As an international student about to start his freshman year as an undergraduate in business management at Northeastern university, I wanted to ask, what are my chances of finding work in the US after my graduation?
Do you need work, or work and a work visa? The former is much easier than the latter. Under current visa rules - which are subject to change - there’s an annual cap on the number of H-1B work visas that can be issued, and a lottery is conducted to decide which applications get processed at all. In the most recent lottery, you would have had about a 35% chance of getting drawn. Losing the lottery = no work visa = no job.
Since employers know that the lottery is a crap-shot, most employers won’t consider applicants that would require work visa sponsorship for entry-level positions at all.
There’s a small chance that you may be able to find a job on an E work visa.
- You would have to be a citizen of a qualifying country ([treaty countries](Treaty Countries))
- You would need to find a company that’s run by someone who is also on an E visa and has the same nationality as you.
- You have to be hired into an executive or supervisory position, or demonstrate special qualifications that are not freely available on the US labor market (knowledge of a foreign language or a foreign culture does not count).
https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/e-1-treaty-traders
Realistically, most foreign students who want to remain in the US after college will marry a US citizen or go to graduate school (which makes them a better candidate for a work visa).
“Realistically, most foreign students who want to remain in the US after college will marry a US citizen or go to graduate school (which makes them a better candidate for a work visa).”
right.
There are a fair number of foreign born software engineers working in the US, most of whom got some degree in the US. I suspect that most of them have gotten in through the H1B visa route, but hopefully one or more of them can comment.
You can work in the US for approximately one year after you graduate with the OPT extensionon your student visa. Google for information about OPT and CPT for details. The length of OPT time depends on your college major.
After your OPT expires, if you have not found an employer who can get you an H1B, you will have to leave.
If your goal for studying in the US is to permanently leave your home country, then you may be better off studying in Canada or Australia. They have much friendlier work options for internatioanl graduates of their universities.
Posting a similar question is not going to change the answer from your previous post on 5/9/17
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/international-students/1991189-studying-in-the-us.html#latest
. As an international candidate, with a common business degree, you cannot expect to be employed in the US after completing your bachelor’s degree.
Wasn’t expecting it to. Just needed a little more convincing.
You might find the labor certification disclosure data helpful. You can see which positions a labor condition application (LCA) was sought for, which is the first step in the H-1B application process. The file contains information about each position such as company, job title and salary.
https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm
Click on the “Disclosure Data” tab, and then scroll down to LCA Programs.
For example, in 2016, about 1.23 million positions were certified for the H-1B program. Of those, 189,000 (15%) were for business, financial and management occupations most generally (SOC codes 11- and 13-). That includes management consultants (58,000), accountants (52,000) and financial analysts (23,000), but also technical positions like IT managers and construction managers.
For comparison, about 893,000 positions (73%) were certified for non-management IT jobs.
Keep in mind that only 85,000 H-1B visas (subject to the cap) are issued each year, so most of those 1.23 million certified positions won’t get filled.