A rocket- according to US employment policy- is a missile fired in a funny direction. So you need to be a citizen with a security clearance to work for any US aerospace company. This makes the cold shoulder a little more understandable, because they couldn't legally hire you even if they wanted to.

It is NOT true that you have to be a US citizen to work for a US aerospace company. Your comment can dissuade people from applying to jobs. It is true that there may be certain projects within a company that you cannot work on as a foreigner, and because of that it can be harder to get hired. But there are many foreigners who work at places like SpaceX, NASA, etc. For "sensitive country" foreign nationals (you can Google for the list) it will be extremely difficult to get hired. People from other countries should still apply to job postings unless the posting specifically says it is for US citizens only.

It's true that there are some loopholes [1]. It's also true that as a permanent resident, you come under the category "US person", which some/most of the ITER law refers to, which restricts non US-persons from working with "Spacecraft Systems and Associated Equipment" [2].

But I think it's fair summary to say that if you are neither a citizen or a permanent resident, you have a damn tough hill to climb [3].

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-can-non-U-S-citizens-work-for-NASA...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_...

[3] https://www.inverse.com/article/21487-elon-musk-spacex-forei...

You need it to work on ITAR related projects. I worked in a company that had internally "subcontracted" uncleared employees from another unit for design work. One was belatedly found out to be a Canadian citizen and was removed the next day.

> So you need to be a citizen with a security clearance to work for any US aerospace company.

Absolutely not. No company requires a clearance for employment in general, only for specific programs. Also, US Permanent Residents can access unclassified export-controlled information.

Both good corrections. But the point about the difficulty as a non-US person remains.

They are not wrong. In fact the origins of the space program were exactly like that: missiles fired in a funny direction.

(A bit ironic that it took-off after they "hired" that German scientist after WWII - pun intended)

That’s because most of those aerospace jobs are defense related and need citizenship and security clearances to work there.