Try for internship or full time role first? Any referrals?

Posting on behalf of a friend: I’m a recent immigrant to the US, and have a Master’s in Data Science from a non-US university. Just graduated this past summer and while waiting for my green card to be able to work (should have it in the next few weeks), I have been practicing my data skills and trying to learn as much as I can to make myself a stronger applicant. I thought I would first look for a data scientist/data engineering job first but I know some people that got offered really good jobs after doing an internship first (not necessarily with the same company they interned with, but the experience helped them). I’ve had a few short internships while studying abroad but never for a US based company and honestly it wasn’t that rigorous either. So my question is: Should I to apply to a short (2-3 month) internship first and in order to use that as a jumping stone to apply to a full time job after? Or should I apply straight to a full time job without the work experience? Since I just graduated recently, I think I would still be eligible for most tech/non tech companies’ university/graduate programs for full time opportunities. Just not sure which path to take. Any referrals for either? Thank you in advance. #referral #datascientist #dataengineer #dataanalyst #spotify #clever #goPuff #adobe #roku #sony #warnermedia #mailchimp #wepay #mongodb #uber #dropbox #mastercard #disney #cloudflare #nbcuniversal #workday #pwc #ey #deloitte #accenture #slack #salesforce #splunk #apple #etsy #lyft #citi #cisco #twitter #snap #facebook #meta #linkedin #pinterest #zoom #datadog #unity #amazon #google #pocketgems