Spilling the beans on stupid things prospective employers say to non-immigrant aliens!

Long hiatus, but that is what a job search does to this little alien!  Now that I have lost my ties to my previous employer, I'd like to talk about stupid things that a prospective employer can say to you when all you have is a sad F-1 student visa.  I guess I want this story out there so that Fellow Aliens who are running into dead ends or unreasonable employers can take comfort in the fact that they aren't alone :)

When I attended the Fall Career Fair in my senior year of college at The American School, half the prospective employers that I talked to said point blank that they did not sponsor any kind of work visas, so an F-1 visa wouldn't cut it, sorry.  One guy even went so far as to tell me to "come back to us in the Spring Career Fair if you somehow find yourself with a green card".  Did he think that green cards grew on trees?

Eventually I found half an offer with Company X, except the hiring manager wouldn't give me a full offer because having "only" a Bachelor's Degree, I had to prove my worth because they were a bunch of very clever MBA's.  Basically, knowing how the job market was like for F-1 visa holders, they knew how to give me as little as they could, with me still clinging on to them harder than dear life.

My hiring manager also asked about how long I was intending to stay with the company, and how I thought the logistics would work out since my OPT would run out in 29 months even with the STEM extension.  I made the mistake of telling him that because I was looking for a long-term relationship with an employer, my hope was to stay with them in the long term and have them sponsor me a work visa, and maybe a green card if my work merited one.

So I worked for the next 4 months or so with no benefits and no PTO accrual and a salary that wasn't even enough to cover rent, food and gas.  Thankfully my immediate manager at the time was a decent human being who let me take time off even without PTO.  Eventually, the deadline came for them to give me a proper full time offer as my initial contract was ending, and I was given an unreasonably low salary offer.

Of course I was pissed, and did not hesitate to state so.  And was promptly told that it was the way it was because:

(a) It takes 5 to 8 grand to sponsor a work visa (which was annoying but still OK with me), and

(b) With the job market the way it is, especially with how hard it is to find a job with an F-1 visa, they thought this was a reasonable salary.

The 2nd reason made me lose it, because it felt like someone I was trying to give most of my waking hours to was backing me into a corner.  After thinking it over for half an hour, I told them that I was no longer interested in having them sponsor me a work visa.  I was supposed to get married soon anyway, and no longer saw a point in establishing a long-term relationship with them and would therefore like to go down the route of working with my husband-to-be for immigration if we both still felt like we wanted to stay in the US after we tied the knot.

My salary offer was then promptly raised.  Not by much, but enough to placate me.

Naturally the fiasco soured my relationship with my hiring manager pretty badly.  Not wanting to run into another hiring manager who would use my visa position against me, I waited until my green card was in hand before I started throwing out resumes again.

So I now have a new job with a pretty accommodating hiring manager who didn't try to screw me over, and I lived happily ever after.

That's all for today, my Fellow Aliens!