlisted four four years and left or an officer passed over for O5 and canned at 14 years, you may buy back that time and it counts for additional percentage of pay at retirement. For leave accumulation, all regular active duty time counts (unless you retired). I am not speaking of National Guard time or reserves taking active orders, just regular ol' I joined the military and left under honorable conditions after x number of years. In times of drawdown or for veteran's preference points,one can have active military service but not be considered a veteran, but I don't think that has occured in the last 30 years. These are the rules under FERS for law enforcement officers. I thought the FERS rules were the same for military service LEO or not, but cannot speak to that. There may be some on this forum still on the CSRS retirement system, but they won't be around, or alive, much longer. Anyone interested in a CBP job or any other agency will be under FERS, LEO or not. USMCFLYR - are you still FAA flight check? |
Originally Posted by skylike
(Post 3098977)
I was considering Apejackson's eight years enlisted. I should have been more general for others on the forum and included this caveat.
If you have already RETIRED from active duty, you start federal civilian service for leave purposes as someone with no prior time would. You are already being compensated for your military time. If you are retired, you may still buy back your military time but I cannot fathom any scenario that would make it financially feasible. You give up your current military pension for future civil credit. I was speaking for anyone who has regular active duty military (or Coast Guard) time and DID NOT retire. If you were enlisted four four years and left or an officer passed over for O5 and canned at 14 years, you may buy back that time and it counts for additional percentage of pay at retirement. For leave accumulation, all regular active duty time counts (unless you retired). I am not speaking of National Guard time or reserves taking active orders, just regular ol' I joined the military and left under honorable conditions after x number of years. In times of drawdown or for veteran's preference points,one can have active military service but not be considered a veteran, but I don't think that has occured in the last 30 years. These are the rules under FERS for law enforcement officers. I thought the FERS rules were the same for military service LEO or not, but cannot speak to that. There may be some on this forum still on the CSRS retirement system, but they won't be around, or alive, much longer. Anyone interested in a CBP job or any other agency will be under FERS, LEO or not. USMCFLYR - are you still FAA flight check? Agreed......if you served your initial obligation, no reason not to buy back your time. We have one guy who retired but was able to buy back his 4 years at the USAFA. I did not know about the leave accrual being straight military time if you did not retire. everyone I know had to fill out the forms and send them in then was told how much credit time they got towards leave. I did 20 years, multiple overseas tours that were credited to include combat tours and a got 6 months credit. I would find it hard to believe some who spent 4 years in the stateside military without any deployments woul garner 4 years of leave credit if that person joined govt service, but OPM has some strange rules for sure. i know that govt LEO service has some different rules, but I’m certainly not up to speed on them all. I’m sure your recruiting is probably seeing an uptick of recent. We just had 4 retired USAF pilots come on board. 2 were coming on board in any case and two I’m sure we’re heavily influenced by current factors. We probably haven’t had a newly retired USAF guy come on from the USAF Flight Check DET 1 in probably 6-7 years. |
Yes. If Apejackson had eight years military, or as FBI, or at Dept. of State, it all counts as working for the same employer for leave purposes. Doesn't matter if spent the entire time in Diego Garcia shoveling sh@t or as a recruiter in your hometown living in your mother's basement.. Most of the gentleman I work with have 10-13 years active duty and our Leave and Earnings statements have a different box for leave accrual date that is actually before our EOD date. Went to the Academy? You get four more years toward leave and four percent more at retirement.. You, USMCFLYR, received "extra credit" for combat time or special circumstance deployed time, kinda double dipping. Thank you for your service.
For pension, Justice or State, would already have been contributing to the FERS retirement and would be credited for years there. The buyback exists to give military the same opportunity since they contributed nothing out of pocket towards a pension as did their civil counterparts. Same employer, different departments For those interested in the job, the death benefits I mentioned before are these. Should you die as an employee with eighteen months of civilian service, your spouse would receive a lump sum payment of $ 32,423, plus one half of you current salary (to include LEAP). If you have ten or more years of service, including bought back military time, your spouse would then receive 50% of what your pension would have been had you retired at the time of death. That pension payment continues for life unless the spouse remarries before age 55. That is a basic benefit, regardless of whether or not you purchased government life insurance. BTW, there are groups serving federal employees that have better life insurance for less cost than the FEGLI policies. There are also disability benefits and retirement that I wont get into here. Just a side note, I know two pilots that became medically unable to continue flying. Both became supervisors and are able to continue working until they choose to retire. You need a FAA medical to fly, just able to breath for anything else. Brain dead is O.K. too, sometimes a requirement for government work. |
Not sure I understand the double dipping.
i was hired as a GS-11 and got 4 hrs leave. With my military credit of 6 months, I started to get 6 hrs leave after 1.5 years of gov’t service vice 2 years. Is that what you mean? |
Originally Posted by USMCFLYR
(Post 3099145)
Not sure I understand the double dipping.
i was hired as a GS-11 and got 4 hrs leave. With my military credit of 6 months, I started to get 6 hrs leave after 1.5 years of gov’t service vice 2 years. Is that what you mean? |
Originally Posted by skylike
(Post 3099147)
Yes if you retired from the military and got some credit toward leave accrual then that six months I considered double dipping. If you retired without combat or deployment credit one would get nothing, even though still a veteran.
It was a small grouping of circumstances that qualified for leave credit. |
Man that polygraph is some BS. I knew roughly 50 percent failed but to be truthful and a straightedge person and accused so smugly of lying at the end was infuriating. The questions were so easy to answer truthfully which makes it so frustrating. Maybe my natural biology just isnt a good fit for polygraph or something.
Kinda wish i would have paid for practice prep or something. |
Originally Posted by falconkidding
(Post 3101852)
Man that polygraph is some BS. I knew roughly 50 percent failed but to be truthful and a straightedge person and accused so smugly of lying at the end was infuriating. The questions were so easy to answer truthfully which makes it so frustrating. Maybe my natural biology just isnt a good fit for polygraph or something.
Kinda wish i would have paid for practice prep or something. |
Originally Posted by senecacaptain
(Post 3101863)
that is a likely automatic fail or DQ.
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Thanks for the heads up, have that part coming up next. Be nice to get through and get in flying the drone, I have had all the jet time bouncing from hotel to hotel that I need, sleeping in my own bed at night until I retire sounds pretty darn good.
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reminds me of the Hogan thing with United. Is the poly something you can re-take a year later or are you disqualified from ever re-applying for the CBP job?
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Originally Posted by hindsight2020
(Post 3102229)
reminds me of the Hogan thing with United. Is the poly something you can re-take a year later or are you disqualified from ever re-applying for the CBP job?
It felt kafkaesque. Nothing like being lectured "you could have come in here and been honest with me, but you lied and concealed cue 20 minute lecture on honesty and we all have stuff in our past, if you would have just listened to me and told the truth yadda yadda"... My eyes wanted to roll out the back of my head Its like dude trust me i'm not lying about any of this stuff. Like I said it would probably have been a good idea to get a practice run in cause obviously something went wrong somewhere that I could have fixed. |
I had the same experience a couple of years back. Not a single thing in my past, grew up as a straight-laced Midwest kid, and followed the direction of coming into the poly with a clean slate. By the end of the thing, the smug poly administrator was literally accusing me of anything from smuggling drugs across state lines in an airplane, to hiring child prostitutes in Asian countries. No kidding. I thankfully found a better fit the same day the polygraph went sideways.
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Gee that poly graph sounds scary. And what I'm reading here isnt encouraging at all. It's too bad that people get DQ from it. I thought this place needed workers. I guess not bad enough. I've never taken a polygraph, but reading that stuff puts doubt in my mind. I know it's what they require i look forward to getting that block checked and seeing what they have to say
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk |
Originally Posted by PreciousCargo
(Post 3102944)
Gee that poly graph sounds scary. And what I'm reading here isnt encouraging at all. It's too bad that people get DQ from it. I thought this place needed workers. I guess not bad enough. I've never taken a polygraph, but reading that stuff puts doubt in my mind. I know it's what they require i look forward to getting that block checked and seeing what they have to say
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk Is the wall white, are you in a chair do you intend to answer truthfully if asked would people say your reliable have you committed felony violence against another person are you concealing any foreign relationships. They run through them in a random order. Needless to say I was shocked when I got back from break and was notified I had failed. Don't worry too much about it maybe i just had a wacky physiological response. I would advise reading about it though cause I went in doing what they said and apparently that didnt work. |
Originally Posted by falconkidding
(Post 3102961)
Yeah it weeds out a bunch of people. At one point almost 2/3rds of people were failing it. Theres a bunch of news articles from 2017 2018 about it. The poly guy I took it with said his pass rate was about 50%. Which is crazy, cause the questions they ask you are as "easy" as you could think of. They ask about 6 questions heres a "hypothetical" version of what i got.
Is the wall white, are you in a chair do you intend to answer truthfully if asked would people say your reliable have you committed felony violence against another person are you concealing any foreign relationships. They run through them in a random order. Needless to say I was shocked when I got back from break and was notified I had failed. Don't worry too much about it maybe i just had a wacky physiological response. I would advise reading about it though cause I went in doing what they said and apparently that didnt work. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk |
Originally Posted by PreciousCargo
(Post 3102965)
But wouldn't any type of "prep" disqualify you? I'm assuming they ask if you have and if so I suppose you are finished
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk |
Originally Posted by PreciousCargo
(Post 3102965)
But wouldn't any type of "prep" disqualify you? I'm assuming they ask if you have and if so I suppose you are finished
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk They didn't ask me if I prepped just something along the lines of what do you know about polygraph (then they launched into a speech about how accurate they are (its science bro!)) Your only hooked into the actual polygraph for 10 min or so(20 in my case cause he was like i'll try it again you just have to be honest with me)
Originally Posted by ugleeual
(Post 3102994)
don’t “research” how to beat a poly On this website or anywhere else on the internet... you will fail. Nothing cosmic about the questions you’ll be asked for any polygraph (lifestyle, CI, or LE)... just don’t overthink and answer honestly.
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Originally Posted by ugleeual
(Post 3102994)
don’t “research” how to beat a poly On this website or anywhere else on the internet... you will fail. Nothing cosmic about the questions you’ll be asked for any polygraph (lifestyle, CI, or LE)... just don’t overthink and answer honestly.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk |
Did any pure civilians (no prior military), or any non law enforcement types get hired in this July announcement? Curious to see if a straight civilian can get an interview invite?
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Originally Posted by WacoQCF
(Post 3103059)
Did any pure civilians (no prior military), or any non law enforcement types get hired in this July announcement? Curious to see if a straight civilian can get an interview invite?
I applied on USAJOBS.com in march and got the tent offer that week, being a Veteran might have helped, not sure. Have you applied on USAJOBS yet? If you get the tent offer things happen quick from there, but I think a class date to start getting paid is well into next year. |
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