Foreign seniors compete for visas

Seniors face many challenges in determining post-graduation plans, but international seniors planning to stay in the United States face an additional hurdle on the way to their first jobs: securing a visa.

After the expiration of the one-year period of Option Practical Training (OPT) granted to internationals by their student visas, foreign University students must join the masses of graduates trying to obtain H-1B visas.

An H-1B visa permits a foreign student who has at least a bachelor's degree and the sponsorship of a company to work in the United States. But getting one is easier said than done. Last year, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service received more than 150,000 applications for the 65,000 available H-1B visas. All of the visas were issued on the first day they became available.

The remaining applicants had to be either sent to foreign offices or laid off by the companies that sponsored their applications.

The difficulty of procuring a visa is why many companies, like Google and Barclays Capital, have listed "Permanent U.S. Resident, U.S. Citizen or U.S. National" as their "desired work authorization status" on the University job search website, TigerTracks.

Google adds that it "actively publicize[s]" positions outside the United States to international students studying at American universities, Google spokeswoman Sunny Gettinger said in an email. "Due to visa requirements, we do encourage students to apply for positions in their home regions or countries, however, we will still consider foreign applicants for U.S.-based roles."

Rachel Baldwin, an assistant dean of undergraduate students who advises international students, said that "While companies can choose to restrict their hiring practices, international students should be diligent in expressing their interest in jobs with 'desired' residency status to challenge employers to broaden their search," she said in an email.

But, she added, visas continue to be "a challenge for many universities in the U.S., as highly qualified international students who wish to take advantage of competitive jobs in the U.S. are unable to do so due to the visa crunch."

Companies wishing to avoid the complications of sponsoring international students may choose to remove those students from their applicant pool before the process even begins. That is what Cee-Kay Ying '08, an economics major from Australia, said happened when she applied for a job at Merrill Lynch.

"The recruiter told me that I didn't get an interview because they didn't want to sponsor any international students," Ying said. "They told me that they would send my resume out to satellite offices."

Yigit Satilmaz '08, an operations research and financial engineering major from Turkey, has accepted a post-graduation job with JPMorgan in New York. But he only received that offer after spending the summer there as an intern and proving himself as an employee in spite of potential visa issues.

Many of Satilmaz's friends, though, have not been as fortunate. "I know a lot of my friends who are international students can't get any jobs even though on paper they are more than qualified, because of this annoying system," he said.

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"It's tough for most global firms to find another person for the spot if it turns out that the student [they've hired] doesn't get a visa ... so the firms decided to be cautious this year," he added.

The Immigration Practice Group of McCandlish Holton, a Virginia-based law firm, provides resources to employers about filing visa applications. Mark Rhodes, the group's director, said that even larger companies may tend towards caution when considering international applicants.

"A company like Google, they want to hire engineers, so they submit an H-1B application, and they have a 50-50 chance it will get rejected because of the quota. No one is going to want to deal with that level of uncertainty," Rhodes said.

Hicham Alaoui '08, a Wilson School major from Morocco, said that the actual process of applying for a visa is not as difficult as finding an employer to sponsor the application.

"The visa procedure is relatively straightforward. It's a question of a lottery. You just get all of your paperwork in on time, and the odds depend on how many people apply. That's all you can do. That, and hope," Alaoui said.

Ying said that the difficulty of securing a visa has affected all international seniors looking for jobs in the United States.

"It's definitely affected the entire international community at Princeton and other places too," she said. "People from the class of '07 have been relocated to other offices in London and Japan, and people who've already found apartments and settled into New York have to move."

Rhodes agreed, adding that Congress should revise its policies to allow for more H-1B visas to be issued.

"This is not how America was built. Historically, we've invited the world's best and brightest to stay. Now, we're educating them and then asking them to leave because there's no work visas. This is bad immigration policy," Rhodes said.