Portfolio at NYU

Posted 06.17.04
Internationals Go Illegal
Manhattan South, Fall 2002; Winner of NYU's 2002 Sydney Gross Award for Investigative Reporting.

By Aleksandra Todorova

Three nights a week, she tosses school papers and projects in the back of her mind, slips into a sexy thong and bra, and goes to a Manhattan night club. There, unlike other college students who go to clubs to drink, dance and socialize, she swallows pride and strips-all night long.
She came to New York University two years ago and quickly discovered three facts of life: New York rents fly high in the thousands, part-time on-campus jobs pay in the low hundreds per week, and off-campus work is illegal for her and the nearly 25,000 other students in her situation-internationals studying in New York colleges and universities.

U.S. immigration law allows student visa holders 20 hours of work per week on-campus and does not allow them to work off-campus. That doesn't stop them. Waiting tables, working in restaurant kitchens, and babysitting were considered the most popular jobs among the 5,399 internationals enrolled at New York University last year, the largest concentration of students from abroad at any U.S. college. Of course, for those with the appropriate body and moves, exotic dancing was another possibility. The students say this is ridiculous. Officials claim this prevents them from stealing jobs from American graduates. Economists say this could hardly be the case.
Around the country, foreign students, about 250,000 undergraduate and almost as many graduate in total in 2001-2002, may choose to stay out of trouble with an on-campus job in exchange for approximately $160 a week before taxes, apply for a work permit from the INS; or go illegal.

While working illegally pays the bills, students not only have to worry about the consequences they face if caught, they also have to deal with the possibility of being treated poorly since they have no authority to turn to. Take a French NYU student, for example. She was hired to babysit and speak French to a two-year-old for $10 per hour. "At one point, I thought: Oh my God! I'm 24 and here I am, babysitting," she says. "I had to play with kids instead of read! And I could be doing so many more things!"

She pauses for a second, then sighs: "But with my [foreign student] status... and the people at the OISS really scared me-I was paranoid!"
Each semester, the Office of International Students and Scholars at NYU welcomes hundreds of new foreign students with a detailed explanation of the dire consequences awaiting anyone who dares to take an off-campus job.

"We can't stress enough the importance of not working illegally," says the OISS Director, Gail Szenes. "It's too great a risk and there are several ways to do it legally."
Students who begin work without a written authorization are violating immigration and naturalization laws. Such violations can result in immediate loss of student status that allows them to study in the United States.

Students can apply for an INS work permit based on unexpected economic difficulties, for example, devaluation of their home currency, loss of graduate assistance, or unexpected medical expenses. They can also apply for optional practical training in their field of study, for a total of 12 months. In both cases, the INS requires a $100 application fee and takes at least four months to decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether to issue the permit. Another option is to apply for a special permit for a paid internship if the program requires it. It is valid for only a semester and students can do only one in the whole course of studies.

According to the OISS, many hundreds of NYU students apply for and receive permission to work each year. But even though the OISS reviews all applications before they send them to the INS, they cannot guarantee a favorable outcome.

So each year, many hundreds of students decide to skip the hassle. They find illegal jobs through friends and roommates, and agree to work for as much as employers are willing to pay them-just as long as they pay them. "How can a foreign student come here, pay tuition, and not work," says French Babysitter. "It's a crazy policy! Plus, everybody does it. There's no other way to survive."
Babysitting generally pays $10 an hour, and tips from waiting tables on a good Friday night can reach $250. Most are not as lucky as Exotic Dancer, who says she makes an average of $1,200 a week, and has come home with $800 on a good night.

But students say the problem is not how much they are paid, it's how they are treated. When employers hire foreign students off the books, the students know no employment laws apply.

"It puts you in these situations, where you have to work for someone you really hate, and they can fire you any time because you don't have any rights," says an NYU student from Belgium who worked as a coat-check at an upscale Upper East Side restaurant for $20 a night and about $50 in tips. She described her job as "stupid."
"I would stand there like a poor plant and wait for people to come, take their coats and hang them. And wait for my tip," she says. She adds that she quit because the job was a psychological harassment. "They can make you do things you don't want to do-it really made me feel like a piece of shit."

French Babysitter quit because she felt the family was taking advantage of her. "They pushed the limits, they made me sweep the floor and clean the house," she says.
And as vacuum cleaners, dancing poles and coat hangers take over books and pencils, the opponents of allowing foreign students to take white-collar jobs, like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, argue students have to obey the laws.

"A lot of people view the student visa as a backdoor to bypass the regular immigration system," Says Karl Fillipini, a FAIR policy analyst. "...It's unfortunate that they can't find the sources to pay tuition or to support themselves," he adds, "but at the same time they haven't kept the promise they made when they came here -- to study, not work."

Yet professors and advisors strongly recommend working-as an intern-and some academic programs require it. And while some lucky students find paid internships, foreign students need more than luck-they need patience.

"I'd love to spend the time I now spend on my off-the-books job at a paid internship instead," says an NYU graduate student who in the past four years has babysat, researched and copyedited for a professor, and worked at an attorney's office-all illegally.

"Obviously, if I had the chance to concentrate my time and efforts on a paid internship, during the summers especially, I would have been on the same footing with American students," she adds. "And then I would have known I am being judged on my own merits, not have to hear as one of the first questions when trying to arrange an interview, 'Are you a U.S. citizen?'"

But if you find a paid internship, she goes on, the bureaucracy of arranging it is so limiting-from the pile of paperwork to the long wait for a work permit-that most companies don't want to bother.

And some companies just skip the hassle, too. French Babysitter says she did a paid internship last summer without a work permit. Her supervisor wrote the $250 checks every week and she didn't even ask for a contract.

No questions asked, no contracts signed, no taxes paid, no rules obeyed. They may feel disgruntled with their jobs, angry at their employers, and frustrated with the system. But they don't feel guilty.

"I don't feel like I'm cheating because I work for this money," the Exotic Dancer says. "I'm not stealing. I'm not robbing anyone."