U.S. moves to end H-1B grace period, requiring immediate departure on job loss
The Trump administration's effort to tighten controls on high-skilled immigration has reached a new stage. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of Homeland Security have posted an unpublished document…
Key takeaways
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and DHS have posted a proposed rule to eliminate the 60-day grace period that H-1B and other visa holders currently receive to find new employment after losing a job.
- Under the proposal, an H-1B holder who loses their sponsoring employment would be required to leave the United States immediately.
- The rule is scheduled for Federal Register publication on Friday, September 11, followed by a two-month public comment period before it can take effect.
- The change would reverse a 2016 DHS rule that created the 60-day window effective January 17, 2017, restoring the pre-2017 standard.
- DHS justified the change as promoting program integrity, administrative efficiency, and favoring U.S. workers.
The Trump administration's effort to tighten controls on high-skilled immigration has reached a new stage. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of Homeland Security have posted an unpublished document to the Federal Register proposing to eliminate the 60-day grace period that H-1B and other visa holders currently receive to find new employment after losing a job.
H-1B visas allow U.S. employers to sponsor skilled foreign nationals holding at least a bachelor's degree for specialty occupations. Under the proposal, a holder who loses that sponsoring employment would be required to leave the United States immediately. The rule is scheduled for Federal Register publication on Friday, September 11, and then enters a two-month public comment period before it can take effect.
A reversal of 2017 policy
The grace period that would be eliminated is a relatively recent regulatory creation. DHS established the 60-day window through a 2016 rule that took effect on January 17, 2017, three days before President Trump first took office. No such grace period existed in federal rules before that point, and the current proposal would restore the pre-2017 standard.
DHS framed the change in the document as a matter of program integrity and administrative efficiency. The agency argued that reviewing whether the grace period applies in a given case, examining submitted materials, and deciding whether to shorten or eliminate it is time-consuming for the agency and confusing or unpredictable for employers, workers, and their dependents. Eliminating it, in DHS's view, would restore a direct relationship between a visa holder's nonimmigrant status and the specific employment that formed the basis of their admission to the United States.
The agency also contended the change would favor U.S. workers. DHS assumed in the document that most affected employers would offer the same roles to equally qualified American candidates, initiate a new I-129 petition, or redistribute the work internally, while acknowledging that some may incur a temporary productivity loss from labor turnover.
Broader enforcement context
The proposal arrives against the backdrop of wider action on U.S. visas. The State Department has revoked more than 175,000 visas under the current Trump administration, and a federal court has separately struck down a proposed $100,000 H-1B fee, ruling it an unconstitutional tax. The public comment period opens Friday and runs for two months.
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