I'm a French citizen born, raised and educated in France. My question is if it is possible for me to apply for a job in USA today, or will I run into problems with immigration authorities? I have seen several CFD jobs in the US which look very interesting and for which I have very good qualifications. I would like to apply for these jobs.

Has anyone from Europe applied for a CFD job they found here? If so could you please give me advice as to how to proceed with all the administrative details involved in immigration to the US? Are US companies in general helpful and willing to support you with this?

I would like to respond to your message, since I am in exactly the same position as you. I am a French "grande ecole" engineer with a PhD, and have been trying to obtain a job in the US for several months. Since I am based in France, it is not an easy task. Apparently, many employers do not bother with applications coming from abroad. Also, they are very hesitant to go through the process of applying for a work visa with the Immigration Service. In my case, I spent a total of 6 years in the USA including two years of work on a special J1 visa, and I speak English like an American without any accent. I'm really familiar with American work methods, but I still have not been able to find a company willing to sponsor me for the work visa. I have responded to several job positions advertised here on the CFD database, but to no avail.
I think the best chances for French or European engineers are with high-tech companies in Silicon Valley who have a real shortage of engineers, mostly in electronics and computer science. My advice would be for CFD-experienced people to try to "sell" their skills in computer software development with those companies. This is what I intend to do. Good luck!!
By the way, if there are any potential employers reading this, please feel free to get in touch with me.

As everyone could notice, the major part of CFD jobs are located in the North America, but still there a lot of people in Europe and other part of the world, who would like to apply for those jobs. I have a suggestion to Mr.Jonas Larsson, who is very kind to take care of this site, to add a new field to every job posting, so that employers, posting jobs here, could say in advance, if they accept applications from abroad and are ready to sponsor a work permit. I believe it's not very difficult to do, but could save a lot of time both of employers and job seekers. Thank you!

I could easily add such a field. However, I'm not so sure it is a good idea. Whether or not a company is prepared to support an immigration procedure tends to depend on two things:

1. If they can find a suitable native candidate.

2. If they find a very good foreign candidate. A company might well refuse to help 95% of all foreign candidates but then do all they possible can to get one of those top 5% guys.

Both these points are things that a company does not know at the time they post a job. Hence, it's not possible to indicate this at the time the job is submitted. For this reason I'm not sure if it's a good thing to include a specific field where companies are asked to indicate if they will consider international applications. If nationality is important a company can always write that in the description of the job (a few companies already do this).

Any comments from employers about this?

Radioss Consulting Company (RCC) has posted one job offer on its web site. http:www.radioss.com. As this company is owned by French partners, I guess your chances are great. I do belong to MECALOG who is developping the RADIOSS code.

Fred

As you might have noticed I changed my mind about this and I have now included a field where companies are requested to indicate if they will consider international candidates or not. However, there is no field to indicate if the company is prepared to support an immigration procedure. I still think that this is too much dependent on the individual applying for the job and thus it can't be specified at the time the job is posted.