Amen!
If someone is looking for advice from a professor or from Anonymous Cowards, they get what they pay for; and if you become your own immigration lawyer, you have a fool for a client.
Keep in mind that there are many options, with many complexities attached, for an F-1 student who is about to be out of status. Here are a few:
1) Go home to your native country and make it great....come back legally another time through visa processing at a U.S. Consulate abroad.
2) Get OPT (optional practical training) through the DSO at your school as a one-year extension of your F-1....allowing work under your student status.
3) Seek an H1-B after your OPT expires; but this is also a non-immigrant visa which is company-specific. If you are fired, then you will be out of status, and must depart.
4) Marry an American....but if you don't act fast, you will be subject to the "unlawful presence" provisions of the immigration law, and cannot adjust status.
5) Stay in the U.S. illegally for 10 years (since the date of your arrival) and actually be eligible for a green card under "Cancellation of Removal" for non-permanent residents under Sec. 240A(b) of the Immigration Act....talk about perverse incentives in immigration law!!
6) Find an employer to file an I-140 and get a labor certification for you.
7) Wait for Congress to grant you some type of Amnesty....they will probably cave in again sometime soon.
8) Whatever you do....don't listen to your professor. Hire an honest immigration lawyer if you can find one.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Go home to your native country and make it great....come back legally another time through visa processing at a U.S. Consulate abroad.
2) Get OPT (optional practical training) through the DSO at your school as a one-year extension of your F-1....allowing work under your student status.
3) Seek an H1-B after your OPT expires; but this is also a non-immigrant visa which is company-specific. If you are fired, then you will be out of status, and must depart.
4) Marry an American....but if you don't act fast, you will be subject to the "unlawful presence" provisions of the immigration law, and cannot adjust status.
5) Stay in the U.S. illegally for 10 years (since the date of your arrival) and actually be eligible for a green card under "Cancellation of Removal" for non-permanent residents under Sec. 240A(b) of the Immigration Act....talk about perverse incentives in immigration law!!
6) Find an employer to file an I-140 and get a labor certification for you.
7) Wait for Congress to grant you some type of Amnesty....they will probably cave in again sometime soon.
8) Whatever you do....don't listen to your professor. Hire an honest immigration lawyer if you can find one.