Immigration Gone Astray

So i get a call from ______ _____ Financial asking me to come in for an interview. I clearly have the OPT then H1B sponsorship listed on my resume, I end up driving about an hour to Connecticut and have a great one hour interview. Going over what the company does, how they set up personal financial advice to so many clients etc etc. He pretty much offers me a job right there on the spot, but wait of course when i bring up the visa he quickly says they don’t offer that and they even have a current manager who they are they trying to get one for but failed. Said did the one year OPT and would cost them 5000 to do it and a 40% chance of getting one. Not sure if these numbers are true but what anther waste of my time. Thank You so much

Email I just received regarding a job,

Hi David:
Unfortunately ——— ——– cannot hire people who don’t have
green cards or are a U.S. citizen. This is because the people that we
hire are independent contractors. I’m sorry for the inconvenience and
miscommunication.   

Found an interesting post by the Google Blog, made me think that even if I get sponsored do I even have a chance.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-us-immigration-policies-mean-to.html

Thanks for the speedy first comment so it has pushed me to write my second post. I actually came here in 1996 and have been here on a G1 Visa thanks to my Dad who works for the UN. I went to part of my middle school, all of High school and finally college here. Through this time i never thought it was so hard to get a visa. To most people i was just as American as they were. There is some misperceived view out there that if you live here in the US for five years then you can just stay here, how wrong this is. After visiting a immigration lawyer in November, actually a very good one here in NYC they explained all of my options and none seemed to work. We went over everything and sponsorship was my only option. My most recent decision was to now switch from this G1 to a F1 student visa and then gain the one year OPT training period. But will this one year training period really change anything. I have a feeling ill end up at the same position just one year later.

Because of privacy issues I really will not say the actual companies who initially offered me jobs but because of my need for sponsorship simply took them away. I started my job search back in September of my senior year, spending about two months applying and on first round interviews. I ended up with 12 first round interviews and three of these ended up with job offers. Once i received my offers i went to the lawyer to find out what steps needed to be taken to go through with these offers. The first being from a small internet based stock trading position. It seemed like a good job. A long paid training period, being a day trader, good commission based on profit made, young working environment and good location in Manhattan. A job I would love to take. The second from a Fortune 100 large company, position was located in jersey with a great starting pay and starting bonus. Even though the work seemed to be boring and there would be a commute the position seemed like a great place to start in a large company. The final offer coming from a small financial firm who paid commission on clients brought in and full training in financial advising, good starting role with endless possibilities. After contacting all three companies not one of them would offer me sponsorship, not one! I began to think why not but then i realized I am just one of hundreds who wanted that position so why not just pick the next person in line, why waste the effort lawyers and money on me. How sad it is but true. A college educated person who has employees willing to offer him a position who has lived here almost all of his life but is unable to because of a simple visa. Is this the free America we all think of?

This site has been created to share and explain my immigration process to the US and the search process for a job upon graduation from college. I will give a look into a process that most Americans don’t understand or see. When most people think of the current immigration issues it always comes back to the Mexican immigration and securing the boarder but these are not the only concerns out there. What about legally immigrating to this fine country? How hard is it? Everyone talks about workers coming in and taking American jobs but these are normally low paying jobs where people are worried about them coming in and undercutting American workers. This blog will explain my current situation with steps and results along the way.