Has this happened to anyone else here on upwork? What should we do about it?

[jameslongshore]

**Edited for Community Guidelines** I am an American, born and raised in NYC, trained in screenwriting for 7 years in New York and Los Angeles. Lived 31 of my 40 years there. Oops, I married a European and live now in Paris. And now, I can't apply to this job which I am very qualified for?:

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

I got this message:

"Unfortunately, you cannot submit a proposal for this job post. Based on the client's requirements, only freelancers in the U.S. can submit a proposal."

And yet frequently I get your little note as I'm clicking that "83% of upwork users say the best thing about upwork is being able to work from anywhere".

I could you know, put my NYC address and start a new account and lie to you about where I am. Or get a VPN and hide my IP. Or you could do something about it.

I have had a lot of problems with upwork since I signed up, including the fact that my money has been stuck in the account for 2 weeks. So please respond and answer this, from a supervisor, not a service robot person.

[versailles]

Upwork has this US-only program. It doesn't matter where you were born, what matters is where you are located. This initiative is not very popular amongst freelancers, but there is not much that we poor mortals we can do about it.

Concerning setting up a VPN and faking your location, it has been done before and many have permanently lost their accounts on this. I wouldn't suggest you even try.

[kochubei_valeria]

James,

Rene is correct, the US-only setting isn't referring to the freelancer's country of origin. It allows clients to specify that they are looking for freelancers who are physically located in the U.S. at the moment. There may be various reasons why a client may use that option. Their projects may require localized knowledge, the possibility of on-site coordination, specific compliance needs or other factors that make working with someone within their country a preferable way for them.

And I'd also like to confirm that creating more than one freelancer account on Upwork and misrepresenting location are violations of Upwork ToS that may result in an account hold.

[jameslongshore]

Okay. Thank You for the advice, Valeria and Rene. Duly noted.

My question would be then why does upwork display those ads outside of the U.S.? Why don't they sort them by country. It wastes my precious time and as you can see, can be quite frustrating. 

[kochubei_valeria]

James,

Do you see them in your Job Feed or Search? I just checked your account and I don't see US-only jobs in your Feed.

[wendy_writes · Accepted solution]

James, as Rene noted, the restriction is counter to anything resembling "global" and not something those of us residing in the US believe is right. 

Upwork and clients would be better served by verifying that FLers were truly fluent in English vs. residing in the US.

So -commiseration for what that's worth.