President Donald Trump’s deputies are junking an Obama-era regulation that allows foreign workers to seek a new U.S. job after they lose the specific employment that justified their work-permit visas.
Fortune 500 lobbyists say that “H-1B [visa] workers are supposed to be doing a specific job that Americans aren’t able to do,” immigration lawyer John Miano told Breitbart News. “That’s what we’re told, and if that is the case, when that job goes away, there’s no need for them, and they should go home.”
“Congress is not going to pass a law changing this — there just isn’t the political will to do it,” Vice President JD Vance told a September 15 meeting of investors. He added:
So we’re doing a lot within the confines, of course, of what we’re allowed to do legally. We’ve gotten sued on some of this stuff, but I think fundamentally we’re on the right on both the law and the policy. The H-!b should not exist to replace American workers with low wage foreigners. It should exist to enrich the American economy, and that’s exactly what we’re trying to make sure it does.
Trump’s decision to end the 60-day job-search period — dubbed the “grace period” — should help U.S. graduates regain some of the million-plus jobs locked up by the Indian-dominated companies, recruiters, and subcontractors that import Indian graduates.
That business now traffics cheap Indian migrants into a million-plus technology, healthcare, and academic jobs via a variety of visa programs, including the H-1B, L-1, O-1, TN, and E-2 visas. The inflow sidelines Americans, enriches labor brokers, and burdens U.S. investors with an unprofessional, self-serving, and expensive foreign workforce.
However, industry-funded lawyers will sue to preserve the existing H-1B job-switching rule, which was created in 2016 by President Barack Obama’s business-first, pro-migration deputies.
“This proposal restores a direct relationship between an alien’s nonimmigrant status and the specific [short-term] employment or activity that formed the basis of his or her [temporary] admission or [temporary] grant of status in the United States,” the Department of Homeland Security announced on September 10, adding
The up to 60-day discretionary grace period disconnects the alien’s lawful status from the very basis of [temporary] eligibility under these employment-based nonimmigrant classifications. By statute, an alien’s lawful status in [temporary] E-1, E-2, E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, L-1, O-1, or TN nonimmigrant classification is directly connected to and contingent upon the alien conducting certain employment activities … generally tied to a petitioning employer
The regulation could impact 1.5 million white-collar visa holders plus many additional migrants, such as low-cost workers imported by E-2 visa holders.
However, cooperating Indian migrants are likely to create legalized workarounds that help soon-to-be-fired Indian migrants find jobs before they are formally fired.
For example, Indians have established companies that sell fake employment documents that help jobless Indian college graduates to preserve their temporary Optional Practical Training work permits. Indian companies also sell fake resumes for migrants trying to extend their O-1 “genius” visas, and for Indians trying to get green cards via the EB-1 track.
One likely option, said Miano, is for companies to delay the legal firing date until their discarded Indian worker lands another job. “They’ll let them stay on the payroll without pay … because the H-1B worker isn’t going to complain.” But companies might decline to cooperate with the workers if they fear agency investigations, he added. Job switches, he said, already “open the door for doing checks.”
Already, Indians have created websites to help fellow nationals quickly migrate into U.S. jobs.
“DHS isn’t proposing a new process so much as proposing to stop running an existing one,” said one migration lawyer who works for companies. “Right now, an immigration officer has to establish whether employment ended, when, and whether to grant the grace period at all, since it’s discretionary,” said Jeff Joseph, the president of Immigration Strategy at Manifest Law.
Trump’s deputies have urged Americans to endorse or criticise the new pro-American regulation, amid the expected backlash by business and Indian groups.
You may submit comments on the entirety of this proposed rulemaking package, identified by DHS Docket No. USCIS-2026-0364 through the Federal eRulemaking Portal:https://www.regulations.gov.
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