As the immigration reforms debate is going on, many international students struggle to plan their life.\u00a0 As a graduate\u00a0international student, now an international \u201calien\u201d defined by the U.S. Government, I am now working in a company that is sponsoring my H1B visa. What does it mean?\u00a0 It means I can work for this company for up to 6 years (renewal every 3 years) and maybe\u2026 just maybe they \u2018ll agree to sponsor my H1<\/strong>B visa green card<\/strong>.\u00a0 Again, what does it mean?<\/p>\n Let me tell you a story, the life and the emotional roller coaster of an international student, maybe you will feel worse for your friend who is an international student, or maybe you can decide to help and do something or at least, try not to unintentionally picking on the same old wound that we, international students, all try to cover up with pretty American made products like bandages, shoes, chocolate molten cakes, \u00a0etc.<\/p>\n 12 years ago I came to this wonderful country on a J1 visa.\u00a0 What is a J1 visa?\u00a0 Great question.\u00a0 It is an \u201cexchange visitor visa.\u201d\u00a0 Which means, you come to this country as an exchange student based on an exchange program between 2 countries (your country and the other country).\u00a0 The exchange program typically works this way, the schools between 2 countries work together, they send students between the schools back and forth during the countries for cultural experiences.\u00a0 No, this is not a mail order bride program, though, if you really think about it, it might be a good cover up for such a program.<\/p>\n Most of the time, the exchange program is embedded in the school fee you pay, but if you are from a third world country trying to do an \u201cexchange\u201d program to the US, the fee is extremely crazy.\u00a0 My family didn\u2019t have that much money, but for my future, my mother sold everything we had to send me to the US and she sent\u00a0me to this strange and foreign country when I was\u00a014.\u00a0 14, alone in\u00a0a place half way around the world\u00a0from my home, living in strangers\u2019 home and knowing noone, my first year in the US was\u00a0much better than it sounded.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I landed in Chicago\u00a0O\u2019Hare airport, and was met\u00a0by my \u201chost parents\u201d assigned\u00a0by this exchange program.\u00a0 Did I mention, I\u00a0could not find the\u00a0place in any\u00a0maps (this was before Google became popular) before I left my country?\u00a0\u00a0But, oh well,\u00a0\u201dit\u2019s the US, no one would do anything bad,\u201d I thought. \u00a0 So, why not get on the plane, meet someone\u00a0you have never met\u00a0and live in a town you could not find on any map?\u00a0\u00a0My\u00a0\u201dhost parents\u201d met me with an upside down name board with my\u00a0full legal name carefully written.\u00a0 That was the first time in my entire life I have seen my name written in full in such a mega scale,\u00a0it was a bit\u00a0unsettling.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I lived with my host parents for 1 year in a smallest town, I met wonderful people, made many mistakes and gained 20 pounds within the first 2 months snacking on onion-sour cream potato chips dipped in sour cream.\u00a0 I drove my first tractor, mowed my first lawn, ate my first McDonald\u2019s hamburger and fries, and many more.\u00a0 I lived on $500 for that entire year. I got lost to class the first day.\u00a0 All the girls and boys looked the same to me with their blonde hair and blue eyes and pale skin.\u00a0Oh, also, I broke my first bone ice skating and had my first dance.<\/p>\n I fell asleep crying for the first 3 months, and my mother spent at least $200 every month paying for phone cards.\u00a0 Every conversation was filled with silent cries and tears.\u00a0 Until one day, my uncle picked up the phone, and he said to me \u201cif you keep crying, it does not help anyone.\u00a0 Stop crying and be strong.\u201d\u00a0 That was the end of my weeping and mourning period.<\/p>\n 1 year goes by, and the fear started to creep.\u00a0 I wanted to go home.\u00a0 However, a J1 visa required the student to not come back to the US for 2 years after the exchange year (why? I have no idea).\u00a0 In addition, the year of exchange\u00a0in the US would not count toward your education back in your home country.\u00a0 In another word, I would have to retake my freshman year in high school.\u00a0 I refused to do that, but I missed my family.\u00a0 My mother kept promising me, \u201cyou will come home\u2026. SOON\u2026.,\u201d and I kept that word \u201cSoon\u201d in my heart for the next\u00a07 years until I decided to go home\u00a0all by myself.<\/p>\n After the J1, you will never be able to get another J1<\/strong>.\u00a0 It\u2019s a\u00a0once in a life time visa type.\u00a0 Thus, in order for me to stay in the US, I have to change my visa status from J1 to F1<\/strong> (independent international student) and have to change school (\u00a0by law, you cannot attend the same school with different visa type\u2026.why?\u00a0Again, I have no idea\u2026\u00a0maybe\u00a0non-citizen aliens like us might get too attached.\u00a0 So the journey began to change\u00a0my visa status from a J1-F1 and\u00a0to look\u00a0for another stranger to take me in to live with them with no conditions\u2026.. and yet, God is on my side again.<\/p>\n According to the immigration rules, I could not change my visa\u00a0unless\u00a0I left\u00a0the US\u00a0and either go home\u00a0or go\u00a0to a third party country and reapply for the visa.\u00a0 Which meant, there\u00a0was a big chance\u00a0my visa would get rejected and I would\u00a0never be\u00a0able to enter the US.\u00a0 So,\u00a0after my mother found a friend of a friend of a friend who knew a friend who lived close to a friend in Denver to take me in as their host daughter and helped me with my visa, I finally got my\u00a0visa status changed from J1-F1<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Then college time came, not many schools offer scholarships for international students, not to mention, international students never get in-state tuition benefit, so you always pay the highest cost.\u00a0 I found a school with full scholarships and everything\u00a0I wanted in a state where -20F is a normal thing (not Alaska, thank God), and consider this, I am from a country where 100F is a normal thing.<\/p>\n When you attend\u00a0a college or\u00a0university as an international student, you cannot work for more than 20 hours a week, and you cannot work off campus unless it\u2019s an approved CPT<\/strong> (CURRICULAR PRACTICAL TRAINING<\/b> VS OPTIONAL <\/strong>PRACTICAL TRAINING).\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>You can work part time as long as you are in school with your CPT which will have to follow your curriculum in school (your major), approved by the school department, signed by your international student advisor and approved by the USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In your years in school, you are also allowed 1 full year of full time CPT, and then after graduation, you are also allowed 1 full year of full time OPT (OPTIONAL <\/strong>PRACTICAL TRAINING), <\/b>the time frame is longer for you if you are in the STEM<\/strong> program (science fields).\u00a0 The purpose of this OPT is to find an employer who loves you so much that\u00a0he\/she will sponsor your H1B visa (I don’t even want to go over the requirement for the H1B visa approval) and eventually sponsor your green card.<\/p>\n This sounds great, but, consider this, one of the condition for the green card H1B visa is that the employer has to prove that there is no or very limited candidates in the US that can\u00a0do the job and you\u00a0can\u2026 out of all the people in the US, you are\u00a0THE ONE!\u00a0 I believe, this condition comes out of the fear of\u00a0international students\u00a0who have to study extremely hard to be top of their schools with the highest grades and the most extra curricular activities would take away\u00a0American jobs.\u00a0This topic calls for another long and complicated blog!<\/p>\n Long story short, your international student friend who you see everyday or\u00a0once in a while worries about all these letters everyday, J, H, O, C, T, P, U, S, C, I, S, 1, B, D, E, P, O, R, T, E, D<\/strong>\u2026.\u00a0and many more\u2026 so don’t mind them when they freak out\u00a0in front of the alphabet place mat.\u00a0 When they go to bed at night,\u00a0they have to worry\u00a0if tomorrow they will be back and continue another day or they will have to pack and start a new life in another country or go back home.\u00a0\u00a0Every meal is\u00a0like the last meal, and every party is the best\u00a0party.\u00a0 Every\u00a0relationship is extremely precious, and every mistake is a\u00a0grave chance of being deported. When they plan their future, they have to have plan A<\/strong>: staying in the US and getting green card or plan B<\/strong>: staying in the US for 3-6 years and getting married, or plan C<\/strong>: leave it all and\u00a0just restart.\u00a0 And the easiest choice always is: go back\u00a0to school and get a PHD<\/strong>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So be nice\u00a0to your international student friend, feed them the best\u00a0American dish (90% of the time, they already tried all the\u00a0food you considered \u201cexotic\u201d yet never touched a hot dog before), invite them\u00a0over for Easter Sunday, Thanksgiving, etc. because those holidays are the most terrifyingly lonely time for them.\u00a0\u00a0Talk to your friends who might know people who are executives (only the executives can be so unrealistic enough to make the decision of going through the pain of hiring\u00a01 non-citizen\u00a0individual).\u00a0 Pack their clothes and give them a giant party when they\u00a0can\u2019t find a job, not because they are not qualified, but\u00a0because no one even want to try to look at their resume due to the inherit invisible flash\u00a0on their forehead saying : sponsorship<\/strong>.\u00a0 They will have to go home.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is a repost from the blog, Quarter Life Crisis. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As the immigration reforms debate is going on, many international students struggle to plan their life.\u00a0 As a graduate\u00a0international student, now an international \u201calien\u201d defined by the U.S. Government, I am now working in a company that is sponsoring my H1B visa. What does […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,9,16,4],"tags":[35,32,39,37],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anxiety","category-friendship","category-international-students","category-stress","tag-anxiety","tag-friendship","tag-international-students","tag-stress"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4s1Yj-Y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/98"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"FOP\"](\"http:\/\/halehap.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/03\/fop.jpg?w=300&h=300\")
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