aerospace internships for international students

Hi any advice on how to get an internship? My son is at Purdue. BUT he is not a US citizen but we are permanent residents. He has a great GPA 3.4 - it’s VERY tough program. AND has been approached by companies but without citizenship they have not been able to go further. Any ideas out there?
At this point he might try to apply to Canadian companies (where he has citizenship). But even those companies prefer students studying in Canadian schools. argh …

Your issue is that your son picked a major which is narrow in scope. This is also a field which, more often than not, requires a Security clearance. If he’s not a US citizen, a large majority of companies cannot “hire” him because they work on US government contracts or require tough security clearances.

He needs to search among smaller companies that may or may not use Aerospace technology-drone tech?

Some parents, are in the engineering fields and are on this site. @eyemgh? @boneh3ad? @Maine longhorn. They may be able to suggest some options.

Why isn’t your son in the process of becoming a permanent resident or citizen?

We don’t know that he isn’t, but it isn’t that easy to become a citizen. She said he is a permanent resident.

I’m no expert on this, but I would think ITAR requirements might make it challenging to get a job with a space company in the US and DOD requirements would make it challenging to get a job with a defense company. I’d look at Canadian companies that have a presence in the US and maybe have him call their HR department for guidance. MDA is an example. They wholly own and operate SSL.

It’s also a challenge if he isn’t going to be a rising senior. Most companies reserve their slots for students doing “long interviews” for permanent jobs.

Wish him luck.

There is a big difference between ITAR (which allows both citizens and permanent residents to have access to such data) and classified information (which is limited to citizens). A secondary issue is FCPA (concerns about bribery of foreign officials) which also makes companies like Boeing reluctant to hire foreigners (they have had problems in the past with the perceived quid pro quo of hiring relatives of an official who is buying aircraft from them).

My advice would be to look at companies focused on civil work that don’t have defense contracts. But that will be a limited set of options. Incidentally MDA is suffering severely from the downturn in the space business and is refocusing on US defense work (even replacing their Canadian CEO with a US citizen), so that might not be much help.

I am not so sure this is actually true. You certainly don’t need one to work for most roles within Boeing Commercial Airplanes or Cessna or Bombardier or Sikorsky or Rolls-Royce or GE or…

Just steer clear of jobs related to national defense and the security clearance and jobs located within plants that handle national defense jobs. This is, of course, tricky to do sometimes when the facilities are co-located and there are access restrictions, but even then, a lot of times that access is just NOFORN and not any more restrictive than that. Since OP’s son is a permanent resident, NOFORN is not an issue.

Security clearances are much more restrictive.

Of these, only one of them is a parent of a student in one of these fields, one is a professor in the field, and one is not in any way connected to the field.

This is a tough problem for sure, because, while not every job requires a clearance/citizenship, a substantial number do, and many companies don’t want to deal with the hassle of non-citizens coming anywhere near this stuff for legal reasons, let alone foreign nationals.

Their son is a permanent resident already. Depending on the timing, he may not yet be eligible for citizenship.

If a job only requires ITAR restrictions, then the student in question should have no issue since he is a U.S. Permanent resident. ITAR only requires that people working on the program be U.S. persons. In other words, I’d think there are some space jobs available for this person (though certainly not all of them). Defense is tough because essentially everything is ITAR by default, and many programs end up with at least substantial components that are classified at some level, requiring citizenship.

Most aerospace work is ITAR restricted but does not require a security clearance. Still, not being able to get a clearance does limit one’s ability to be reassigned within the company. Some companies may view that as a non-starter. Make sure his resume and application state his status in the US.

The bigger problem is his GPA. A lot of large aerospace companies require a minimum of a 3.5 GPA for internships. Most engineering programs are tough and the fact that he goes to Purdue won’t change the 3.5 requirement.

Full time jobs are actually easier to get than internships as they typically require “only” a minimum GPA of 3.0.

These are only minimums and, depending on the number and quality of applicants, the true requirements are usually higher for the big companies.

Smaller companies would not have such strict GPA guidelines and would be where would have more luck.

There’s a recent article in my alma mater’s alumni magazine that touches on the conundrum facing Canadians who want to work in astronautics:
https://trekmagazine.alumni.ubc.ca/2018/fall-2018/features/crossing-the-karman-line/

Not an aeronautics company, but even 3M hires extremely few foreigners because they make a lot of USML technologies. But since your son is a permanent resident, ITAR probably isn’t the problem.

Canadian internships are usually done through co-op programs, which are registered through the university’s co-op office. So a lot of available internship jobs are invisible to outside applicants. Even then, hiring is regional, so for example, a company in Toronto may not list an internship with universities in the West. If you’re not in a co-op program, it’s hard to get your resume into that pile without personal connections or networking.

If he has interest in research, perhaps he could apply for US (or Canadian) campus research programs too.

Engineering major here who is interning at a defense company: for pretty much all the defense companies US citizenship is required as you’ll need a security clearance for most programs. I’d try looking at smaller aerospace companies that deal only in commercial applications as not only will the competition will be less but being a US permanent resident is fine. I had a friend work at a small defense company out on the east coast as an international student from Europe. His project was unclassified and was company specific so there wasn’t an issue there. I’d look for places like that. But the Northrop’s, Lockheed’s and other companies like that will be closed doors.

This is not recent by any stretch… One of my old roommates from my birth country was an Aero Eng major and it was a major pain to even do a plant visit to a defense supplier, let alone work in one. That was in the mid 1980’s…

When a leader in the industry starts to lay off people, you have to wonder the prospect of getting an internship in the commercial (non-defensive) aerospace companies – https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/11/spacex-will-lay-off-hundreds-to-become-a-leaner-company/

Calling SpaceX “non-defense” sorely misunderstands what constitutes a defense contractor.

Somewhere I read that about 50% of the aerospace jobs in the US required a security clearance. I used to work aerospace and can believe that figure.

When he was in Australia, Elon Musk was asked why SpaceX only hires Americans. He said it was because the US government classified the work the company does as being militarily sensitive (I don’t remember the exact term.) Therefore, the US government only allowed SpaceX to hire Americans.

simba9, the term you are looking for is “ITAR” restricted. ITAR restricted may not, and many times isn’t, classified but is restricted to US citizens and permanent US residents. So, you don’t necessarily need to be a US resident. However, many aerospace companies will not sponsor a non-resident to get their green card. A student visa won’t translate to a green card.

In our jobs, aerospace, almost no one has security clearances anymore, however it is a requirement to have US citizenship. We have lots of SBU data, sensitive but unclassified, that requires it. We work with Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Space X and other contractors/partners who also have to be US citizens.