Standing in the Boston Common his freshman year in 2016, Jay Liu wears his Emerson College T-shirt proudly as he smiles for the camera (Photo courtesy of Jay Liu).
By Jocelyn Yang and Tivara Tanudjaja
When Jay Liu graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Emerson College in December 2020, he hoped he would be working as a film editor soon.
But months went by as he sat in his Boston apartment holding his resume, portfolio and work authorization documents, trying to piece together his American dream.
After spending three years in Boston, the Chinese international student planned to attend the Emerson Los Angeles program his senior year in spring 2020. He searched for an L.A. apartment and reached out to the Emerson alumni for networking opportunities. He was ready to move across the country to work at a post-production studio, doing a range of tasks cutting and assembling raw footage for films.
But the staggeringly high coronavirus infection rates in California resulted in another lockdown during the summer of 2020, halting Liu’s journey to the West Coast.
Anxious about his prospects of getting a job in Boston, away from Hollywood, Liu began searching for film-related opportunities. He landed a job offer at a Boston film company in December and was supposed to receive his Employment Authorization Document (EAD) by the following January, allowing him to work that same month. But the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) delayed Optional Practical Training application processes due to the pandemic, forcing applicants like Liu to wait.
Having lost his job offer, Liu is now back at square one. With just just a month left on his 90-day limit, Liu is feeling the pressure to get a job soon. But the days pass as he sits on his computer scrolling through the limited film job opportunities offered in the city. Some days he feels hopeful, and others he doesn’t see an end to his job searching.
As an international student, Liu can stay up to a year under OPT, but he has until May 24 to get an OPT-qualifying job. Otherwise, he must go back. His dream of working in Hollywood is slowly coming to a close.
Besides the paperwork process, COVID-19 has also made the situation even more difficult. Many companies stopped job hirings during the beginning of the pandemic, and are only just beginning to start back up. The class of 2020 international graduates who wished to stay for OPT have faced unprecedented challenges in job hunting and financial and emotional wellbeing.
“I came here because American schools can provide resources, techniques, and skills I want to gain, as well as once the friendly policy for foreign students and workers,” Liu said in a Zoom interview. “But it’s a different time now.”
Inspired by the 2004 crime drama film “Crash,” he said he hoped his film editing work would eventually amplify voices of minority communities.
Born and raised in the Liaoning province of northeastern China, Liu grew a passion for film when he attended an international high school in Singapore. Since then, he knew he would come to the United States to pursue his dreams.
Liu got accepted into Emerson College’s Visual and Media Arts program in 2016. He applied for an F-1 visa, allowing him to move and study in the United States.
As an international student, Liu has the opportunity to stay in the country for an additional year through a temporary employment program called OPT. Through it, international students receive an EAD, which allows them to legally work and earn money in the United States.
With a limited time offered to work in the country post-graduation, international students are at a disadvantage because their non-citizen status requires additional paperwork and USCIS work authorization.
Liu says paperwork delays are not the only challenges he faced. Most jobs in the film industry are “urgent hirings,” he said, meaning that film production companies need people to work as soon as possible.
“Film-related jobs are typically short-term; most of them are only six-months or one year at the most,” Liu said. Once these positions are filled out for the project, they will no longer be looking for other applicants until the next project comes along. “That’s why it may be more challenging than other types of jobs,” he said.
Students on OPT after graduation are only allowed a total of 90 days of unemployment. Once the limit is passed, their OPTs are no longer valid and they must leave the country. This means they are on a tight deadline from the moment they receive their degrees, placing greater pressure on them to start job-searching long before their American peers.
For non-STEM graduates, a limited work time of one year means fewer employers are willing to hire them for long-term positions.
“The opportunities that are available to U.S. citizens and permanent residents are vastly different,” said immigration attorney Mary Walsh in a Zoom interview. She explained the three main challenges for international students to get a job: lack of in-school work opportunities, hurdles of a student’s chosen degree program — with an emphasis of the U.S. preferring STEM degrees — and the slim opportunities of the lottery-based system of getting an H-1B visa.
But Liu sees yet another hurdle: racism against Asians within the film industry. In light of the recent asian hate crimes within the country, Liu is anxious about how his race may affect his chances of landing a job in larger film companies. “I’m concerned, especially with the ongoing racism and constantly changing policies for the immigrants and foreign students from the administration,” Liu said
Only recently has Hollywood been more inclusive of the Asian community with the productions of “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Minari,” and “Raya and the Last Dragon,” to name a few. With most of his film friends back home in China, Liu said he does not have the network he would like to jumpstart his career in the American film industry.
Many international students unknowingly believe their path to finding a job in the U.S. might look the same as their domestic friends and classmates, but that is rarely the case.
Patrick Mandiraatmadja, a business administration graduate from Boston University, understood these disadvantages placed on him as an international student, so he started networking years before he received his diploma in January of 2020.
“The biggest challenge with international students finding a job is that they don’t know how to start,” he said. “The only reason why I have a job right now is because I started early in my sophomore year.”
Mandiraatmadja mentioned that out of the “hundreds” of jobs he applied to, he received “close to 10” interviews, most of which he received from his networking efforts rather than his job applications.
Starting April 2021, Mandiraatmadja works as a private equity analyst at Search Fund Accelerator.
“Many employers are not willing to take on the responsibility and additional compliance concerns to hire a foreign student graduate,” said Robert Cohen, an immigration attorney with Porter Wright Morris & Arthur in Ohio. “However, my experience with the employers I represent is that they recognize that the foreign student population presents a very rich source of talent that can be of significant benefit to their business.”
A limited employment time of one year for non-STEM graduates and up to three years for STEM graduates discourages many employers from hiring international students. Most companies prefer those who will be able to stay and work for a longer period of time.
And although international students are eligible for H-1B visas, a status that would allow them to work in the United States as an industry professional, the lottery-based system of receiving those visas only gives each student around a 30 percent chance. Most companies are not willing to take that risk.
With so many obstacles ahead of them, international students have to take a lot more effort and initiative than their American peers. And though they try their best, the system is not always in their favor and some have no choice but to return to their home countries or pursue a career elsewhere.
But receiving approval on their OPTs and finding a job are not the only challenges international students must face. With COVID, a new set of hurdles arises.
In the same way that the pandemic stopped Liu from going to Los Angeles, the pandemic stopped Dionysius Hanubrata’s potential job offer in its tracks.
Having secured interviews with multiple companies in the U.S., Hanubrata was looking forward to gaining a couple years of work experience before heading back home to Jakarta, Indonesia. He worked in silicon valley for a couple years after his undergraduate studies, before deciding to pursue a master’s at Cornell University. In the same way that he thought a master’s degree would better equip him for future jobs in Indonesia, he felt another couple years of work after graduation would too.
Hanubrata entered the final round of interviews for an electric vehicle producer in California until the pandemic hit in early 2020. He said that the company, along with many others he applied to, froze the hiring process, Hanubrata said based on the emails he received.
Graduated from Cornell University with a masters in Operations Research and Information Engineering in May 2020, Hanubrata saw the effects COVID on job hirings. After realizing that the job market was not doing well, Hanubrata returned home in August 2020.
He is now working in the analytics department of a property tech startup in Jakarta, which Hanubrata said aligns with a project he had thought of doing on his own.
While some are forced to return to their home countries because of COVID-19, Liu is still in his Cambridge apartment scrolling through job options that would allow him to stay in the country.
As of April 2021, Liu landed two short-term contract-based jobs with JL Cambridge International and Tindragon Media. Even with two jobs, Liu works no more than 10 hours. But according to USCIS, OPT requires a minimum of 20 working hours per week. Within a tight deadline, he still needs to find a job that can count towards OPT requirements.
“Going home is definitely the first choice because you don’t have to worry about anything else,” Liu said. If he can’t find an OPT-compliant job in the U.S. he intends to find one in Canada or Japan. As he is currently learning Japanese, Japan would be his first choice, said Liu.
“If I have a chance to stay here, let’s say, like have an H-1B visa or maybe another visa, to stay for five more years,” Liu said, “I’m really happy to do it. But the problem is that it’s just not really pragmatic.”
Each year, the number of H-1B visas given out is limited to 65,000 people with a bachelor’s degree and 20,000 people with a master’s. With the number of applicants normally three times the amount of allotments — with over 200,000 petitions entered during the 2019-2020 lottery season — the chances of someone with a bachelor’s getting the H-1B is only about 30 to 34 percent, and 40 to 45 percent for those with a master’s, according to Walsh.
The 90-day unemployment limit still looms over Liu as he struggles to find employment with a minimum of 20 working hours. He needs to be hired before May 24, or else he will be overstaying his F-1 visa and forced home. But he is persistent and hopeful he will find one that suits him as job openings and the film hiring season for the summer starts again.
“We don’t really benefit that much from any immigration rules,” he said. “That’s why having the skills, and habit, and networking is the priority.”
