Harvard will stop granting internships to foreign law students– www.thecollegefix.com

Foreign student suggests Americans would have taken his internship just as a ‘hobby‘

Harvard University international students will no longer be able to displace American law students from internship opportunities.

Harvard’s law school announced it was ending work authorizations for foreign law students. The change follows a Trump administration directive to restrict “Curricular Practical Training” opportunities for foreign students. The internships had been used as backdoor way to allow foreigners on student visas to work in the country.

The Crimson reported:

HLS’s graduation requirements include six credits of “experiential learning courses,” which includes externship clinics. But students also have the option to fulfill the requirement through in-house clinics and seminars — meaning externships are not required of every student and no longer qualify for CPT.

The change bars international J.D. students from all of the Law School’s 13 externship clinics, which pair a course component with placements at government agencies, companies, and non-profit organizations. Previously, international students were barred only from some externships, such as government placements that require U.S. citizenship.

Associate Dean Meredith Boak said the school wants to help its foreign students through these changes.

“We reached out earlier this month to all F-1 students and have been working directly with students already enrolled in externship clinics to help them understand their options,” Boak wrote, according to the student newspaper. “Students who are unable to pursue an externship are being offered individualized advising to identify an alternative path aligned with their goals.”

Applicants for a student visa are supposed to attest that they do not plan to use it as a way to gain permanent residency or citizenship in the country. However, an immigration law professor at the University of Oklahoma told Harvard’s student newspaper that this is what students do.

“I would assume that most students would not want to use their optional practical training in this context,” Professor Kit Johnson said. OPT is a related program that also functions as a backdoor employment program for foreign students.

“They usually want to use it for post graduation because then it helps buy them time and buys their employer time to get them a different visa,” Johnson said, implicitly acknowledging foreign students find ways to stay in the country after graduation.

A Canadian law school graduate bemoaned that others like him might be denied of the opportunity. He suggested foreign law students get internships to gain experience, while Americans just do it as a “hobby.”

“It seems like cruelty for cruelty’s sake,” Michael Poirier, a 2025 Harvard Law School graduate complained.

“You’re just removing those opportunities from the people who are the most interested in them, the people who are most likely to provide the most value to those opportunities versus people who, maybe they’re American-born, but maybe doing an NBA internship is more of a hobby for them.”

Poirier said he may not have attended Harvard if he was not able to get an American internship.

“If I were told at the time that the NBA was completely off the table, I never would have come to the United States,” he said. “There would have been no incentive for me to do so. I would have just much preferred to stay among family and friends and have a successful legal career in Canada.”

He now works at Ropes and Gray, a Boston law firm.

The Trump policy may not be permanent, as legal challenges are currently underway. Several groups filed a federal lawsuit on Monday in a Massachusetts federal court, The Crimson reported.

Groups are separately challenging a regulation that would require college students to complete their studies in four years or apply for a waiver.