Proposed Rule: Eliminating the Discretionary 60-Day Grace Period | Hacker News Reader

Proposed Rule: Eliminating the Discretionary 60-Day Grace Period

regulations.gov

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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

Someone should fix the act's Wikipedia article, then, because it states more than once that employees are entitled to advanced notice.

That’s not standard practice for USA tech companies.

A WARN notice includes text like “such-and-such org headcount to be reduced by 36 by Sep 11,” and doesn’t include specific names.

Google bricks your MacBook and revokes your corporate account access the moment they make the decision. You may be notified via personal email if you properly set that up in Workday, otherwise you will have to ask your manager via off-corp channels what happened.

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.

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.

This problem left as an exercise for the taxpayer. /s

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.

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

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)

And that system was cruel so we improved it.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

I’ve never heard of a tech worker get 0 days notice before their official termination date. They might be told to stop work on the same day, but their official termination is a month or two later and they get paid out for that period. For H1B purposes, the employment terminates when the employer sends the termination notice to UCIS with that official date.

When the 2016 rule was proposed, the stated purpose was to enhance H1B portability by allowing workers to find another job to try to stay in the country: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/11/18/2016-27...

“60-day nonimmigrant grace periods.

To further enhance job portability, the final rule establishes a grace period of up to 60 consecutive days during each authorized validity period for individuals in the E-1, E-2, E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, L-1, O-1 or TN classifications. This grace period allows high-skilled workers in these classifications, including those whose employment ceases prior to the end of the petition validity period, to more readily pursue new employment should they be eligible for other employer-sponsored nonimmigrant classifications or employment in the same classification with a new employer. The grace period also allows U.S. employers to more easily facilitate changes in employment for existing or newly recruited nonimmigrant workers.”

The rule didn’t say that there was a meaningful problem with employees having to depart the country instantly upon losing their jobs. That’s telling, because when a notice like this is published, agencies must articulate facts to support the rule change. If this was actually a problem the agency would have mentioned it.

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.

> 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.

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

yes, but the grift economy means regulations are meant to pad the pockets of the oligarchy who want to pay.

If they cared about actual crack downs, of course they'd go after the businesses employing people.

I'm simply trying to clarify that the only time this admin installs regulations, it's because they want kickbacks in some manner.

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.

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.

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.

Does this leave them vulnerable to immediate ICE enforcement action on the loss of a job? If so, that's rather nasty.

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 ?

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).

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.

As per usual, the cruelty is the point.

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)

From brutal to cruel. Nice!

Imagine the pressure that an employer can impose onto H1Bs now, with no grace period.

This administration lives at the intersection of cruelty and stupidity.

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

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com