Jessica Vaughan - Should Legal Immigrant Workers Get a Grace Period After Losing Their Jobs?

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, joins Lars to discuss a Department of Homeland Security proposal that could eliminate the 60-day grace period allowing certain legal immigrant workers to find new employment after losing a job. Should losing your job mean losing your legal status immediately?

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SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hey, welcome back to the Lars Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you on a Wednesday. I'm always glad to get to your phone calls and emails at 866-A Lars. That's 866-439-5277. Imagine this: you get laid off from your job and you lose your legal status to stay in the United States the same day. A major change could be coming for thousands of foreign workers in America. And the perfect person to describe this is Jessica Vaughn, Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, who we talk to frequently. Jessica, welcome back to the program.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Thanks so much. Good to be with you.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Would you mind describing for my audience exactly why this happens to H1Bs and whether or not the the question of whether or not there ought to be a grace period if somebody has come into the United States, is working on an H 1B for a company, and then at some point lose their job, and we can talk about the circumstances under which they lose their job, and then they have literally zero time to be able to go out and find another job to justify staying in the U.S. And they may find themselves being booted out of the country. Is that the way it goes?

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Um I might describe it just slightly differently, but I and that's a good summary. Um so the H1B visa is a temporary work visa that is supposed to be for needed workers sponsored by an employer. And um the reality is that most of these visas, there's a numerical limit with some exceptions, but most of the limited visas available are used by staffing companies that bring in workers uh who they then market to um American companies to do jobs that Americans once did um or could do in most cases, but um it if you know, or they they may come to work directly for a US company in a job. Our research has found that most of these individuals are in entry or trainee status, at least that's what their the pay rate is.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

But it's a temporary visa. So if they are laid off or fired or lose their job under some circumstances, that means that they are no longer needed by the employer, and it's a temporary visa. So the right thing to do in that situation would be to go home to their home country.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

And then perhaps if you want to. Yeah, find a new employer and come back, but you don't get two months to float around the United States and try to look for another job, which may or may not be an H1B visa job, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Right. It it probably would be what happens a lot of times is these these workers who are brought in by a staffing company. If the client of the staffing company doesn't need them anymore, they may go over to another staffing company. But you know, I don't I don't think staffing companies should be allowed to use H1B visas at all. If employers need these workers, they should be willing to go through the work of sponsoring them themselves instead of getting them through body shops. Right. But regardless, it's a temporary visa, but it has uh the people who come on these visas often consider themselves immigrants and are planning to stay and feel that they are entitled to be able to stay um, you know, because they want to.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

And Jessica, Jessica Vaughn, by the way, is director of policy studies at CIS, Center for Immigration Studies. So it doesn't sound like the companies are hiring these people because they can't find Americans who can do that job. And yet, isn't that the requirement of the H1B? Isn't it kind of a contradiction in terms if you say we should have H1B so companies can get the workers they need that they can't find here, and then you describe the jobs that they do that sound like the kind of jobs you could read relatively readily find Americans to fill.

unknown 4:20

Right?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

One myth about the H1B program is that there is some requirement that employers show that they couldn't find an American worker. That doesn't exist. Wow. The employers simply have to say that um bringing in an H1B worker wouldn't affect American workers. Um, but they have lots of ways around it. They manipulate the wage rates, like I said, they classify them as entry-level. But you know, we have plenty of Americans who can fill entry-level jobs too, like American college graduates, for example.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

No kidding. And and anybody whose whose degree ends in the word studies, how about that?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Perhaps, perhaps. Well, um, but there is a big impact in certain industries because most of the H1Bs are concentrated in technology fields, information technology. And yet we have many American grads who may who you know worked hard to get to get a college degree in that major, and then they graduate and find that employers don't want them, they want the cheaper worker brought in by the staffing company. Uh, about 70% of these are Indian.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

And and by the way, uh Jessica, can I I I I don't want to offend you or anything, I don't think I'll offend you, uh, but we outlawed indentured servitude a long time ago. But it's one of the draws of an H1B. I mean, I've got two great producers, I've got Joel and I've got Mackenzie, but I don't own them. I I don't I don't have you know chains around their their neck or their arms. And if if one of them walks in tomorrow and says, hey, I'm going to work somewhere else, they can do that. The H1B has a little bit of a chain around their neck, don't they?

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Well, it does, but what the employers do is say, hey, you stick with me, and I will I promise that I will sponsor you for a green card at the appropriate time. So in the meantime, you're gonna have to grovel and work the hours that I tell you to do and do what I tell you, um, and sometimes pay me, pay kickbacks to the supervisors and so on, and not complain. Um, and but the reality is is this is a tempor it was supposed to be a temporary visa, not a guarantee of a green card. And you know, if if they are laid off, they should go home. We we do not owe them an opportunity to go look for another job.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

I couldn't agree with you more. That is Jessica Vaughn. She is director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. Jessica, thanks very much. By the way, think about this. In Batavia, Illinois, at 2 40 in the morning, a woman looks outside, sees a flashlight and a shadow outside of her window. Imagine how scary that is. Police say the man in her backyard was a registered sex offender. A military court convicted him in 2024. He had taken a sailor's keycard, let himself into her bedroom, and watched her sleep. He never met the woman in Batavia. He saw her on social media, researched her, then found her home address, researched, let me translate that. A people search site will sell a report on you for about $2. That means your home address, your phone, your relatives, everywhere you've ever lived. I've used Incogni to take myself and take my family out of that status. It sends requests to more than four data broker and people search sites on your behalf. Now, under the law, they have to remove your name from their databases. But Incogni makes the request. Then Incogni continues to check to make sure it stays that way. Do this. Go to incogni.com slash Lars. That's I N-C-O-G-N-I. Incogni.com slash LARS. You'll get 60% off the regular price. Two dollars bought her address, take yours off the market. They can't hurt you if they can't find you. Incogni.com slash Lars, L A R S for sixty percent right now.