I’m writing this article from a place I’m quite familiar with – a seat on an airplane. Though this trip to Miami is certainly much shorter than the trans-Atlantic voyage I took eight years ago#and still take almost annually.
I, like 819,644 other students in this country, am an international student. I initially moved to the U.S. from Scotland, using my mother’s E2 investor’s Visa to maintain temporary residency. This came with some annoyances, such as having no access to a worker’s permit or having to renew my license yearly. There also was the inconvenience of the Visa expiring on my 21st birthday, interrupting my education.
As college rapidly approached, I realized that I would have to obtain an F1 Student Visa to continue living in the country. Getting a student Visa can be quite a hassle. After getting accepted to a college, you must apply for sponsorship – which essentially means waiting for a piece of paper to come to you in the mail saying that you can legally go to get your Visa.
Once this has been done, you must go to the embassy to wait in line for your interview. After that, you wait to receive your Visa (if you got it). Now, an F1 Visa like the one I have is essentially no different than the E2 Visa that I left behind. I still have no access to a worker’s permit, and can only work off-campus if I can get a position relevant to my major in my second year of education.
The largest qualm about having a student Visa, however, is that there is no promised route to permanent residency. I, along with anyone else on a student Visa, can stay in the U.S. as long as I am attending school. As soon as I graduate, I have a sixty-day grace period in which I need to find an employer that can sponsor me for an H1B worker’s Visa. Otherwise, I have to return to their home country.
International students have to put a lot of faith into starting a career immediately following graduation – something which can often prove difficult in the highly competitive job market. The fact of the matter is that legal immigration is in much need for reform. As it stands right now, there are very limited legal paths to permanent residency or citizenship.
The path which I will most likely have to take is getting the H1B Visa following graduation, and then eventually gaining eligibility for a Green Card. But if that fails, then I guess it’s back across the Atlantic for me.
