Trump Moves to Completely Scrap the H-1B 60-Day Grace Period, Forcing Foreign Staff To Leave the US

Donald Trump's administration is proposing to scrap the 60-day grace period for certain foreign workers who lose their jobs in the United States, according to a Department of Homeland Security proposed rule scheduled for publication in the Federal Register on Friday, 11 September 2026.

The up-to-60-day grace period currently applies to some nonimmigrant workers in employment-based classifications including E-1, E-2, E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, L-1, O-1 and TN, as well as their dependants.

It allows eligible workers to remain in the United States for up to 60 days, or until the end of their authorised period of stay, whichever comes first, after qualifying employment or activity ends.

During that time, they can pursue another lawful immigration option, seek new employment, or prepare to leave the country, but the grace period itself generally does not authorise work.

Under Trump's proposal, that cushion would disappear. The Department of Homeland Security and US Citizenship and Immigration Services say covered workers would generally be treated as failing to maintain their nonimmigrant status the day after their qualifying employment or activity ends, unless they have another lawful basis to remain in the country.

The proposed rule argues that eliminating the grace period would 'restore a direct relationship between an alien's nonimmigrant status and the specific employment or activity that formed the basis of his or her admission or grant of status in the United States.' In practical terms, DHS wants the legal link between status and job to be much tighter, with far less of an in‑between zone than exists today.

Donald Trump Policy Shift Targets H-1B Grace Period and Beyond

After years of argument over the H-1B and other employment-based visas, and whether they undercut American workers or shore up key sectors like technology, finance and healthcare. Before the current provision took effect in January 2017, workers in the affected classifications did not have today's up-to-60-day grace period after losing a job.

DHS finalised the rule that created that buffer in 2016, and it took effect on 17 January 2017, three days before Trump's first inauguration. In the new proposal, the department leans heavily on 'program integrity' and statutory alignment as the justification for reversing course.

'DHS believes that restoring the expectation that aliens depart the United States upon cessation of the employment or activity upon which the alien's status was based, would better promote program integrity and be more consistent with statutory purpose,' the proposed rule states.

Officials also complain about the practical burden of maintaining the safety net. The agency describes deciding when the 'up to 60-day grace period' applies, reviewing submissions, and deciding whether to shorten or eliminate it as 'time-consuming and complex' for staff and 'confusing or unpredictable' for petitioners, workers and their families. In other words, DHS is framing this as much a paperwork problem as an immigration one.

DHS's own numbers underscore how many people could, at least in theory, be touched by the change. The agency estimates that 328,758 primary beneficiaries in the affected classifications experienced a job loss or employer change between fiscal years 2021 and 2025. It stresses, however, that its data cannot reliably show how many people actually relied on the grace period, and only a fraction had new petitions filed within that window.

Trump Administration Says Ending Grace Period Could Benefit US Workers

The most politically loaded section of the proposal is the one that talks about American workers. DHS says that if the grace period disappears, employers that have been hiring people in these categories between jobs would have 'less foreign-born labour to choose from.'

The department goes on to assume that many of those employers would instead offer the same roles to 'equally qualified US workers,' continue through the relevant I-129 petition process to sponsor another nonimmigrant, or simply reassign the work to existing employees. It acknowledges that some petitioners 'may incur a temporary loss of productivity due to labour turnover.'

DHS couches all of this in the careful language of regulatory analysis, but the underlying trade-off is blunt. The Trump team is signalling it is prepared to accept disruption and extra churn inside firms that rely on specialist staff in order to tighten the system and, as the document puts it, reduce the pool of foreign-born labour available at short notice.

For those on the visas in question, the stakes are not academic. Under the current regime, an eligible worker whose employment ends can, at DHS's discretion, have up to 60 days to line up a new job, explore another immigration category or organise their departure.

Under the proposal, that worker would generally be expected to leave the United States once the underlying employment or activity ends, unless another provision of law independently authorises them to stay.

The proposed rule, as posted to the Federal Register, includes a 60-day public comment period. That gives businesses, universities, hospitals, advocacy groups and individual workers a formal window to set out what they think this would do to hiring, planning and people's lives before DHS decides whether, and in what form, to finalise the change.

Immigration lawyers, employers and migrant advocates can use that process to press DHS on practical questions that the dry regulatory text only sketches. For instance, how often does the department actually shorten the grace period in practice, and what will happen to in‑flight petitions if status ends the day after a job does? None of that is small stuff if your mortgage, your children's schooling and your career are all tethered to one HR decision.

DHS, for its part, argues that the proposal would restore a closer connection between a worker's nonimmigrant status and the job or activity that justified it in the first place. It also insists that clarifying the rules would reduce confusion for everyone involved, even if the immediate impact feels pretty brutal for those who only recently started relying on that 60‑day buffer.

IBTimes UK cannot independently assess the potential economic and workforce effects of the proposal beyond the information and analysis provided by DHS. Those effects could depend on how employers, workers and the immigration system respond if the rule is ultimately finalised.