If I were to get a MSc in Computer science from my home country at KTH, would American companies even consider sponsoring me? I would graduate at the age of 24 with no work experience, maybe an internship or two. I know theres limited H1-B and that if you were to get sponsored you would most likely have to win the lottery H1-B lottery to recieve it. KTH is pretty well known in Europe but i have no idea of its reputation in the states. How about if I get a job at a big company that have offices in Sweden and USA? For instance Google, Ericsson and Dice? Is it possible to work at an office for like 1 year and then apply for transfer to another office located in the USA? Or is a masters degree in the US the way to go? I know that there are pretty many Swedes working at the Ericsson office in Dallas.
Most US companies can’t sponsor foreign workers because they are required by immigration rules to indicate that no US applicants exist for any open position.
A number of companies are stating these rules on their websites.
There are limited immigrant visas.
@“aunt bea”
According to this website http://redbus2us.com/h1b-visa-2017/ there was 233k H1-B applications in 2016. There are however only 65k visas for people who doesnt have a masters degree or higher from an American university. So it is like a lottery to recieve one.
It actually seems pretty easy for a company to apply for h1-b for you. While its hard to actually win the lottery as there are so many applications?
Well, you can look at stats or you can research individual companies.
I know from personal experience that my daughter’s CS company won’t hire non citizens because there are enough US citizens applying for positions at her global corporate.
My husband’s company won’t hire non citizens because they can’t get US security clearances.
Paccar owns DAF ( or MAN) and I think Navistar is tied up with the other. Then there’s GM, Ford, MB, BMW, VW, etc. Who also are global companies. It happens that some of these will have expat assignments for some of their employees. I’ve known one or two from Scania, if that helps.
For CS, maybe Bosch or Continental would be worth a look. Products like DSpace don’t write themselves, after all. So engineering tools and services might be a far more promising avenue than normal consumer grade software.
At least the big companies seems to try to sponsor a lot of foreigners in the “software” category according to this data http://redbus2us.com/h1b-visa-sponsors/?searchText=&searchCity=&searchYear=16&action=search&searchJobTitle=Software. Companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Qualcomm are at the top. The medium sized companies try to sponsor quite a few too.
As long as you dont look for a job at companies who are into Aerospace, military technology/equipment and weapon manufacturing. Or for some secret project or something similar. Then the security clearence wont be a problem right?
If I was in your position, I’d get a job at a US company with a Swedish office and then look for a transfer on an L1 visa. It gives you less freedom but they’re also relatively easy for companies to get. H1Bs are a bit of a crapshoot as one of the devs in my org just lost the lottery for the third time (about 1/3 of H1B applicants won the lottery this year).
A common thread at my previous companies - both of which were multi-nationals - was that people would start in their home country with the hope of transferring to the U.S. It typically wouldn’t happen right away, but with 3-5 years of service, many got their wishes.
@auntbea Actually, no, US companies do not have to establish that no US workers exist for the job in order to hire foreign workers. That is only for certain types of employment-based green cards, and not for temporary work visas such as H-1B’s or L-1’s.
I agree with fragbot, if you want to work in the U.S. for a large company, work for a multinational with offices in your country so you can do an L-1 multinational transfer to the U.S.
If you are set on working in the U.S., then do a Master’s in the U.S. so you can get OPT (optional practical training) which allows you to work in the U.S. up to 24 mo. after you complete your studies. So then you work for a company, they like you, and then they sponsor you for an H-1B. A U.S. Master’s degree has a better chance of getting selected in the H-1B lottery, as there are an additional pool of H-1B visas exclusively for persons with a U.S. Mater’s degree.
Good luck!
If you were to go for the L visa I think DICE would be a great company for that wish to come true. From what i’ve read, there’s pretty many Americans working at the DICE Stockholm office so I would think there would be pretty many Swedes working at the LA office too.
I also read the following on their FAQ:
Q: EA HAS MANY TEAMS AROUND THE WORLD. ARE THERE OPPORTUNITIES FOR MOVEMENT BETWEEN TEAMS?
A: Yes. We encourage employees to work on projects they’re passionate about.
Let your manager and your HR representative know and they can work with you to highlight opportunities.
I don’t know how long you would have had to work for the company in order to be granted such an opportunity though. Is 1 year really enough? It’s not a very large company either but it’s a part of EA.
A master’s degree in the US would probably be the best though.
So many great answers on this thread. I know for certain that obtaining sponsorship is extremely difficult because of the amount of money the companies have to spend on the litigation aspect of it, I think they need to hire a lawyer that basically have to prove to the court why they hired you over a US citizen for that position.
That being said…I would still advise you to keep researching. I graduated in Engineering in my home country and came to the US through my parents so I already had a work permit so it was hard to get a job but it’s a lot easier than requiring sponsorship. Currently, I’m trying to go back to school and maybe pick up software engineering / programming and that is a headache because I need to get my official transcripts evaluated and then take a whole bunch of prereqs for the major.
Also the company I worked for was international and they would bring employees from abroad like South America and Africa for training purposes. If you get hired in your country with an international company, I think it’s worth trying to look for similar opportunities in the US, you might be able to get a temp or paid internship or training position which could develop into a part time or full time position.
Good luck