About 3,795 temporary workers a year found a new employer willing to file a petition for them within 60 days of a prior job ending, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s own upper-bound estimate, and a new proposal would largely close that path from inside the United States. The 69-page proposal, released for public inspection Thursday and scheduled for publication Friday, would eliminate a grace period that has allowed certain employment-based visa holders to remain legally in the country after a layoff or resignation.

The change is not yet in effect. The existing rule, which permits a grace period of up to 60 days or until the worker’s authorized stay expires, whichever comes first, remains operative while DHS takes public comments and decides whether to issue a final rule. If finalized as proposed, affected workers and their dependents would generally be considered out of status the day after qualifying employment ends unless they already had another lawful basis to remain.

The Trump administration says the grace period adds complexity to immigration adjudications and weakens the statutory link between temporary status and the job that justified it. Employers and immigration advocates counter that eliminating it would make layoffs and job changes far more disruptive. DHS estimates that 99.2 percent of workers in its annual new-employer proxy were in H-1B status, while Reuters reported that major consulting and outsourcing firms are among the program’s largest sponsors.

What the proposal would change

The current regulation at 8 CFR 214.1(l)(2) applies to E-1, E-2, E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, L-1, O-1 and TN workers and their dependents. It gives DHS discretion to treat them as maintaining status for one period of up to 60 days after employment ends. The protection covers resignations and dismissals but does not authorize another job.

During that window, a worker may seek another nonimmigrant status, apply for permanent residence when eligible, request a compelling-circumstances work permit or have a new employer file Form I-129. Eligible H-1B workers can generally start the new job when a nonfrivolous portability petition is filed, a process described in the agency’s worker guidance. Several other covered categories generally must await approval.

DHS proposes to delete the 60-day provision rather than shorten it. A worker whose employment ended would generally need to depart immediately, secure another status independently or risk being found to have failed to maintain status. A prospective employer could still file a petition after the worker left, and an approved worker could seek readmission if otherwise eligible, but the transition would involve consular processing, travel and uncertainty that the present rule was designed to reduce.

DHS emphasizes administrative burden

The department’s central case is administrative. From fiscal 2018 through May 20, 2026, USCIS received more than 1.9 million filings in which officers potentially had to assess whether the grace period applied. That is not a count of people who used the protection; it is a workload estimate covering cases that might require officers to establish an employment end date and decide whether to shorten or deny the period.

DHS says termination evidence frequently lacks a clear last day of work, requiring adjudicators to infer dates and examine case-specific circumstances. Removing the provision, it argues, would simplify decisions and restore a direct relationship between temporary status and employment. The proposal invokes the secretary’s authority under federal law to set the time and conditions of nonimmigrant admissions.

That position reverses the rationale DHS adopted a decade ago. The 2016 rule, effective in January 2017, said limited flexibility after job loss would improve stability and job mobility for workers while helping U.S. employers recruit people already in the country. The new proposal acknowledges that policy change and says the resulting reliance interests are outweighed by statutory alignment and administrative efficiency.

The government’s numbers show uncertainty

DHS lacks a direct count of workers who use the grace period because no form records that fact. As a proxy, it examined people whose approved Form I-129 petitions were withdrawn after employment ended or they changed jobs. The agency found a five-year average of 65,752 such principal workers from fiscal 2021 through 2025, ranging from 40,959 in 2021 to 80,034 in 2023. That population includes people who may never have relied on the grace period.

Across those five years, 5.77 percent had a new employer file another worker petition within 60 days; 0.59 percent applied to adjust status; 1.70 percent sought to extend or change nonimmigrant status; and fewer than 0.1 percent requested a compelling-circumstances employment authorization document. DHS therefore treats 3,795 new-employer petitions a year as an upper-bound estimate of workers who could face transition costs under the proposal. Of those, about 3,765 were H-1B workers.

DHS calculated a $131,000 median annual wage in fiscal 2025 for H-1B workers in its proxy group who obtained a new petition within the grace period. That nearly matches the $132,000 median for approved continuing-employment beneficiaries in USCIS’s fiscal 2024 annual report. Its $21,877 figure, equal to two months of salary, is only an illustrative upper bound for foregone wages.

Dependents widen the household consequences but are harder to measure. USCIS approved an annual average of 208,187 dependents connected to the covered categories from fiscal 2021 through 2025, but that is not an estimate of people who would have to leave. Some spouses with independent work authorization could also lose jobs if the principal worker fell out of status.

A labor-market tradeoff without a forecast

The H-1B program allows employers to hire people temporarily for specialty occupations that generally require highly specialized knowledge and at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent. Congress caps most new H-1B grants at 65,000 a year, with another 20,000 slots for graduates of U.S. institutions holding advanced degrees, while universities and certain research employers are exempt. Before filing with USCIS, most employers must obtain a Labor Condition Application and attest to wage and working-condition requirements described by the Labor Department.

The grace-period debate concerns mobility after admission, not the initial selection system. DHS says prospective employers could hire equally qualified U.S. workers, reassign duties or petition again for a foreign worker who has departed. It found that about 99 percent of the H-1B employer petitions in its relevant proxy were not subject to the annual cap, reducing one barrier to bringing a worker back. The agency nevertheless acknowledges that employers could face temporary productivity losses and that employers who dismiss H-1B or O-1 workers may have to pay reasonable return-transportation costs.

In fiscal 2025, 2,886 entities filed new-employer petitions for 5,178 covered workers whose prior petitions had been withdrawn; DHS classified 1,852, or 64 percent, as small entities. The department concluded that the rule would not significantly affect a substantial number of small entities, but it did not monetize nationwide costs or benefits and said labor-force effects would probably be localized.

Critics see a different mechanism: removing lawful transition time could make workers more dependent on a current sponsor and less able to move between firms. Employers would have less time to coordinate filings, while workers could have to manage housing, school and family arrangements immediately. DHS recognizes those costs but cannot estimate how many people would leave, change status or return later.

The proposal will receive 60 days of public comment after Federal Register publication. DHS must then evaluate significant evidence and arguments before deciding whether to finalize, modify or withdraw it. Because the 2016 policy was justified as supporting mobility, a final reversal may depend on how fully the department explains its changed assessment and addresses reliance and economic costs.

The agency’s own analysis identifies the central evidence gap. It can count petitions that might have required a grace-period review, but it cannot directly count users of the grace period, determine which job endings were voluntary, quantify affected dependents or forecast how often employers would replace workers domestically rather than pursue them abroad. Those limitations do not answer whether the rule is sound; they define what commenters would need to document for a better-supported final decision.

For workers and employers, nothing changes immediately. The decisive next steps are the public record developed during the comment period, any revisions in a final rule and the effective date DHS ultimately chooses. The proposal establishes a clear policy direction toward tying lawful temporary status more tightly to a specific job, but the department has not yet demonstrated the scale of the resulting departures, employer disruption or opportunities for U.S. workers.