Do Unpaid Internships Harm the Career Prospects of International Students?

Do Unpaid Internships Harm the Career Prospects of International Students?

 the fiercely competitive sector of work, interns are termed as ‘modern slaves’. Unpaid interns are haplessly pulled up to offer their services for no wages at all. These interns are expected to help companies happily save money, which they should ideally spend on recruiting full-time employees. However, if you  are a foreign student, on a study visa and interning for free, you could risk losing your residence visa in the country and be deported. Yes, it is definitely shocking to learn something like this when you’re working twice as hard as the full-time employee, whose shoes you’re trying to fill in through immense work. But, How does an Unpaid Internships Can Harm Career Prospects of International Students?

Unfortunately,there’s no way around it; this one’s legally tricky. Irrespective of legalities, the truth is that if you are an unpaid intern, you should be ideally in a paid internship under the law. Therefore by doing an unpaid internship, you are in the risk of violating your immigration laws and status because paid internships are legally similar to actual ‘employment’, and to be employed, the international student should be ‘employment authorized’. Furthermore, it should coincide to the rule that an F-1 visa permits Optional Practical Training (OPT) and Curricular Practical Training (CPT) or that a J-1 visa permits Academic Training.

Recently, the US Department of Labor took internship courses under fierce scrutiny. This crucial step was taken to determine if the unpaid internships coincide with the prescribed rules of ‘volunteer work’, willing to see where the international students actually did work as volunteers or if the firms were just smartly playing it to cheap workers. In addition, the government has made stringent laws and criteria for
the situations under which an employer can avail the services of interns or trainees, without actually paying them. Furthermore, if a company is found on the wrong side of legalities, the intern is seen as a ‘victim’ if he/she is a US citizen. On the contrary, if you a foreign student, unfortunately then you could be deported back to homeland.