This is probably heresy. No one talks about the H-1B worker who got laid off - it is only about the ones who stay. Not sure if everyone in this thread is aware but if an H-1B worker is laid off, he/she gets only 30 days to find a new job. If he is not able to land a new gig within 30 days, they have to leave US for good. So I will not judge here based on a couple of FB comments.
There is actually no grace period. They can be legally picked up and put in deportation proceeding the minute they're fired and they start accruing illegal presence immediately.
Absolutely not. The previous employer has no role at all and does not even have to know it happened - you could apply for a H1b transfer, get it approved, decide you don't want the new job and continue working for your old employer without them ever knowing you had looked around. Everyone I know has had the transfer completed before giving notice at the old job so that if it somehow is denied (eg new employer does not have a job that qualifies for a H1b), the current employer doesn't have to know you wanted to leave.
This is my #1 worry about our industry - Zuckerberg and his folks will get that FWD.us thing passed and use to to ship cheap Indian engineers over here. Call me an asshole if you want but don't be shocked when it happens to you.
I have no problem with tech companies bringing foreign workers into the US. I have a deep problem with them being here on H1B visas that make them little more than indentured servants.
I didn't get the H1B visa in the lottery, but I got moved to UK and got paid the same salary. Since you mentioned Facebook - they opened the office in London when H1B visa lotteries started, and now the office have several hundreds employees. If you won't accept foreign workers be prepared that more and more tech jobs will just move abroad.
Surely FB can find whatever skills they need domestically. I can't imagine there is a skillset that several hundred people have abroad but that does not exist in the US.
It comes down to pay not skills. FB could afford the people in the US with those skills, they are just looking for employees that are cheaper, and they tend to be Indians and Chinese because they value being on US soil more than anyone else. I heard a phrase recently "India has a population of 1 Billion and 900 Million want to be in the US".
Corporations have perfected layoffs done in such a trickle or way as to prevent triggering the WARN act and other legislation. It's sick but just a fact of life. See also how they've perfected dodging taxes in offshore shell companies (and blow off criticism with the line 'we are just following the laws as written').
Disney initially 'got away with it' because they kept the whole thing at an arms length by outsourcing to Cognizant. "Oh that's what you did, hire H1B? Yeah that wasn't us... We just outsourced to Cognizant so you should ask them about what's going on".
Super shady, but it was a fleeting attempt at plausible deniability on behalf of Disney execs.
These were two separate instances of layoffs. The grandparent link is not related to yours (except that both stories involve Disney, and both involve layoffs).
That's the stereotype. As a former H1B holder myself I can say that I never experienced it.
That said, if your employer sponsors you for a green card while you're on an H1B you are quite trapped in your job, and I wouldn't be surprised if people found their wages not rising as much as they would have otherwise.