Since 2017, a worker on an H-1B, L-1, O-1, TN, or E visa who loses their job has had a cushion: 60 days, or whatever's left on their authorized stay, to find a new sponsor, switch status, or pack up in an orderly way. It's not generous. It's not even especially controversial — it's the kind of provision that exists so a company's decision to eliminate a role on a Tuesday doesn't instantly turn a legally present worker into a deportation case.
On August 6, DHS sent the Office of Management and Budget a proposal called, plainly enough, "Eliminating the Discretionary 60-day Grace Period." If it clears review and survives the comment period, a layoff notice could function as an eviction notice — for the worker, and for whatever family is on a dependent visa riding along with them.
I want to be honest about where I sit on this, because it's not where you'd guess from the rest of this newsletter. I think the H-1B system, as currently run, does real damage to American engineers and American wages — I'll be writing about that plenty this week. But there's a difference between fixing a program that's been gamed by outsourcing shops and punishing the individual workers caught inside it for the crime of having their employer make a business decision.
The grace period isn't a loophole. It's the bare minimum of due process for someone who did everything right — filed the paperwork, paid the fees, waited in the visa queues that can run a decade — and then got laid off in a market where American tech workers are also getting laid off in the tens of thousands. Stripping it doesn't send jobs back to Americans. It just adds a 30-day countdown timer to somebody's life and calls it enforcement.
If DHS wants credit for protecting American labor, there's no shortage of real targets: the L-1 outsourcing pipeline, the wage floors on H-1B petitions, the firms that treat the visa system as a staffing arbitrage. A grace period for a worker who already lost their job isn't one of them. This is the difference between reform and cruelty dressed up as reform, and I don't think DHS is confused about which one this is — I think they know, and they're betting nobody with a platform will say so out loud.
The rule hasn't been published in the Federal Register yet, which means there's still a comment period coming. Watch for it.