This seems especially cruel in the wake of recent tech layoffs where you can find out that you're no longer employed while riding a corporate bus to work in the morning without any warnings or time to prepare.
Can you imagine living here for many years, having a rented house with all the furniture, a car, bank accounts, gym memberships, friend groups, kids enrolled in local schools, and then suddenly being thrown out of the country without even having a chance to liquidate any of it just because Meta or Amazon has just dropped another 10k people layoff and and you're unlucky to be a part of it?
Aren’t most tech companies subject to WARN act requirements of a 60-day notice period before layoffs? As I understand it, you’re technically employed during the period between the termination notice and official end of employment, even though you’re not working.
This just adds to the list of reasons not to accept a position in the U.S.. The U.S. is a country that doesn't want you and whose elected government is dedicated to making you feel unwelcome. The money had better be damned good to even consider it, and now you'll probably have to demand 60-days of vacation and a written guarantee that you'll be able to take it before your employment can end.
It's probably better to make a little less in a country that will treat you far better.
The grace period didn't even exist until 2017: https://www.regulations.gov/document/USCIS-2026-0364-0001 ("Before 2017, there was no grace period for nonimmigrant workers in E-1, E-2, E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, L-1, O-1, or TN classification whose employment or activity ended during their period of lawful status.").
How did things work under Clinton, Bush, and Obama?
Poorly. How fucked up it was that we expected people to be on a plane out of the country the day they were fired was a recurring discussion. In practice no one actually did and there was a de facto grace period, but what people got away with was wildly inconsistent and how long you could spend in the country after getting fired was effectively random. Codifying the grace period made the whole process much more humane and predictable with no downside.
Looked at another way, the lack of grace period was indeed a problem back then, and that's why the Obama government proposed and finalized a rule to solve that problem. And now the Trump government proposes to reimpose the problem.
What did people do before the grace period was implemented in January 17, 2017? There was no grace period under Clinton, Bush, and Obama (except for the last three days)
Some companies extended severance as salary to allow the employee to stay in compliance for a couple of weeks and people would scramble to find any job
Now worse than that, practically one might be up for this admin's ice to grab at the moment of their termination, or the update of that termination into USCIS's system, as the status is lost, unless they immediately book a plane ticket for today or tomorrow.
60-day period is incredibly short to sort out one's belongings (and dependents) but it at least promises a way to let you leave legally, with some dignity. This proposal of elimination just reads like a plan to render people illegal and hunt them down.
Practically this probably does not matter. IANAL but iirc the current wording for the 60-day grace period is something that says along "this automatic grace period exists but actually we can deny you it if we want". Despite I've never heard of anyone suffering any related consequences so far, getting rid of the line altogether would be worrisome.
What happens after this? This administration has clearly sent a message that foreign workers are not welcome in any capacity. Fruit not being picked, research not being completed, tech not being built. Hell, a quick search shows AAMC reports 20% of doctors and med students are foreign born and educated.
No one seems to care in this admin. Absolutely wild.
The number of medical school spots is effectively capped by regulation, so there will be zero problems filling those slots.
We have to integrate millions of immigrants and their children from Latin America who have come to the US over the last decade. They’re going to want to have upward mobility for their children. The kids of the fruit pickers are going to want to become doctors and professionals just as with prior waves of low skill immigration. It makes no sense to import new skilled workers, especially as many of those jobs are going to be automated away.
I agree zero problems filling the spots, but the best foreign medical students are likely better than the 20% of the bottom US students that would take those positions.
The US med school system with residencies and med school slots needs a total overhaul. I'm not arguing that. I would rather have higher skilled immigrants than lower skilled if possible, and I would even prefer that to promoting less meritorious US workers if they are unqualified.
We are vacuuming up people left and right with ICE and the message is just play the game? I guess Milo missed the message. The results are too scattershot for any sort of plan.
Are the foreign students we let in better than the 20% of US students that are excluded? If they are much better, I guess I don't see the problem.
The better solution (for me) is to open up the slots since there is such a huge shortage of doctors. NPs and RNs are not going to make up that expertise gap.
How much of H1B hiring is because companies want to pay people less and how much is it because there genuinely aren't enough trained people to do the jobs?
I ask this question because I don't have any exposure to h1b hiring, so I really do not have any sense for what really goes on. It sounds like these programs get abused, but there is a lot of noise out so I can't be sure.
so this post was at the top of the 1st page of HN just a few min ago, and now it's down on Page 2 (#36 atm). Is this due to the title change, or something else?
I thinks that it is entirely possible that they view the workers as some unnecessary burden to be eliminated and to be replaced with AI. 0 day grace period is probably intended to steal the workers' belongings by preventing them from selling them. Only humans will do such inhumane thing; AI would have never recommended this.. ever because they are trained to have more empathy.
Other than AOS issues (i.e. if AOS takes too long and your H1B expires, you have to stop working and probably leave to avoid becoming illegal, but leaving might have implication on the new visa's application) or whether H1B->O1 can do AOS at all, O1 also has travel restriction for some reason, the visa sticker (not the status) is a single entry. Want to visit family or go elsewhere for tourism? You are stuck outside of US until you apply for another travel visa. Sounds like it has no dignity to me.
"A specialty occupation is one that requires the application of a body of highly specialized knowledge and the attainment of at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent. The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States."
This was the point of the visa. Now tell me how many people under H1B fall into that category.
I’m still not understanding the upset on this one. If your visa is granted for a specific job (as H1Bs must be) I don’t think it’s that crazy for the visa to be revoked if you lose the job. If you don’t have a valid visa in a foreign country, it’s on you to leave. Does there need to be a period where that can happen peacefully? Sure. You don’t need two months to monkeybranch to another job where you get an implicit advantage in the job application by already being here, but without a valid visa.
The point of H1B is that the talent is so rare and valuable that it can’t be found domestically. If you get fired or laid off, hate to say it but you weren’t valuable enough to keep around.
I'll bite. The problem is when you lose the visa and no grace period rule is in place, you are now an illegal immigrant instantly. The category now up for grab for ICE's concentration camp, at least theoretically, including all of your dependents because their visa is voided as well. How practical is it to get a plane ticket for today/tomorrow the moment you are laid off? Do people who get laid off also gets a teleportation machine?
As others have pointed out, this grace period did not exist before 2017, and prior administrations have managed to do just fine without building teleportation machines or conducting Trump style raids. If someone is in the process of self deporting and can show they are making good faith efforts to leave, there is no reason to arrest them. But there has to be a line somewhere. Another possibility could be interpreting the end of employment/expiration of the visa as the day your last paycheck is delivered. Two months is crazy though.
“The maximum 60-day grace period starts the day after termination of employment, which is typically determined based on the last day for which a salary or wage is paid.”
That’s different from what I said. I think it’s pretty uncommon to receive your last paycheck on your last day. It’s usually the end of the next pay period
> If someone is in the process of self deporting and can show they are making good faith efforts to leave, there is no reason to arrest them.
That likely was the assumption and source of trust, i.e. enforcement's goal is to uphold order and has a sense of logic when being implemented. The current upset has a context of the breach of such trust. In other words, the enforcement now is sometimes aligned with Trump's domestic politics maneuver rather than immigration law enforcement, it is increasingly hard to not interpret new rules between the lines.
It’s still not a new rule though, it’s the old rule, and not even that old. The new part is the violence from masked ICE officers and they’re not even bothering to check visas half the time. It’s a different problem. A two month grace period was always overly generous.
Do you know that some US utility companies have geo IP + VPN bans, so that when you leave the US without setting up end of service and stuff, you can't even log into your account again to do that? What about google accounts etc that's implicitly tied to a US phone number?
If you imagine you can leave one country, that you have lived in for a somewhat extended period of time, for another one within a week just because you are heading home, I'm sorry but have you ever moved across borders for something other than tourism.
> The point of H1B is that the talent is so rare and valuable that it can’t be found domestically. If you get fired or laid off, hate to say it but you weren’t valuable enough to keep around.
Since H1B visa holders possess valuable business skills that can’t be found domestically it makes sense to recruit them when they become available
Agree to disagree. Layoffs have everything to do with the position which the person was hired for. If your position or department is eliminated, whatever value it was providing to the company is no longer worth it in the balance sheet.
This seems especially cruel in the wake of recent tech layoffs where you can find out that you're no longer employed while riding a corporate bus to work in the morning without any warnings or time to prepare.
Can you imagine living here for many years, having a rented house with all the furniture, a car, bank accounts, gym memberships, friend groups, kids enrolled in local schools, and then suddenly being thrown out of the country without even having a chance to liquidate any of it just because Meta or Amazon has just dropped another 10k people layoff and and you're unlucky to be a part of it?
Aren’t most tech companies subject to WARN act requirements of a 60-day notice period before layoffs? As I understand it, you’re technically employed during the period between the termination notice and official end of employment, even though you’re not working.
WARN is about notifying the state of layoffs, it does not notify the employees
This just adds to the list of reasons not to accept a position in the U.S.. The U.S. is a country that doesn't want you and whose elected government is dedicated to making you feel unwelcome. The money had better be damned good to even consider it, and now you'll probably have to demand 60-days of vacation and a written guarantee that you'll be able to take it before your employment can end.
It's probably better to make a little less in a country that will treat you far better.
That’s the whole point. Make people not want to come here.
The grace period didn't even exist until 2017: https://www.regulations.gov/document/USCIS-2026-0364-0001 ("Before 2017, there was no grace period for nonimmigrant workers in E-1, E-2, E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, L-1, O-1, or TN classification whose employment or activity ended during their period of lawful status.").
How did things work under Clinton, Bush, and Obama?
Poorly. How fucked up it was that we expected people to be on a plane out of the country the day they were fired was a recurring discussion. In practice no one actually did and there was a de facto grace period, but what people got away with was wildly inconsistent and how long you could spend in the country after getting fired was effectively random. Codifying the grace period made the whole process much more humane and predictable with no downside.
Looked at another way, the lack of grace period was indeed a problem back then, and that's why the Obama government proposed and finalized a rule to solve that problem. And now the Trump government proposes to reimpose the problem.
Think about the practicalities here. What would you do with your furniture, your apartment? Your car?
With no grace period at all, you'd just have to abandon them, and I guess try to sell them remotely if you even can.
What did people do before the grace period was implemented in January 17, 2017? There was no grace period under Clinton, Bush, and Obama (except for the last three days)
Some companies extended severance as salary to allow the employee to stay in compliance for a couple of weeks and people would scramble to find any job
Has to have been brutal during the recessions
And that system was cruel so we improved it.
Now worse than that, practically one might be up for this admin's ice to grab at the moment of their termination, or the update of that termination into USCIS's system, as the status is lost, unless they immediately book a plane ticket for today or tomorrow.
60-day period is incredibly short to sort out one's belongings (and dependents) but it at least promises a way to let you leave legally, with some dignity. This proposal of elimination just reads like a plan to render people illegal and hunt them down.
Startup idea..
fired and on an h1b? Gotta take an emergency plane outta here on short notice?
Mail us your car and apartment keys and we'll liquidate your assets for you and wire the funds to you
We are seeking 1M$ for 10% of the company
the real practicality here is that the OP is a request for comments.
definitely a request to fulfill.
Practically this probably does not matter. IANAL but iirc the current wording for the 60-day grace period is something that says along "this automatic grace period exists but actually we can deny you it if we want". Despite I've never heard of anyone suffering any related consequences so far, getting rid of the line altogether would be worrisome.
This problem left as an exercise for the taxpayer. /s
What happens after this? This administration has clearly sent a message that foreign workers are not welcome in any capacity. Fruit not being picked, research not being completed, tech not being built. Hell, a quick search shows AAMC reports 20% of doctors and med students are foreign born and educated.
No one seems to care in this admin. Absolutely wild.
The number of medical school spots is effectively capped by regulation, so there will be zero problems filling those slots.
We have to integrate millions of immigrants and their children from Latin America who have come to the US over the last decade. They’re going to want to have upward mobility for their children. The kids of the fruit pickers are going to want to become doctors and professionals just as with prior waves of low skill immigration. It makes no sense to import new skilled workers, especially as many of those jobs are going to be automated away.
I agree zero problems filling the spots, but the best foreign medical students are likely better than the 20% of the bottom US students that would take those positions.
The US med school system with residencies and med school slots needs a total overhaul. I'm not arguing that. I would rather have higher skilled immigrants than lower skilled if possible, and I would even prefer that to promoting less meritorious US workers if they are unqualified.
No, they sent a message that business must buy their foreign works on both sides of the table.
We are vacuuming up people left and right with ICE and the message is just play the game? I guess Milo missed the message. The results are too scattershot for any sort of plan.
Edit: typo
> AAMC reports 20% of doctors and med students are foreign born and educated
This is by design: https://www.newsweek.com/there-are-limited-spots-doctors-med...
(And 20% is barely above the overall US foreign born population, which is at 15%: https://www.statista.com/chart/8083/immigrants-foreign-born-...)
Are the foreign students we let in better than the 20% of US students that are excluded? If they are much better, I guess I don't see the problem.
The better solution (for me) is to open up the slots since there is such a huge shortage of doctors. NPs and RNs are not going to make up that expertise gap.
Actual title: Eliminating the Discretionary 60-Day Grace Period (Thanks - the title has now been corrected.)
This is a "Proposed Rule", and the comments window is open. Use that "Comment" button on the page to share your opinion with the decision makers.
How much of H1B hiring is because companies want to pay people less and how much is it because there genuinely aren't enough trained people to do the jobs?
I ask this question because I don't have any exposure to h1b hiring, so I really do not have any sense for what really goes on. It sounds like these programs get abused, but there is a lot of noise out so I can't be sure.
so this post was at the top of the 1st page of HN just a few min ago, and now it's down on Page 2 (#36 atm). Is this due to the title change, or something else?
It probably set off a flamewar (or potential thereof) detector
I thinks that it is entirely possible that they view the workers as some unnecessary burden to be eliminated and to be replaced with AI. 0 day grace period is probably intended to steal the workers' belongings by preventing them from selling them. Only humans will do such inhumane thing; AI would have never recommended this.. ever because they are trained to have more empathy.
has there been any updates to the 100k premium for H1B hires ?
definitely not a good time for H1Bs
Related, from a few hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49697171
“New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore” (ieee.org)
Imagine the pressure that an employer can impose onto H1Bs now, with no grace period.
How hard is it to convert H1B to O1? At this point I gotta imagine it's easier to just do this for well paid H1Bs no ?
Other than AOS issues (i.e. if AOS takes too long and your H1B expires, you have to stop working and probably leave to avoid becoming illegal, but leaving might have implication on the new visa's application) or whether H1B->O1 can do AOS at all, O1 also has travel restriction for some reason, the visa sticker (not the status) is a single entry. Want to visit family or go elsewhere for tourism? You are stuck outside of US until you apply for another travel visa. Sounds like it has no dignity to me.
The proposed rule will apply to E-1, E-2, E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, L-1, O-1, and TN (copied directly out of the document).
As per usual, the cruelty is the point.
"A specialty occupation is one that requires the application of a body of highly specialized knowledge and the attainment of at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent. The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States."
This was the point of the visa. Now tell me how many people under H1B fall into that category.
Another bit of evidence exposing the lie that Trumpists only object to illegal immigration.
you are downvoted but HN is trumpists and "moderates" who like to think they so smart with their fancy moderations
This administration lives at the intersection of cruelty and stupidity.
No, this is what happens when you abuse a visa and create a stealth takeover of an industry.
this does nothing to solve the problem: the employers and just affects people. with your logic, we definitely h1b, cause you useless
Both can be true.
I agree and even though I am pro immigration, I do think the H1B program has been exploited by the employers to the hilt
How does this proposal affect the employers you mention?
this doesn't affect the employers. with people like you, we need h1b
[flagged]
I’m still not understanding the upset on this one. If your visa is granted for a specific job (as H1Bs must be) I don’t think it’s that crazy for the visa to be revoked if you lose the job. If you don’t have a valid visa in a foreign country, it’s on you to leave. Does there need to be a period where that can happen peacefully? Sure. You don’t need two months to monkeybranch to another job where you get an implicit advantage in the job application by already being here, but without a valid visa.
The point of H1B is that the talent is so rare and valuable that it can’t be found domestically. If you get fired or laid off, hate to say it but you weren’t valuable enough to keep around.
I'll bite. The problem is when you lose the visa and no grace period rule is in place, you are now an illegal immigrant instantly. The category now up for grab for ICE's concentration camp, at least theoretically, including all of your dependents because their visa is voided as well. How practical is it to get a plane ticket for today/tomorrow the moment you are laid off? Do people who get laid off also gets a teleportation machine?
As others have pointed out, this grace period did not exist before 2017, and prior administrations have managed to do just fine without building teleportation machines or conducting Trump style raids. If someone is in the process of self deporting and can show they are making good faith efforts to leave, there is no reason to arrest them. But there has to be a line somewhere. Another possibility could be interpreting the end of employment/expiration of the visa as the day your last paycheck is delivered. Two months is crazy though.
> Another possibility could be interpreting the end of employment/expiration of the visa as the day your last paycheck is delivered
I believe that’s already the law. https://www.uscis.gov/archive/options-for-nonimmigrant-worke...
“The maximum 60-day grace period starts the day after termination of employment, which is typically determined based on the last day for which a salary or wage is paid.”
That’s different from what I said. I think it’s pretty uncommon to receive your last paycheck on your last day. It’s usually the end of the next pay period
California employees who are discharged must be paid all wages due at the time of termination. (Labor Code § 201)
> If someone is in the process of self deporting and can show they are making good faith efforts to leave, there is no reason to arrest them.
That likely was the assumption and source of trust, i.e. enforcement's goal is to uphold order and has a sense of logic when being implemented. The current upset has a context of the breach of such trust. In other words, the enforcement now is sometimes aligned with Trump's domestic politics maneuver rather than immigration law enforcement, it is increasingly hard to not interpret new rules between the lines.
It’s still not a new rule though, it’s the old rule, and not even that old. The new part is the violence from masked ICE officers and they’re not even bothering to check visas half the time. It’s a different problem. A two month grace period was always overly generous.
It's insane to expect people to move to a different country with zero days notice.
> Does there need to be a period where that can happen peacefully? Sure.
A week should be plenty. And it’s not just some random different country, it’s their home country. There’s always your stateside consulate.
Do you know that some US utility companies have geo IP + VPN bans, so that when you leave the US without setting up end of service and stuff, you can't even log into your account again to do that? What about google accounts etc that's implicitly tied to a US phone number?
If you imagine you can leave one country, that you have lived in for a somewhat extended period of time, for another one within a week just because you are heading home, I'm sorry but have you ever moved across borders for something other than tourism.
> US utility companies have geo IP + VPN bans
They have phones you can call to cancel service
> What about google accounts etc that's implicitly tied to a US phone number?
That’s a problem between you and Google, not the US government
Seems like a fine trade if you want to make the big bucks in American tech. No risk, no reward.
> The point of H1B is that the talent is so rare and valuable that it can’t be found domestically. If you get fired or laid off, hate to say it but you weren’t valuable enough to keep around.
Since H1B visa holders possess valuable business skills that can’t be found domestically it makes sense to recruit them when they become available
Layoffs often have nothing to do with specific individuals, so your last assertion is false.
Agree to disagree. Layoffs have everything to do with the position which the person was hired for. If your position or department is eliminated, whatever value it was providing to the company is no longer worth it in the balance sheet.
There is a thing called human dignity that isn't inherently tied to a corporate balance sheet.
Ok? You can treat someone with dignity while also laying them off because they/their department is losing money
lmao. pretty soon you won't be valuable enough to keep around.