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Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

311–320 of 679 posts

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re using the term “democracy” in an Orwellian way. The people voted for the guy who promised mass deportations. There were signs and everything. Multiple surveys have found that, if everyone had voted, he would have won by an even larger margin. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec... A non-functioning democracy would be if the people voted this way and mass deportations didn’t happen. Lik…

Democracy is broken because here's a candidate whose entire premise (that America somehow isn't great and needs to be made great again) is made-up, and a significant proportion of the population just believe it.

In a democracy, people are entitled to disagree about what makes the country “great.” That’s like the whole fucking point.

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#312

UK around Brexit time thought kind of similar: let's keep the "riffraff" immigrants out by applying higher criteria. The narrative also changed this way: we don't want immigrants in general, but you , with your highly paid PhD-requiring job, you can go in, on a 2 year rolling basis. Then everyone's a winner, except for unwanted, unskilled labour. But a lot of skilled labour left anyway. Partly because the general atm…

This, so much. Not the UK, but another western-European country that has slowly succumbed to right-wing rhetoric and fear-mongering. There, legal immigration has continuously been a boon to the economy, but each politician having had to "one-up" the previous one in terms of "tightening immigration" and "looking tough" has only made legal immigration increasingly miserable, and put off skilled/high-earning global workers whose presence was desired.

Of course, nothing has changed for the illegal ones: they haven't (and won't) see the increased burden of legal migration of which they are oblivious. Overall things are only getting worse, and I hate that there's no attempt to having a honest and transparent debate and discourse on the matter.

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. How does Microsoft pay the fee? Which online portal do they go to? What bank account do they wire a check to over the weekend? What reason do they give for the payment? What USCIS code do they enter? What USCIS forms do they fill that USCIS will then snail mail (because they’re still living in the 90s) an I-797A to the employee that they will present at the border for evidence of payment. What address will USCIS…

Maybe Satya can call Donald Trump? I am sure he has his phone number. They can sort it

So if you want your employees to be able to go back from vacation and back to their belongings, you have to pay a large fee. And to pay that fee, you have to talk to the president personally, otherwise you're screwed.

That's so dumb I can't believe you're suggesting it. In a rule-of-law country, lobbying the president should never be a solution to anything, much less routine bureaucracy.

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#314

Doesn’t seem fair to the companies that employ these people. It’s obviously a hidden tax on large tech companies like x and Tesla that hire a lot of global talent.

Doesn't seem fair to the citizens that live here. We should be taxing companies that have international leverage more . ¢¢ –– Citizen, former Data Center Electrician (still blue collar — I'll eagerly do the work if paid citizen-wages!)

>I'll eagerly do the work if paid citizen-wages

What was the wage you were last offered?

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#315
These new restrictions are uniquely capricious and gleefully harmful to people, but they are really only an extension of behaviors that have gone on for some time. I'd like to share a related story from the previous Trump administration:

My roommate in 2018 was an Indian here on an H1-B. He was working for a large consulting firm. (You've heard of it.) I don't recall his title but it was sort of an SRE/infrastructure position. He was a relatively conservative guy himself, in terms of his views, and a huge fan of America. He delighted in being here. He bought a brand new Mustang because it was the iconic American car. We weren't particularly close friends, but we got along okay.

In the spring of 2018, he went back to India for the first time in several years, for about a month. His return flight date came and went and I didn't hear from him until the next day: He was back in India. He'd landed in Chicago, and CBP had pulled him aside. They said his documents were flawed and he was to be deported. They said he had lied about where he was moving for his job. When he pointed out that he hadn't, they said, well, your employer didn't tell us everything they were supposed to when you moved.

He asked to see documents he had with him, or call his managers. They said no. He asked for time to go online and get his employment details. They said no. The only options he were given was: 1) Admit he'd lied, and be deported but not banned from the US, or, 2) deny he'd lied, and be deported and banned for five years. Indignant, he refused to "admit" to anything. He was deported. His entire life in the US was summarily destroyed. I spent a great deal of time helping him get his possessions either sold or shipped to him, and on the phone, I had to explain to him that he likely hadn't done anything wrong - it wasn't his fault. This was how our system had been set up to work.

About two years later, a judge concluded that there had not, in fact, been any issues with his employer or him that were material. The deportation was ruled to have been illegitimate. But by that point, he'd been back in India for years, and it was now COVID. He's probably never coming back to the US. We lost our chance to have him, because a couple of individual CBP agents in Chicago made a bad call one day in 2018 and wouldn't take no for an answer.

Even if you believe in controlling and limiting immigration, even if you think that we should only bring the best and brightest and then only in limited numbers, even if you think everyone who crosses the border illegally is a criminal, there is nothing just in what happened in this case. If you are such a person, and you think the people in power are on your side, I urge you to look at what they're actually doing over what they say they're doing. There's no justice in what happened in this case; if even legal immigrants have such limited due process and can have their lives so utterly destroyed, what rights do any of us imagine we have?

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#317
I am so glad I left the States. It is horrible to live in a country where on a whim of a deranged leader your whole life can be upended. No country is perfect, but the way US now behaves towards people on visas is not tolerable. (And it was similar situation during COVID)

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#318
post #255
post #134

This has very strong "cruelty is the point" vibes. There are a fair bit of international flights in the 10-12 hour range. Add some time to pack, get to airport, baggage check, get through security & how the flight times line up and this seems calculated in a way that is precisely not doable. Never mind people not perpetually online and only seeing this a couple hours later Meanwhile there is to my knowledge no reason…

48 hours would also have been crazy. This should be a bill introduced in Congress, discussed in committee, voted on, and enacted with a date months in the future when it goes into effect, so that people, companies and government agencies can prepare and plan ... you know like an country with laws and procedures.

That argument went out the door when the last administration chose to open the borders.

We have laws against that. But they were ignored.

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#319
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I think of slavery I usually think of working for free, not H1B tech worker salaries which are insanely high on a global scale. It's also something people actively sign up for.

The free part of slavery is about freedom, not payment. It was not uncommon for enslaved people to buy their way out of enslavement.

Quick googling (could be wrong), thousands bought freedom, approx 4 million were enslaved. It would have been uncommon, ballpark 0.1% (which still seems high to me. The issue is a very large denominator)

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#320

Anecdotally, although I'm sure it's happening to more people. I'm Brazilian, I work in the US on H1-B. I'm on vacations in Brazil with my wife and kids, one in school age. I also came to renew my visa stamp, as I had my extension approved not long ago. My visa is valid from September 21st, so, same day as this proclamation takes effect. And I can't go back before that because my visa is not valid. My flight was sched…

Wow.

"On vacation" makes it sounds like workers were just off "having fun" (which of course is their right), but as your story illustrates, many immigrants are required to leave the US for their visa renewals. To be forced to leave the country and then be barred from return by an sudden change in the rules is the most unjust cruelty.

As an American, I'm deeply ashamed by this. I hope you and your family are able to return home soon. Thank you for sharing your story.

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