UK citizen wanting to live and work in the US.

[clarebearhh 0]

Thanks for your input guys. Much appreciated

[JayJayH 546]

Funding, savings or loans, there is extremely limited working options on a Student visa.

To elaborate - there are only four ways to work on a student visa:

1. Curricular Practical Training (CPT) - Allows you to work an internship or job as part of your curriculum if required.

2. Optional Practical Training (OPT) - Pre-completion OPT is possible, but the max length of OPT altogether is 12 months (+17 months if eligible for STEM extension). Any pre-completion OPT is counted towards those 12 months, and you may only work 20 hours a week while school is in session. The job has to be related to your major field of study. If you plan to do post-completion OPT, I would not recommend pre-completion OPT because it will shorten the time you're eligible to work after graduation.

3. On-Campus employment - International students may work up to 20 hours a week on-campus while school is in session. 40 hours during school holidays.

4. Severe finanacial hardship - International students may be eligible for off-campus employment if they can show that they suffer extreme financial hardship, and that harship is outside of the student's control, and the student could have not foreseen this hardship before the start of their program.

Edited December 7, 2013 by Yang-Ja

[jan22 3,043]

To elaborate - there are only four ways to work on a student visa:

4. Severe finanacial hardship - International students may be eligible for off-campus employment if they can show that they suffer extreme financial hardship, and that harship is outside of the student's control, and the student could have not foreseen this hardship before the start of their program.

Just wanted to add that #4 is very difficult to get approved in the beginning of your studies. Why? Because in order to get a student visa, one of the things you have to prove to the interviewing officer is that you have enough resources on hand to completely fund the first year of your studies (including room and board) and availability of additional/future funding that will cover the cost of the rest of your program. If the student visa is somehow issued, then claiming "severe financial hardship" to get a work permit immediately upon entering the US to study could be viewed as visa fraud, since it would have to be assumed that the financial resources presented during the student visa interview were false. This provision of the law is more often approved (although I don't believe it is often used anyway) when a person has been studying and something drastic happens in the middle (e.g., father who is funding education loses job, home country goes into a recession and currency is severely devalued, etc.).