Mass layoffs in US leave majority of Indians on H-1B visas impacted: Report

Reports also suggest that these impacted Indian nationals are getting inadequate guidance from the companies that sponsored them.

The tech industry in the US has long relied on the H-1B visa program to meet its need for workers in specialized fields such as computer science and engineering and with mass layoffs by several of them, many Indians have been impacted.

Amazon, Lyft, Meta, Salesforce, Stripe and Twitter have sponsored at least 45,000 H-1B workers in the past three years, according to a Bloomberg analysis of data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Reports indicate that the latest round of job cuts by Meta and Twitter alone has affected at least 350 immigrants.

H-1B holders who become unemployed can remain in the US legally for only 60 days without finding new employers to sponsor them.

Many people with H-1B visas have been living in the US for years and awaiting permanent citizenship.

Now they're frantically searching for jobs, along with thousands of other tech workers in a newly competitive labour market. Some have mortgages, student loans and children in school.

At the same time, many major employers have seized hiring as recruiting is typically slower during the holidays.

With deadlines looming, desperate job seekers have turned to their professional networks to find a way to stay like direct appeals on LinkedIn.