My Year Serving International Students Through Social Journalism

9 min readDec 20, 2017

A digital newsletter, a website and an Instagram campaign later, here’s what I learned.

It was May 2016 when I learned that after 5 years spent studying and working in the United States, the work visa my company had applied for on my behalf had not been selected in the annual H-1B lottery — a random selection process that determines which visa petitions will be reviewed.

Discouraged, I returned home to Morocco where I began the process of rebuilding my life. I had to leave my job at Snap, Inc, where I was a story editor, I had to leave the community I’d built over five years, and I had to leave New York City, which had become my home. My time at Snap and New York were cut short because of a lottery.

But what I’ve learned is that I’ve had more luck than most, and that my story is not a unique one.

For the last several years, approximately a million international students have enrolled in US colleges and universities. Upon graduating, every international student has the opportunity to apply for Optional Practical Training (OPT), a period wherein foreign students graduating with a US degree may remain in the US to work. This period can last up to three years for those graduating with a degree in STEM (science, tech, engineering and math) and up to one year for those with non-STEM degrees.

After one’s OPT, however, rigid immigration procedures (like those attached to the H-1B, for example) make staying in the US a challenging endeavor. Employers are reticent at the idea of hiring employees on OPT, knowing their time in the US might be cut short after just a year. They are furthermore reticent at sponsoring employees for H-1Bs, the most highly sought after work visa by international students, because nothing guarantees a petition will be selected in the lottery.

When I decided to apply for journalism graduate school, I knew I wanted to somehow use my time to serve the international student community, to shed light on the challenges we face when trying to intern, work on campus or get a job post grad.

Upon entering the social journalism program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, however, I soon realized that I had the opportunity to do a lot more than make videos and write articles about my community. I could actually find ways to solve some of its problems.

But first, with the guidance of my Community Engagement professors Carrie Brown and Jeff Jarvis, I decided I needed to take a step back and listen to my community — what issues needed to be addressed? What were their wants and needs? And what could I, as a social journalist, do to address them?

To listen, I interviewed more than 50 international students in New York City — outside of schools, in person, on the phone and in studio. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes for four. To document some of these interviews, I launched an Instagram campaign @internationalstudentsny.

Now followed by 140 people, I used this Instagram campaign to document the faces and stories of NYC’s international student community. It gave me a platform to set up more community interviews in order to learn about students’ needs.

Here are some of the things I was hearing:

“Once they hear you’re international, they kind of smile and say, ‘Okay, we’ll be in touch’ and you never hear from them again.”— Zeina Sabry, Egypt
“If I’m selling my labor, it should be my right. It should be my basic right to be given the proper documentation to stay.” — Soheil Asefi, Iran
“I want to stay. But I’m also aware that it’s very difficult to stay even in a field like journalism, so I’m so stressed out about what I’m going to do after my OPT ends. I don’t think I’ve ever been this stressed out in my life.” — Monica Espitia, Colombia

Throughout the course of my work, I gained three major insights:

1. A substantial portion of international students want to stay and work in the US post grad, at least for a few years before returning home. Last year, those staying to work in the US after graduation rose by 19% according to the Institute of International Education, indicating an increased interest on behalf of international students to obtain professional experience in the US before returning home.

A video I produced as part of a social media course I took with Professors bob sacha and Jeremy Caplan.

2. Many international students are ill informed when it comes to the various labor and immigration rules that apply to them. Every student I spoke to had questions relating to immigration: whether or not they could apply for an internship, whether or not they could legally engage in freelance work (they can’t, fun fact), how to discuss getting sponsored for an H-1B with an employer and so forth. And some international student offices aren’t best equipped. “The international office at my school isn’t always informed about things. I often have to go find the answers to things myself,” Soukaina Alaoui, an international student from Morocco, told me.

3. Those seeking H-1B work visa sponsorship down the line want an easy way to find out which employers sponsor such visas and for which roles. Many international students have told me they aren’t always sure, during the job search process, which companies will be worth the time they invest in putting together a tailored resume and cover letter. I also received the following prompt via Hearken this summer: “I would like to be able to access a list of employers that sponsor international students with H-1B work visas.”

Developing an Action Plan

To address the issues faced by my community, I decided to:

Create a biweekly e-mail newsletter called ‘Students With Borders,’ with the goal to inform and connect international students.
Create and code an H-1B sponsor search tool that would live at the domain ‘dotheysponsor.com,’ and allow international students to find employers who might sponsor them.
Continue visibility work via a Medium publication and an Instagram page @internationalstudentsny.

Students With Borders, a biweekly newsletter catered for the international student community

Students With Borders includes news updates, immigration-related resources, and a student spotlight section featuring writing by current and former international students. At the end of every newsletter is also a Q&A section, wherein audience members are prompted to ask a question, to be answered in the next edition.

I set up a landing page at: studentswithborders.tilda.ws, where international students could subscribe and view current and past editions of the newsletter.

Here’s what the newsletter looks like when it gets to my subscribers:

DoTheySponsor.Com, an H-1B sponsor search tool

In response to many international students asking how to better discern which companies sponsor employees for H-1B visas, I set out to find data for labor condition applications over the last five years. Labor condition applications are attached to every H-1B petition — they detail the work and salary conditions of every role being sponsored and are, therefore, a good indication of an H-1B attempt. With the help of Barbara Gray at CUNY-J’s research center, I was able to find a registry of all LCAs for the past several fiscal years, though downloading entire sets of data from the site has been a challenge.

I partnered up with a coder, Farid El Nasire, who kindly made a demo to show how what the website would look like. We used data from the site for media companies like Vox, Buzzfeed, the New York Times Company and Turner Broadcasting. Once we find more complete and reliable LCA data spreadsheets for the last five fiscal years, the site will be updated.

Essentially, the website would allow international students to search the name of a company and see which roles it attempted to sponsored employees for in the last five fiscal years. This gives students the opportunity to know which companies they should target in their job search, if their goal is to get an H-1B visa.

International Students of NY, a Medium Publication

An important insight I gained while talking to international students is that they desire more visibility in the media — their American counterparts don’t know any of the challenges they face, nor do they feel validated in fighting for more opportunities when their issues are largely being ignored. In order to tackle this issue, and also to inform international students, I decided to create a Medium publication called “International Students of NY,” where I published five pieces centered on the international student experience, two of which featured videos I produced with skills obtained through Professors bob sacha and Jeremy Caplan’s social video class and through a social video internship at CNN this semester.

International Students of NY (Medium)

Metrics and Outcomes

Because of the interpersonal nature of connecting with international students, I knew going into this project that my metrics wouldn’t be ‘successful’ by traditional standards. But just for fun, let’s look at the numbers. Here’s how my Medium publication did:

Here’s how ‘Students With Borders,’ my newsletter did:

No real numbers for DoTheySponsor.Com just yet, but will have more as the domain is attached to the site and more data is input to it.

Instead of focusing on the stats above to give me a sense of how I was doing , I decided I would measure my impact by the quality of the feedback that I was receiving.

Getting in person and virtual feedback from international students was incredibly helpful. Hearing that my newsletter was a good resource or that a student wished they’d had something like this newsletter or the H-1B sponsor search tool when they were in undergrad — these were good signs. Getting comments on my Instagram page saying that people could relate —these were my metrics.

Creating a community at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism through my work — this was my impact.

CUNY-J International Students Organization

An Ode to Social Journalism

My work with this community would not have been as impactful, as interpersonal, as it would have been without the social journalism mindset I gained throughout the course of this program. Learning to put the community’s needs first, and figure out ways to serve them through my journalism work, was what led to the creation of ‘Students With Borders’ and ‘DoTheySponsor.Com,’ which I hope will continue to make impact and serve this community in positive and helpful ways. After a year in the social-j program, I’m left hoping traditional journalism is on its way to including more of the social journalism ethos in its practice — it’s in dire need of it.

What next?

My work with the community isn’t over. ‘Students With Borders’ will still be delivered to my subscribers every other Friday, my website is still under construction, and my Medium publication and Instagram page are still alive.

I will continue to gather feedback from my community to make these resources as effective and helpful as they can be and, of course, you will stay updated via this Medium page.