60-Day H1B Deadline Pushes Laid Off Indians Into Panic

The switch to AI-powered systems has triggered layoffs in many tech companies. Global giants including Meta, Amazon, and Oracle had cut jobs, impacting a huge number of H-1B visa holders. The heavy dependency on H-1B visa is now turning into a major vulnerability.

With Indians being the major benefactors of the H-1B visa programme, many tech NRIs are on the verge of losing jobs and staring at uncertainty. The last few months have seen many Indian tech workers in the US spending anxious moments, fearing their future, as a layoff mail could lead to a major trouble in their life, with the strict 60-day deadline imposed by the US immigration wing.

Foreign workers, on H-1B visa, will have only 60 days to find a new employer willing to sponsor them. In case they cannot find a sponsor, they would have to leave the US. This rule is putting the Indians on tenterhooks even when they had spent many years building their lives in the foreign nation.

To buy more time, several laid-off workers, reportedly, are trying to switch temporarily to the B-2 visitor visa, as it would allow them to stay in the US for nearly six months. However, even that process is proving difficult as the authorities are demanding extra paperwork. The immigration officials are denying B-2 visas to several H-1B visa holders laid off by companies. The process is legal but approvals are increasingly becoming hard.

According to Layoffs.fyi, more than 1,10,000 employees have lost jobs across 144 tech companies in 2026 so far. Of them, thousands could be H-1B workers, and many Indians. Several B-2 visas being denied, employees are exploring other immigration routes, including F-1 student visa, O-1 visas for individuals with extraordinary abilities, and L-1 visas for company transfers.

Meanwhile, a few others are reportedly planning to move to Canada, through Express Entry and Global Talent Stream programs. Reportedly, employees in Singapore received layoff emails early on Wednesday morning, and workers in the US and Europe are also likely to be impacted.

The cuts are expected to mainly impact engineering and product divisions. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has put AI at the centre of the company’s future plans. Meta is reportedly expected to spend more than $100 billion on AI-related investments this year.