When Big Tech Fires These H-1B Workers, The Countdown Begins: Planet Money : NPR

People come from all over the world to work in the U.S. tech industry. During the tech boom, the industry relied heavily on foreign workers. That’s how we built Silicon Valley — by bringing great talent from all over the world to work in the U.S.

But when the industry started shrinking, all these people who moved here for work found it really complicated to tie their jobs to where they lived. That was the case for Ashika, a product engineer at Amazon, and Niranjan, who worked in digital advertising at Google. They both lost their jobs in layoffs announced by both companies earlier this year.

When Aashka and Nilanjan got the news, the clock started ticking. Since they were both H-1B visa holders, they had only 60 days to find new jobs or they would risk being deported. And they couldn’t just find a job—they needed new employers in their industry willing to sponsor them for visas.

On today’s show, we follow two tech workers as they try to find work before their visas expire, and what they go through as H-1B visa recipients trying to stay in the United States.

This episode was hosted by Alyssa Jeong Perry and Amanda Aronczyk, produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, designed by James Willetts, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and edited by Molly Messick and Jess Jiang.

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music: “county seat“”Secret Passage,” and”Machine Melody“”.