For Indian techies, is it the end of the great American dream?

The application fees for employment-based visas, such as H1-B and L, are set to increase under a proposed US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) fee rule to recover operating costs and prevent case backlogs.
Under the new proposal, which will be subject to a 60- day comment period before it takes effect, the application fee for H-1B visas for high- skilled workers would jump by 70 per cent to $780.
H-1B visa petitioners would also need to pay $215 in pre- registration fees, up from the current $10 fee.
Team Absolute|New Delhi
Amazon, Salesforce, Meta, Twitter, Uber and other tech companies have laid off employees as well as put a total freeze on new hirings.
In some cheer for those who have lost jobs in the ongoing funding winter and global macro-economic conditions, most laid-off tech employees landed new
jobs within three months of starting their search for a new opening.A ZipRecruiter survey revealed that near- ly 79 per cent of terminated staff in the tech industry landed a new job within three months.
Nearly four in 10 previously laid off tech workers found jobs less than a month after they began search- ing, the survey found.However, 2023 is set to become the worst year for tech layoffs and there may not be jobs available for those on H1-B visa anymore.
Several Indian-origin workers were left in the lurch in late 2022.Now, with the latest layoffs announced by Amazon and Salesforce, and Google soon joining the list, several of H-1B visa holders will be left in a precari- ous situation.They will again have 60 days to find a new job or leave the US, ending their American Dream.”Although an increase from $10 to $215 may appear dramatic at first glance, the $10 fee was estab- lished simply to cover a small portion of the costs of the program, as opposed to no fee at all,” the USCIS said in a statement.LinkedIn in late 2022 was flooded with sto- ries of laid-off H1-B workers.It was an anxious time for tens of thousands of newly laid-off workers amid infla- tion pressures and recession concerns. Some people who were in earlier rounds of layoffs got jobs but even they were pessimistic about the current market.