How tech layoffs by Twitter, Meta impact H-1B visa holders

“A lot of tech workers (on H-1B visas) being laid off have been in the country for five or 10 years, they own homes, have U.S. citizen children who go to local public schools,” said Sophie Alcorn, founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Mountain View. “Their spouses might have a work status dependent on theirs. (Losing the breadwinner’s visa) … is really putting the family in jeopardy.”

One displaced H-1B worker encapsulated the dilemma in a note to Alcorn, writing, “It’s not just dollars and a job. It’s our entire life.”

* * *

The U.S. hosts more than half a million H-1B visa holders, with a big concentration in the Bay Area.

Meta, Google, Apple, Intel, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Amazon and Uber are among the tech companies with the most H-1B workers. Meta, Cisco and Amazon, along with Twitter, Lyft and Stripe, are among the companies that have recently laid off swaths of their workforce.

Immigration problems are exacerbated for H-1B holders from India and China, who may have lived and worked legally in this country for many years, unable to advance to get a green card and then citizenship. That’s because the U.S.
imposes a cap
on how many immigrants from each country can receive a green card each year. Populous nations like India and China are allocated the same number of slots as much smaller countries. The result: Hundreds of thousands of Indian and Chinese workers are stuck in immigration limbo.

“The
Congressional Research Service
estimates that more than 2 million people from India will be waiting in the U.S. employment-based immigrant backlog by 2030,” said Stuart Anderson, executive director of the
National Foundation for American Policy,
a nonpartisan think tank focused on trade and immigration.

“We are looking at decades, decades of wait,” said Sunil Mallya of Mountain House, vice president of engineering at digital health startup OncoHealth, who has been in the country for about 10 years on an H-1B visa. “If I was from any other country, I would have gotten a green card probably five years ago. Since I am from India, it is a huge wait.”

He and his wife have not been laid off, but he can visualize how wrenching it would be if they were.

“We would have to start from scratch, finding a job and home in India,” he said. “Our kids (ages 8 and 10) were born and brought up here and are American citizens; it would be a huge adjustment for them.”

Anderson and others worry that the situation will result in a brain drain for the U.S.

“Obviously, for anyone who has to leave the country, this would be devastating for them,” he said. Some might choose to never return and “give up on their American dream.”

* * *

This is an
arduous time to job hunt
for many reasons. Companies are laying off people or implementing hiring freezes. It’s the holidays and the end of the year. And the competition is intense among all the laid-off workers.

The 60-day grace period can work out to being much shorter, since workers may need to allocate time for the red tape involved in transferring an H-1B visa.

“That 60 days is more like five weeks that you have to prep, apply and get a job offer,” said Kakki (a pseudonym), who was laid off from an engineering job at a major tech company this month. “It suddenly throws your life apart; you have to drop everything and start preparing for interviews.”

If she doesn’t find a job in time, she’ll have to find someone to take over the one-year lease on her South Bay apartment and figure out what to do with all her furniture and belongings if she has to move back to India.

Finding another job so quickly might involve major compromises.

“You are very much forced to make suboptimal decisions because you have to accept something very quickly,” said Lakshmi (a pseudonym), who was laid off this month from a startup. “It may be a big step down; it may be something you’re not remotely excited about, but you have to settle and take it.”

* * *

Aradhana Vaidya of Albany was devastated when she found out she was being laid off from her product manager job a few years ago.

“What’s going to happen?” she thought. “What will happen to my status in this country?

“Of course losing a job is difficult for anybody,” she said. “But if you are on an H-1B visa, you have it harder. You can’t go get a job at Starbucks or Target; it has to be a job that you have qualification and education for.”

Vaidya called her husband from BART on the way home and they brainstormed ways to cope. She had an idea: Maybe she could negotiate to defer the layoff, staying on the payroll in lieu of a three-month severance payment, giving her more time to job hunt. Her company agreed and she was able to find a job in time to keep her H-1B visa.

While that worked for Vaidya, Alcorn, the immigration lawyer, cautioned that it can be a risky strategy, as regulations do not define what “cessation of employment” means, and the grace period itself is discretionary.

“All these massive layoffs are in the news, so it’s safe to assume UCCIS is well aware of the moves to terminate employment,” she said.

U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services did not reply to a request for comment.

Some advocates are
calling on the Biden administration to extend the 60-day period,
but the White House has not commented on the situation.

* * *

Vidya, like all other laid-off Twitter workers, is still technically on the company’s payroll until early January because new owner Elon Musk failed to give the required two-months’ notice for a mass layoff.

She has consulted with four or five immigration attorneys, asking if her grace period started when the layoffs were announced in early November, or when the paychecks stop coming in January. They suggested it was safer to take the conservative approach and assume the grace period had already started.

Vidya’s husband also has an H-1B visa, so she has the option to switch to a spousal visa, called H-4.

“It is technically possible, but it is not an easy affair,” she said. “I have to pay $7,000 or $8,000 to an immigration attorney from my pocket at a time when I don’t have a job. It adds up to a lot of stress.”

She already has experienced having to return to India. A few years ago her student visa ended and she failed to win a slot in the annual H-1B lottery, which awards 85,000 visas, but usually receives more than five times as many applicants.

“I was very disappointed; I felt it was very unfair that, through no fault of my own, I was having to leave the country and find a job in another country,” she said. “It took time to make peace with it, for sure.”

* * *

For H-1B visa holders who do return to their home countries, getting back to the U.S. could be extra difficult because of pandemic logjams. Not only do they need to find a comparable new job, but they must visit a U.S. consulate or embassy in their country to get their visa stamped.

“Because of COVID, many consulates such as Mumbai have wait times for visa interviews that are three years or more,” Alcorn said. A recent update gives them the discretion to waive in-person visits so visa applicants can courier in their visa for the stamp, “but it is not predictable which consulates are offering that for which visa applicants,” she said.

Another option for remaining in the country is to switch to a six-month B status visa for business or tourism. However, Alcorn said, the wait for a decision can range from 1 to 2½ years, with no option for premium processing to speed it. Applicants can stay for the six months they initially requested, and then have to file more paperwork before the expiration date to try to stay longer.

“Our broken U.S. immigration system keeps causing PTSD to the world’s most brilliant individuals,” Alcorn said.

Indeed, many of those affected said the emotional whiplash is overwhelming.

“All of my friends are here, all of my network is here,” said Lakshmi, who has lived in the U.S. more than 15 years, almost her entire adult life, some of the time on H-1B visas and some on student visas. “It’s about where you feel at home. The Bay Area is the longest I’ve lived anywhere in my entire life, including India because I moved around quite a bit there.

“No one should have to go through this,” she said, sobbing. “To think of a country as your home, but that can be taken away from you in one second.”

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @csaid