Q: Adjustment of status and OPT EAD

A: With your Application to Adjust Status, did you file an Application for Employment Authorization (separate and apart from the work authorization application that you filed to obtain your OPT)? Your work card that you get through the adjustment of status case does not limit for whom you work or for what type of employment. That adjustment of status based work card is typically produced within about 3 months from the date that the application was filed, barring issuance of any requests for evidence. To the extent that you are asking whether it is "ok" to work in an occupation not contemplated by your OPT work card and before your adjustment-based work card is produced, no attorney can advise you to do something that would be considered a violation of the terms of your F-1 status nor can any attorney advise you to work without proper Department of Homeland Security work authorization. What can be said, however, is that that relevant adjustment of status statute permits U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services adjudicating officers to forgive unauthorized work and status violations in certain circumstances. Specifically, where the term "immediate relative" includes spouses of U.S. Citizens, INA 245(c) provides in relevant part:

(c) Other than an alien having an approved petition for classification as a VAWA self-petitioner, subsection (a) [WHICH CONCERNS BASIC ADJUSTMENT OF STATUS ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS] shall not be applicable to

. . .

(2) subject to subsection (k), an alien (other than an immediate relative as defined in section 201(b) or a special immigrant described in section 101(a)(27)(H), (I), (J), or (K)) who hereafter continues in or accepts unauthorized employment prior to filing an application for adjustment of status or who is in unlawful immigration status on the date of filing the application for adjustment of status or who has failed (other than through no fault of his own or for technical reasons) to maintain continuously a lawful status since entry into the United States;

Where a foreign spouse has not made a false claim to U.S. Citizenship in connection with getting (unauthorized) employment, which would be a separate and larger problem altogether, USCIS officers routinely forgiven, without requesting submission of a waiver application, unauthorized employment and status violations when adjudicating the adjustment of status application for an immediate relative of a U.S. Citizen.