For thousands of Indian tech workers in the United States, the most immediate threat is no longer just losing a job. A layoff email can now trigger a 60-day countdown that determines whether they stay in the country or are forced to leave.
That pressure has intensified as large-scale cuts continue at major companies such as Meta, Amazon, and Oracle. Under H-1B rules, foreign workers who lose their jobs have only 60 days to find a new sponsor before they must exit the United States if they cannot secure one.
The people most exposed
The risk falls hardest on Indian workers, who make up the largest share of the H-1B program. A 2026 report from US Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of Homeland Security showed that Indian citizens accounted for 283,772 of the 406,348 H-1B petitions approved in FY25.
That dependence has become a vulnerability as hiring slows and layoffs continue across the tech sector. Layoffs.fyi says more than 110,000 employees have lost their jobs at 144 technology companies so far in 2026, and immigration experts estimate that many of them are H-1B holders, including a large number from India.
The impact goes beyond careers and paychecks. Many affected workers have spent nearly a decade in the United States while waiting for green cards trapped in a long backlog, and they have built families, mortgages, and lives around the assumption that they would remain there.
A shrinking set of options
Some workers try to buy time by switching to a B-2 visitor visa. That route can allow them to stay in the United States for up to six months while they search for a new employer or plan their next move.
But that option is becoming harder to use. Immigration specialists say U.S. authorities are asking for more documents and issuing more denials for H-1B to B-2 status changes.
U.S.-based immigration lawyer Rajiv Khanna said his team has seen a sharp rise in requests for evidence and notices of intent to deny in B-1/B-2 change-of-status applications from laid-off H-1B workers. He said the volume of cases is far beyond anything he has seen before in his career.
Other workers are looking at F-1 student visas, O-1 visas for individuals with extraordinary ability, or L-1 visas for internal company transfers. Those paths each have their own requirements, and they do not always fit someone who has just lost a job.
Some are also considering leaving the United States altogether. Canada and several European countries are increasingly seen as backup plans, and some workers are weighing moves to Canada through programs such as Express Entry and the Global Talent Stream.
Meta adds fresh uncertainty
The latest wave of concern came from Meta, which began another global round of layoffs this week as part of an AI-focused restructuring. Reports said employees in Singapore started receiving layoff emails as early as 4:00 a.m. local time on Wednesday, while workers in the United States and Europe were also expected to be affected.
The total number of cuts has not been made clear. There is also no confirmation on how many Indian workers were included in the latest round.
In an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg, Meta Head of People Janelle Gale said the company wants a flatter team structure so it can move faster with greater responsibility. Employees were reportedly encouraged to work from home while the restructuring was underway.
At the same time, Meta has moved nearly 7,000 employees into AI-focused teams, including product and AI agents. The cuts are said to have hit engineering and product divisions in particular as CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushes AI to the center of the company’s future strategy.
Meta is also expected to spend more than $100 billion on AI-related investment this year. For H-1B workers, that kind of shift means uncertainty is coming not only from layoffs, but also from the shrinking set of jobs that have traditionally served as a path to staying in the United States.
A choice that has turned urgent
Xiao Wang, CEO of Boundless Immigration, said Indian H-1B workers feel the heaviest pressure because their green card backlog has stretched for decades. He said more people now want to return to their home countries or move to Canada and Europe than at any point in the past decade.
Immigration lawyer Kevin J Andrews also said many workers are now reassessing whether staying in the United States still makes sense. That calculation is taking place as the technology job market shifts and AI changes hiring patterns.
For many Indian workers, the decision has become brutally narrow: find a new sponsor quickly, try a visa path that is growing stricter, or start over in another country after building a future in America for years.
Source: www.indiatoday.in