Last December, Satoshi Sugiyama was offered a summer internship with The New York Times.
Sugiyama, who graduated from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University this past May, completed his internship with The New York Times in August. Having graduated as an international student from Japan, his work authorization only allowed him 90 days of unemployment, so Sugiyama began seeking work in other places.
Sugiyama, however, was not lucky in his search. As his work authorization limited his time in the U.S. until June 2019, employers were not willing to hire him, which he said was a hard reality to face.
“I went to Syracuse; I just completed an internship with The New York Times. I was pretty sure I would be able to find something,” Sugiyama said. “I found out in a hard way that that really isn’t the case.”
This week, after spending nearly half of his life in the U.S., Sugiyama returned to Japan sooner than he said he had expected to.
Upon graduation, international students, like Sugiyama, have few options if they wish to stay in the U.S. Students can apply for Optional Practical Training, or OPT, which allows them to stay in the U.S. and work in their field for up to 12 months. After this time, if the company wants to keep the employee, the company must submit a petition for an H-1B visa for the employee. The H-1B is a temporary visa that allows international employees to work in the U.S. for three years.
However, applying for the H-1B visa isn’t as simple as submitting an application. The United States Citizen and Immigration Services only accepts a limited number of petitions, and those petitions are then entered into a lottery system that determines which applications are actually processed. This fiscal year, the USCIS set a cap of 65,000 petitions and opened the filing process on April 2; four days later, the filing process officially closed due to the influx of petitions, according to USCIS. It is a rapid, competitive process, and it’s also expensive, as companies must pay fees to sponsor international employees, according to USCIS.
Furthermore, President Donald Trump’s April 2017 executive order for companies to “Buy American and Hire American” stated that the administration would “ensure that H-1B visas are awarded to the most-skilled or highest-paid petition beneficiaries.” In the midst of college students applying for internships and graduate school, international students who wish to work in the U.S. are trying to adjust to be those “most-skilled” candidates.
Joshua Kan, a senior from Hong Kong studying music, history, and culture at Syracuse, said that though he doesn’t necessarily want to, he plans to focus his studies and research on Asian music in graduate school, as he believes it will give him an advantage when pursuing a career as a college professor.
“People would think of it as more natural, and they would somehow think that I am better at teaching Asian music than perhaps a white professor,” Kan said.
Studying Christian worship music among Syrian refugee-converts would be Kan’s ideal area of research, he said, but it does not seem feasible.
Not all international students are willing to diverge from their dreams in hopes of future employment, though.
Lianza Reyes, a junior from the Philippines studying at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, said she came to Syracuse knowing exactly what she wanted to study, but complicated immigration policies have gotten in the way of her employment endeavors.
Reyes explained that she has noticed that many companies require applicants to be U.S. citizens, though not all explicitly state it, and it is only when she faces this requirement that she changes her plans.
During her sophomore year, Reyes said she was applying for an internship with NBC, but when she indicated that she would need sponsorship to remain in the U.S. as an international student, the application automatically shut her out. According to NBC Universal Careers, departments are more likely to hire local talent over international talent if skill sets are the same.
In response to this obstacle she has faced, Reyes said her solution is to dedicate herself entirely to her work.
“Whatever opportunities open up when I can apply for them, I jump on it immediately, and I work myself to the death for it,” Reyes said.
Like Reyes and Kan, Satoshi Sugiyama found that being an international student under current strict immigration policies made him less attractive as a candidate during his summer job search, he said. However, he thinks it’s worth recognizing what international students can bring to companies.
“There will be some liabilities, but at the same time, those international students bring a lot of great perspective.”