A presidential advisory subcommittee has recommended that the federal government increase the H-1B visa holders’ grace period from 60 to 180 days.

Many H-1B visa holders have been impacted by the recent wave of major layoffs at IT companies like Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Twitter. After 60 days, they must either find a new employer to sponsor their visas or leave the country. A non-immigrant visa called the H-1B enables US businesses to hire foreign workers for specialized jobs.

The federal government has now been advised by a presidential advisory subcommittee to increase the grace period for holders of H-1B visas from the current 60 days to 180 days.

“The immigration subcommittee urges the Department of Homeland Security and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to extend the grace period for H-1B employees who have lost their jobs from 60 days to 180 days,” said Ajay Jain Bhutoria, a member of the president’s advisory panel on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.

Ajay Bhutoria, highlighting the significant difficulties faced by H-1B workers laid off from their jobs, claimed that the current grace period creates difficulties such as having to find a new job quickly, completing complicated paperwork to transfer H-1B status, and delays in processing at USCIS as a result of which many H-1B workers are compelled to leave the country.

He noted that the extension will give the impacted workers more time to work their way through the difficult and time-consuming process of looking for new employment prospects.

This is in light of the fact that since November of last year, approximately 200,000 IT workers have been put off, including a record number at firms like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon.

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