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Tech layoffs leave H-1B holders in vulnerable position

03.02.2009
Tech companies are announcing layoffs nearly every day, and thousands are losing their jobs. Now pressure is being placed on companies to consider the nationality of workers when planning workforce reductions.

Computerworld reports that when last week, one United States senator said the company should give job priority to U.S. citizens over foreign workers on H1-B visas.

"Microsoft has a moral obligation to protect ... American workers by putting them first during these difficult economic times," the article quotes Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) as writing in a letter to Steve Ballmer, the company's CEO.

Microsoft announced it will cut up to 5,000 positions in the next 18 months, and that a "significant number" of the first 1400 will be foreigners who are in the US on work visas.

There are no federal laws that require that H1-B holders should be the first to be laid off.

"In fact, the law is very well designed to say that you have to treat H-1Bs the same as U.S. citizens in all regards," David Kussin, an immigration attorney at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP in New York said in an interview with Computerworld.