Hacker News Reader

Comment by tgma | Hacker News Reader

How is this related to being "welcome" or not? Of course they are very welcome to study. They are simply not encouraged to circumvent their program of study and go to work under the guise of "CPT."

View on HN

How is using CPT for a summer internship circumventing program pf study? To get CPT, the experience has to related to your degree, not just a random job. And you can only do it in over school breaks

Reading the article it explicitly says if CPT is designed as part of your program of study that you need to complete to satisfy the degree requirements, they are fine. They just won't approve it for optional internships. That's what Optional Practical Training is explicitly intended for, Optional.

And no, to be clear, you are totally mistaken about "school break" thing. In fact, you have to be enrolled in credits to get CPT, not on a full break (this is in no way a new rule.)

School break means between-semester breaks.

Furthermore, CPT is used for STEM internships. You cannot do internships using OPT because that requires UCSIS permissions which can take upto 4-5 months. CPT is approved completely by university.

Without STEM internships, there's almost no chance of employment after internship.

Precisely this.

> You cannot do internships using OPT because that requires UCSIS permissions which can take upto 4-5 months.

Routinely intern recruitments at Google or Facebook start as soon as October of the prior year giving ample time for that. OPT has an optional 30-day response time if you opt to pay for Premium Processing.

> Without STEM internships, there's almost no chance of employment after internship.

Oh wow, you mean F-1 temporary non-immigrant student visa will finally work as intended, to complete a program of study and not as a backdoor for labor importation? Tough.

I have no clue why you are mentioning OPT. Almost no one uses it during their school years because it makes no sense to and reduces your post-grad time. That’s what CPT is for. They’re requiring programs to have mandatory internships which most dont and probably wont require it. You obviously have to be enrolled to get CPT, you just cant use it to work full-time during the school terms.

How prevalent is that kind of abuse? Quantify it. I am sketpical.

Not sure what you mean by "abuse" or what you are skeptical of? Please clarify what stats are you looking for?

You said "They are simply not encouraged to circumvent their program of study and go to work under the guise of "CPT.""

This implies that you are familiar with the system and aware of how it's abused, so presumably you can provide some evidence.

I wasn't aware of any during my time there, but my personal experience doesn't necessarily mean it didn't/hasn't happened.

I ask because I did not use the term "abuse," as that's subjective. Circumvent was picked precisely because it was a clear run around the intent of the program, without the value judgement.

The keyword is "Day 1 CPT" if you want to learn about the abuse.

Certain colleges basically knowingly wink wink and allow incoming students to go immediately work under CPT.

Can you quantify the scale of it or not?

I know what "Day 1 CPT" means and am specifically curious about real abuse of the system at Cal.

In my opinion, it would have to be obvious and fairly extreme to take action over, because there are issues that dwarf whatever impact it might have, the top one being bureaucratic bloat. If 90% of the non-teaching/researching staff at Berkeley were replaced with CPT abusers, I think it would be a net positive.

Yes, I agree that at any of these top universities, the egregious cases are not that likely. However, I do think they still do not do proper "diligence" and were reliant on students to basically take a unit and happily handed out I-20s to go work at their desired workplace with little supervision or specificity that can defensibly supplement the program of study, thus they never really developed the machinery to truly vet individual cases. They are now being cautious so as not to accidentally lose their SEVIS permission over such a small matter. My guess is the degree programs themselves will start incorporating more formal work experience similar to Canada, as the primary or an alternative path to satisfy degree reqs. This would make a much more robust justification for the student and the international office.

Elon Musk, for one. Maybe not the same program but came as a j1 student visa then promptly left to work on startups.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/28/us/elon-musk-immigration-wash...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com