What International Students Should Know About Finding Work in America (That No One Will Tell You)
It's never been easy for internationals.
Recent reforms and changes to the H-1B program in September 2025 have definitely made it more difficult, but it's never been easy for foreign nationals to find employment and stay in the US. It's not meant to be that way. The system is designed to keep more people out than it lets in, and why wouldn't it? Any exclusive club worth its salt would do the same.
There really isn’t a way to get around needing work authorization. The most direct pathway to open work authorization is to get married — with an American citizen, of course. In fact, that's the advice I got from a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer when I was watching my paperwork get finalized for my first work permit (right after I had been turned away from the border the night before).
I was standing there, watching an officer processing the paperwork that would permit me not only entry into the country again, but the legal ability to be employed. My American citizen partner at the time was sitting in the waiting room in the corner, still slightly nervous and irritated that their passport had also been taken along with mine, when another officer came by and commented, "You realize that by the end of this TN work permit, you would've been in the country on non-immigrant status for over 10 years?"—referring to my four years of undergrad studies, two years of graduate studies, and supposedly the three years of work that the TN would allow me.
"Yes," I responded, perplexed at the officer's train of thought. "…Is that a bad thing?”
"Well, you know the TN is never guaranteed," he said.
"Yes," I ventured, wondering where this was going — obviously I wouldn't be seeking approval for a TN if I had any other alternative.
Then he jerked his head in the direction of my partner sitting in the waiting room. "Is that your girlfriend?" he asked.
"Yes."
"How long have you guys been together?"
"About a year and a half."
"Oh. Never mind."
Now I was really curious. "Why do you ask?"
"Well, if you've been together longer, I'd suggest you get married."
I was floored. Here was an actual agent representing the government basically giving me advice to get married to get a green card. I suppose he would know—there really isn't any better or easier pathway to being on immigrant status instead of non-immigrant status, which, as he pointed out so bluntly to me, is not guaranteed.
Sadly, no Silver Bullets here
I don't have any tips and tricks for international students to find employment and establish themselves, especially after graduation. It is a tough market. It's always been a tough market for foreign nationals, and I doubt very much that international hires are about to have an easier time seeking American employment anytime soon.
The worst piece of advice I got for my job search was to put my citizenship on my resume. (Cornell Career Services — you meant well, but that was a huge disservice to me.) I remember going to in-person career fairs, and even though we all knew that most resumes dropped in the box would not get more than three seconds of consideration, I was explicitly told not to drop my resume in the box. (I see you, Macy’s!) They didn't even want to pretend that they’d consider my piece of paper for three seconds before recycling it.
Online applications have also gotten smarter in the last few years. Now most of them explicitly list examples along with the dreaded question "Do you now or in the future need sponsorship?" — e.g. H-1B, OPT, TN, etc. I used to try to take advantage of that question. If it wasn't explicit, I would answer “no,” because I would try to reason that the TN work permit was not sponsorship per se; it was a slightly easier process than the H-1B work visa—even though I knew the spirit of the question was getting to the same thing, and that, to an employer, the legalese differentiating and H-1B from a TN (created under NAFTA, and for which I was qualified for as a Canadian citizen) was not significant.
Why lie about needing sponsorship? The hope is that, once they get to know you, a company might like you so much and want you as an employee so much that they’d be willing to change their policy about sponsorship and take on the trouble of acquiring you work authorization — because now they deem you specifically to be worth it. Is it possible to go through the interview process without letting the prospective employer know that you need sponsorship, wowing them so much that they change their mind and undertake the legal process to sponsor you? Yes, it is. I've been in that position before. It was a little awkward to break the news (”well, you didn’t ask; it never came up”), but it did land me a job, and it kept me in the country.
Is it possible to get to the end of that process and have an offer rescinded because the company does not want to go through the process? Yes, it is. I have also been there — numerous times. (More times, if you’re wondering.)
I eventually stopped trying to hide my need for work authorization upfront because I no longer needed the validation that I could get the job if it weren’t for the visa. As a student, it was particularly frustrating that I couldn’t even get interviews from companies I didn’t care about to use as practice. Interviews were just tough to come by — period. While that remains true for me today, my own confidence in my ability to contribute to a business has grown. As such, I would rather vet opportunities more effectively and only invest time and energy in getting to know employers that could be real matches, visa sponsorship and all. Of course recruiters and prospective employers really appreciate this, and I clearly communicate that I want to be respectful of everyone’s time. I state what my status is, what I need, and ask any recruiter that’s screening me to make sure this is an acceptable arrangement for the company before advancing me to further conversations with hiring managers and others in the organization.
I made this switch only when I started prioritizing efficiency in my job search. Leading up to that moment, I always felt uncertain I’d be read as a possible candidate based on my resume, I felt I needed more interview practice, I didn’t trust that I could make it through an entire interview process and land an offer. I did whatever I could to land interviews just so I could have more practice, until I felt I had proved to myself that I could do it, and my mindset began to shift.
Those were also the days when I held on to the idea that “beggars can’t be choosers.” No upbeat, cheery motivational mantra here! I was a late adopter of the idea that, as a job seeker, you also have leverage and should be interviewing the company for mutual fit, to make sure it’s the right environment for you to grow professionally, that you’d be happy working there, etc. “Why bother?” I always thought, “I need work visa sponsorship, so I have no leverage, and I’ll go wherever I get a job that is willing to sponsor me and let me work in the country.”
Beggars can’t be choosers.
You can’t give up on yourself when only you can look out for yourself
It took me a long time to realize you’re only a beggar if you choose to be one — or to think of yourself as one. As difficult and as scary as it is to contemplate passing up the opportunity to work for an employer that would sponsor you when it’s so hard to get just one, it’s also worth considering the opportunity cost you miss out on if you get stuck in a crappy workplace.
The work sponsorship makes foreign nationals a lot stickier as employees — just as it may take longer for you to find your first job, it likely will take you longer to find your next job to skip to. This means you should prepare to be “stuck” at any workplace you’re considering entering for a while. Best case scenario, they sponsor you for a green card, and you’ll definitely be at their mercy and stuck for a couple of years! I propose that it’s worth evaluating any prospective employer as a long-term partner, not just a short-term fix. This is particularly difficult to commit to doing when you don’t have a job in hand (and instead of a very real looming deadline to your legal stay in the country), so obviously it’s a bit of a trade-off. But since you’re interested in optimizing the whole trajectory of your life, not just the next year or two, you should always try to afford yourself a little luxury to consider, based on what you can find out during the interview process:
How does the position I’m interviewing for help me hone or build transferrable skills that will be valuable for my next opportunity? (Ask this even if you have no idea what you want to do next! Evaluate this opportunity for how many doors it opens, leaves open, or closes.)
What are my prospects for personal growth (in terms of skills, knowledge, exposure and experience) in this role?
Is there a good possibility for me to grow professionally in this company (in terms of getting more compensation over time, getting promoted and/or getting bigger titles, moving into different functions, etc.)?
If I were to work here for [insert numbers between 1 to 10 and iterate on this question] years, what would my life look like? How attractive would I be to other employers — in this industry, outside of this industry? What would my exit opportunities be? How likely would I still be satisfied with my professional development at this company at Year X?
How likely is this employer to sponsor me for immigration? How stable is this company that it’d remain in business and good standing for the duration it’d take for my immigration case to process?
In case you’re wondering, I wasn’t smart enough to ask those questions; I didn’t even believe in my power, value and leverage enough to think I deserved to consider those things. Do as I say, don’t do I as did — if you want to try and avoid feeling stuck as I do.
The poor ROI of sponsoring work visas
I know any international student is never going to stop trying until they run out of time. And while it's demotivating, it's also helpful, I think, to have a clear vision of the reality.
Recent changes to the H-1B program will definitely have a chilling effect (I refer to changes announced in September 2025). Regardless of what becomes of these changes in implementation or in contest in courts, the very act of announcing these changes signals to employers that it may not be worth the trouble to hire foreign nationals. (In fact, it's sort of a miracle that it's ever been worth the trouble.)
It's not just the fees that you have to pay the government, or even the uncertainty of having to wait and not be sure that you have an employee that's ready to start sometime in October. (Though both of those things are significant too.) It's also all the legal fees one has to spend just to go through the process of uncertainty. From what I know, it could be anywhere from at least $5,000 to $10,000 to just prepare the H-1B lottery application — and that's not counting even more preparation (read: billable lawyer hours) once you get the lottery to actually apply for the H-1B. The government increased the lottery entry fee drastically, but that was never the true cost of partaking in the lottery. The whole thing is a really expensive crapshoot, and that’s what makes the process onerous: big definite cost for highly uncertain payout.
It's especially difficult for new graduates to be considered worth the effort. Part of the H-1B application process involves justifying — via lots of paperwork the immigration lawyers are paid to prepare — that the candidate in question not only has the requisite skills and experience for the position, but is uniquely suited for it, in that no other American candidate can really do the same job. In that process, the company has to publicly post the job opening to demonstrate that they've tried (and failed) to hire an American for that role. (And yes, if a qualified American does apply to that job, you can lose your H-1B case.) Given new graduates are usually hired on the basis of their potential and general intelligence, but not for their extensive experience and deep expertise, it’s very difficult for a new graduate to be deemed worth the cost and effort since they are unlikely to meet or exceed that bar.
Your OPT is not a golden ticket
A lot of students have gotten smarter about trying to take advantage of a STEM program to get a STEM OPT. (A lot of universities have also gotten smart about making their programs qualify for STEM so they can still attract international applicants.) The STEM OPT offers three years of post-graduation employment authorization, which is a lot better than the single year a regular OPT offers.
However, three years is actually a very short amount of time. It feels like a lot, especially when we consider that most people probably don't stay in their first job for more than two years, but if you need shots at the H-1B lottery to be able to stay, it's really not that much time.
Let's say you find a job coming out of school that takes you up on the OPT. Maybe they want to wait a year to see how well you perform before they decide to undertake putting you through the H-1B lottery. Well, there goes one year. Let's say you're not lucky in that first run of the lottery in your second year. You're basically left with one last shot at getting the lottery to get onto an H-1B. Just one!
Let's say you aren't sure about your company and you actually want to switch jobs within your first year — and lucky you, you are successful in doing so. Now you only have have two years left, and that might just be one shot at the H-1B lottery. Or let's say you're really unlucky and you start a job, you don't get to stay in it for a long time, you have to find something else quickly — not only are you hitting restart, back to establishing your credibility, proving yourself, etc., you just lost whatever OPT time you spent at the first job not working towards an H-1B lottery entry.
Three years go by really, really quickly. It's not even that much time to experiment, because even if you were the most productive, lucky, and amazing job seeker and applicant, you could probably only experience two different roles, three at best. Of course, if you were switching jobs more than once within those three years, it really leaves you no time to go through the H-1B lottery process to try to get more extended work authorization.
You can apply the same logic to being on the H-1B looking for a company to sponsor you for immigration (a green card). It’s the exact same timeframe and associated conundrum because the H-1B is good for three years without extension.
The realities of timing aside, the bottom line is that few employers are willing to take on the hassle of thinking about a new employee as someone with a deadline. The company might have an average tenure of new grad hires of two years. They might be hiring for a defined 18-month rotational program. Doesn’t matter — employers prefer the ease and comfort of knowing that they could have you for five or ten if it things panned out over the necessity of spending more time with HR to work things out so you could keep working for them. It's just easier to not have to think about it. Most, if not all, entry-level positions require significant investment in training, and no one wants to train you knowing that there's a high likelihood of you leaving. The knowledge that legal barriers might prevent you from staying indefinitely is a real deterrent to hiring and investing in you in the first place.