Courtesy of Lewis & Clark
New guidelines from the Department of Homeland Security are making it more difficult for international students to get internships. Following two broadcast messages issued by the department’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) from Aug. 12 and Aug. 24, Lewis & Clark has temporarily paused issuing Curricular Practical Training (CPT) authorizations for internships and externships to international students. The department clarified to school officials guidelines regarding the circumstances under which they can authorize CPT to international students.
International students arrive in the U.S. on F student visas, which do not allow them to hold internships, part-time or full-time jobs. If an international student wants to do an internship or other forms of practicum relating to their field of study, they need to apply for CPT authorization from a Designated School Official (DSO). The authorization is only valid for one employer for a certain period of time.
Previous CPT authorizations allowed international students at LC to do internships, this includes the practical training courses offered at LC. Following the college’s halt on authorizations as a result of the updated guidelines, it is unclear whether students can continue to participate in any of these opportunities anymore.
The guidelines outlined in the broadcast messages clarified narrower conditions for CPT authorization — for international students to do internships and externships, these trainings need to be an integral part of the curriculum.
The Mossy Log talked to Brian White, director of International Students and Scholars (ISS), who further clarified the new SEVP guidelines.
“The key language in that is that the internship work must be an integral part of an established curriculum,” White said. “For an international student to have CPT to do an internship, that internship has to be a required part of the student’s program for graduation, and not only that, it has to be required for everybody else doing the same program.”
Previously, the college would allow international students to do these practicums on the conditions that they were part of an established curriculum, and that the student would receive academic credit toward their major for doing the training. Almost every department at LC offers practicum internship courses numbered 244 or 444, which offer a hands-on learning experience, including internships and other practica that students receive credit for. These conditions were easily achievable for the college to grant CPT authorization to international students taking these courses.
“That’s a pretty low bar, and we have used that to authorize CPT for all of the internship courses that are currently offered at Lewis & Clark,” White said.
The CPT policy itself — which falls under the Immigration and Nationality Act — has not changed in any way. The new broadcast messages rather enforce a different, stricter interpretation of the policy, specifically the condition that the practical training must be an “integral part of an established curriculum.” The guidelines in the broadcast messages interpret the word “integral” differently to what most DSOs interpreted it as when they were previously authorizing CPT to students.
These new interpretations for the CPT conditions now mandate that practicum courses to be required for program completion. Additionally, for these practical training programs to be defined as integral, this requirement must be applied to all students — international or domestic — doing the same program.
“Neither of those requirements are in the actual regulation, but that’s how it’s being construed. That’s how it’s being applied now by SEVP,” White said.
Currently, no departments at LC require their students to do a practicum course. This narrower interpretation of the CPT regulation now prevents all international students at LC on an F student visa from doing any of the practicum courses offered at the college, or even any internship off campus.
As of Aug. 24, the college has paused authorization of any new CPT requests until further clarification on guidelines, regulatory changes or possible curricular changes that would meet the policy conditions.
“We got to make either for individual majors or for the whole school some kind of graduation requirement for an internship,” White said. “And it doesn’t seem like we have the bandwidth to require an internship starting right now for every student in the school.”
Authorizing CPT to students without meeting the new conditions would risk not only students losing immigration benefits and school officials being prosecuted, but also risks the college losing its certification to have international students on campus.
Lisa Kosiewicz Doran, associate director of ISS, spoke to The Mossy Log on the possibility of students facing consequences for previous invalid CPT authorizations.
“There could be people coming back and challenging,” Kosiewicz Doran said, in reference to SEVP and Immigration Services, “I think there will be an attempt to go back and scrutinize past CPT.”
However, she said that so far there have been no cases of this happening to LC students, and that it would be easy to challenge this possible scrutiny. She explained that SEVP would need a strong case to go against what students were previously allowed to do.
White spoke of the possibility of having an internship requirement applied department by department rather than required for the whole school. However, it is hard to know whether the college has the capacity to do that. White said that the main concern is with the competitiveness of internships, especially now, where it is possible that many other colleges in the country will be applying requiring experiential learning courses in the future, in order to also meet the conditions of the guidelines.
However, this halt on CPT authorizations does not apply to the graduate school, as they have programs that actually require internships for graduations. These programs include the masters of arts in teaching, as well as the counseling, therapy and school psychology programs, which all have internship and experiential learning requirements that students cannot graduate without.
International students now have limited alternative options to have other work opportunities. Kosiewicz Doran spoke on two possibilities for students: H-1B work visas and Optional Practical Training (OPT) authorizations.
The H-1B is a nonimmigrant work visa granted to foreigners, allowing them to work in the country for up to six years. However, one of the main requirements for this visa is to have a bachelor’s degree. Because of that, this option is not possible for undergraduate students, but remains open for alumni, graduate students and law students.
“I know of at least two of our alumni that just got approved for H-1B visas this year through their employer, and one has an H-1B application in the works,” Kosiewicz Doran said. “So it’s definitely foreseeable.”
OPT is a more viable option for undergraduate students to hold practical positions including internships and full-time or part-time jobs. OPT is an authorization for temporary employment related to a student’s or an alum’s field of study for up to 12 months of full-time or six months of part-time employment. However, an undergraduate student who wants to do OPT before graduation would only be allowed to do part-time employment.
“It’s probably the next best option for a student, but it’s not a simple option. It’s expensive,” Kosiewicz Doran said, “Students are going to have to be really strategic and really planning ahead.”
Kosiewicz Doran talked about the difficulties students might face when applying for an OPT authorization to secure an internship. Time is a major concern, where the application for OPT takes about four to six months to be processed by Immigration Services. The current application fee for OPT is $470.
“The benefit of CPT is that once you secured an internship, it was relatively fast,” she said.
Moreover, students usually save their single OPT authorization time for postgraduation, as it is their only realistic option for staying in the country after earning their bachelor’s.
“We just generally didn’t encourage it because you only get a maximum of 12 months of work authorization,” she said, “and most students preferred to reserve that for after they graduate.”
While the H-1B visa is still an option for a post-graduation work opportunity, it is a costly and competitive process that requires sponsorship from an employer. It is preferred that they have already worked with the employer for a long period of time, in order to convince the employer to sponsor them for an H-1B visa.
OPT is not competitive nor does it require sponsorship, so students often use their OPT period to work with employers and eventually earn sponsorship.
Since the college’s halt on CPT authorizations, many international students were not able to continue their internships for the semester.
Kosiewicz Doran mentioned that several students who had internships this summer were expecting another period of CPT authorization for the fall semester. Due to the new guidelines the ISO had to let these students know that they could not authorize the students to continue their internships. She described it as “difficult news.”
The college is hoping to have this halt resolved soon. The ISS is hopeful about having changes to the guidelines to be more flexible. Until then, they are willing to support students in any way in their academic and professional career.
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