We are sitting in identical blue armchairs. We both have our right leg crossed over our left. We study at the same university. We work about fifty feet away from each other in this very room. Our families are from the same city. Our mothers are from the same neighborhood. With our dark hair, eyes, light brown skin and round glasses, we could be sisters.

And yet, we couldn’t be more different.

Where I have a gold eagle emblazoned on my passport; she has four golden lions on hers. I am American and she is Indian.

Sara Asher, a senior biochemistry major, is due to graduate from Stony Brook University in a few months. Like many graduating college students, she will face a tough job market as she enters the workforce. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the underemployment rate, or share of college graduates working in jobs that do not require a college degree, is higher for recent graduates than college graduates from 1990 to 2010. This reflects an increasing trend of high-skilled job recruiters requiring more than a bachelor’s degree for entry-level positions.

Essentially, the goalposts have been shifted for college graduates. However, international students on an F-1 visa face added pressures.

“The way I had to approach a lot of these jobs is, ‘do you sponsor visas after my [Optional Practical Training (OPT)] is done?’” Asher said. “To which a lot of people say ‘no,’ because they’re not able to afford that.”

This is a familiar story for many international students in America. According to public policy research and advocacy organization Economic Innovation Group, the retention rate for international students is not only the “lowest for bachelor’s degree recipients,” but “less than one out of five international bachelor’s degree recipients ultimately stays in the [United States].” 

“I feel like that’s going to be a common theme with a lot of international students,” Asher said. “I know a lot of my friends who are having the same problem, where a lot of the companies are like, ‘hey, we need you to have a year of experience,’ but how? How am I supposed to have a year’s experience if I’ve been studying for the last four years?”

There are several statuses one can apply for with the F-1 visa. International students have one year to complete OPT or on-the-job training on the F-1 visa. After this, they can apply for a two-year extension if they are studying a science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) discipline. These time limits, Asher expressed, also caused her issues. 

With limited time to pursue job opportunities, pursuing laboratory or research-based internships during college would count towards an OPT or STEM extension. She was not able to pursue these opportunities, however, so she stuck to on-campus jobs. As a result, the field experience on her resume was limited, further hindering her chances at post-graduate employment.

“There was a lot of pressure from my family, of course, because they wanted to see me succeed,” Asher said. “They wanted me to keep trying. They wanted me to apply and apply and apply, and apply for two jobs every day, apply for four jobs every day.”

During the application process, Asher dreaded updating her family on her progress. Disappointing her hopeful mother was a hard pill to swallow, and she had very little good news to share.

“That pressure mentally, it takes a toll on you,” she said. “Like, for me, I would get so agitated any time anyone would ask me ‘how is my job search going?’ I’m like, ‘shut up. I don’t want to talk about it right now.’ I’ve had enough of this because I’m applying to so many, but I’m not hearing back.”

With many employers requiring related work experience for entry-level jobs, Asher is stuck navigating a system that can take years to progress. The current wait time for a student visa application interview in Mumbai, India is over 300 days. Green cards are even harder to get; the waitlist for Indians is nearly a century, according to the Times of India. Indian immigrants have appealed to seek shorter waiting times, but they were recently denied by the U.S. Court of Appeals.

“Is it really worth it to be coming here and slaving away [for] 60 years to just get a green card here?” Asher asked. “Am I really that desperate to be a citizen here?”

Asher doesn’t have a five-year plan. The unstable job market aside, the current political climate leaves her future in America uncertain and unpredictable.

“I just found out from a friend that there’s a hiring freeze with companies,” Asher said. “A lot of the companies are on a hiring freeze [un]til [President Donald J.] Trump makes a decision about things for the international students.”

Though the president has no public plans to end the student visa program, fears abounded within the international student community leading up to inauguration day. Many universities advised international students to return to America before Jan. 20 just in case implementing visa restrictions were on Trump’s day one agenda.

Asher wanted to be a doctor, but after following the case of a medical trainee’s botched rape and murder investigation, she was inspired to pursue forensic science instead. Despite growing up immersed in the forensic labs of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” (2000-2015) and “Bones” (2005-2017), she never had the opportunity to be exposed to the career itself. While a career in forensic science is a well-paved path in the U.S., it is more of a rocky road in India.

Infamous for police corruption and low conviction rates, the forensic science discipline is only beginning to emerge in India. Therefore, there are limited opportunities to study or work in forensics there. America was supposed to be Asher’s chance to pursue her dream career. Once the job search began, however, she quickly found that forensic science positions, which are often affiliated with local, state or federal law enforcement, rarely offer jobs to noncitizens. As a result, she had to think outside the box, applying to positions that shared similar attributes to the experience of working in a forensic lab.

“When I got the text that she got the job offer at first, I was super excited for her, [be]cause I’m like, ‘thank God that is gonna work out for her,’” Maura Luby, a sophomore double majoring in English and business management and Asher’s friend, said. “And then hearing, ‘I actually really don’t wanna do this. I’m not really happy to be doing this.’ I don’t know, my heart breaks … I wish there was more agency.”

In July, Asher will be starting her OPT at a lab in Greenfield, Ind. She will be a study technician for animal operations, conducting preclinical trials for the pharmaceutical industry. Even after being accepted, she had hesitations about the job. On the surface, this couldn’t be further from her dream: as a lifelong animal lover and dog owner, she will be doing animal testing. She will be living alone, almost 700 miles away from her family in New York. How will she get by as a 21-year-old female noncitizen alone in Midwestern America?

A less desirable job outside a major city was her golden ticket. This is the immigrant’s burden in America: filling the gaps their peers will not. Asher is now forced to look at the positives, namely that her connection to pharmaceuticals could put her closer to toxicology. Perhaps, she mused, she would be able to secure a spot in a master’s program after her two-year OPT.

“I feel like I tried,” she said. “I tried to get a job, I did land a job. I’m very proud of that for myself. I did four years here. I learned a lot and that is why that was my original intention of coming here, which was learning about the world, learning about how other people live, learning about how other countries work.”

Correction Statement: The previous edition of this article said Maura Luby was a junior. It has since been corrected to sophomore. The name of Asher’s future employer was redacted.