US technology has remained stable despite years of what seemed like unending progress. Companies are aggressively cutting back to safeguard their cash flow, which has led to thousands of layoffs per month and a large number in November.
A significant impact is being felt from the most recent round of layoffs.
Skilled workers in the US on temporary visas are being disproportionately impacted by the most recent round of layoffs because they run the possibility of being deported if they can’t swiftly find new jobs.
Staff Fired by Tech Companies Scramble to Find Job
Employers can hire foreign college graduates in specific industries thanks to the H-1B program. These visas are available to foreign nationals for three years with the option of an extension.
Tech companies frequently use these visas for employment-related purposes. For a very long time, Silicon Valley has hired thousands of foreign workers in specialized fields like engineering, biotechnology, and computer science using temporary visas issued by the government.
Tech companies, in particular, have been outspoken supporters of immigrant rights. Holders of temporary visas frequently have between 60 and 90 days to find new employment or risk being deported.
According to immigration attorney Sophie Alcorn, many applicants are having difficulty paying for the 60-day extension. More than 50,000 individuals in the IT sector lost their jobs in only November.
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Tech Companies’ Massive Layoffs
Large-scale layoffs were announced by Meta, Amazon, Twitter, Lyft, Salesforce, HP, and DoorDash in November, adding to the already bleak situation.
The National Foundation for American Policy reports that 6,182 of Amazon’s H-1B visa petitions were approved for the fiscal year 2021. Google, IBM, and Microsoft all held major positions.
In November, only a few months after beginning as an engineer, one former Amazon Web Services (AWS) employee was fired. His employer advised him to look outside the company due to a hiring freeze even though Amazon had given him 60 days to find another job within the company.
Amazon acknowledged that it will stop corporate hiring in November. Many recently fired H-1B employees have expressed their worries about the future on LinkedIn in reaction to the 60-day unemployment window.
In WhatsApp groups and on servers for the anonymous professional network Discord, the former AWS employee claimed that visa holders were trading information.
An engineer from the gene-sequencing technology company Illumina who was recently laid off expressed hope that his former employer would be prepared to assist his switch to an H-1B visa.
He is present in the nation thanks to a different type of visa called Optional Practical Training (OPT), which allows recent college graduates with degrees in STEM subjects to stay and work there for up to three years.
Within 90 days after being fired, the former Illumina employee must find new employment. Any company that hires him must, however, assist and cover the costs of the visa transfer. He is thinking about going back to school to extend his stay in the US, but he is concerned about student loan debt.
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