No job, no grace period.
The Department of Homeland Security is proposing to eliminate the up-to-60-day window that currently allows certain foreign workers to remain legally in the United States after their employment ends.
Under the proposal, workers in several employment-based nonimmigrant categories — including H-1B, L-1, O-1, TN and several E visas — would generally be required to leave the country immediately after losing the job or activity that supports their immigration status, unless they have another lawful basis to remain.
Don’t miss the stories that matter.
Get Sean’s breaking news alerts — free, direct to your inbox.
“This proposal restores a direct relationship between an alien’s nonimmigrant status and the specific employment or activity that formed the basis of his or her admission,” DHS wrote in the proposed rule.
The existing grace period dates to a rule finalized in 2016 and effective in 2017. It was designed to give qualifying foreign workers time to find another employer, pursue a different immigration status or prepare to leave the country after their employment ended.
The department says eliminating the grace period would better align the regulations with federal immigration law and reduce administrative work for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The consequences could be significant for industries that make heavy use of employment-based visas.
Technology companies, in particular, rely extensively on H-1B workers. Without the grace period, a laid-off employee could no longer simply spend several weeks in the United States searching for another sponsor before changing jobs.
The department nevertheless assumes most affected jobs would still be filled.
“DHS assumes that almost all these entities would offer the same jobs to equally qualified U.S. workers,” the agency says in its economic analysis.
More over at The New York Post:
Immigrants with work visas will have to immediately leave country if they lose job under new Trump DHS rule https://t.co/6AdtsBToDv pic.twitter.com/qHlonTksts
— New York Post (@nypost) September 10, 2026
