Musk says ‘so hard to get a legal work visa’ as techies grapple with H-1B woes and layoffs

Indian techies working in US on H-1B visa found support from billionaire Elon Musk on Monday. In his response to a tweet about hordes of illegal immigrants coming to Texas from Mexico, Musk tweeted, “Seems bizarre that it’s so easy enter illegally, but so hard to get a legal work visa.”

Musk’s tweet should be music to the ears of Indian techies who are grappling with layoffs and H-1B visa woes. Lately, there have been media reports of the sacked Indian techies, on a work visa, facing deportation if they don’t find a new job within 60 days.

Companies all over the world have fired around 38,000 employees in just the first half of this month. As per data accessed by Business Today from layoffs.fyi, a data aggregator, 37,866 people have been terminated from their jobs across the world as of November 16. 

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 21, 2022 “>

Seems bizarre that it’s so easy enter illegally, but so hard to get a legal work visa

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 21, 2022

Meta, the parent company of the social networking site Facebook, has had the largest downsizing round so far. On November 9, 11,000 employees were terminated from the company. Amazon sacked 10,000 people on November 16. Microblogging site Twitter laid off 3,700 people on November 4. 

Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday there would be more role reductions as its annual planning process extends into next year and leaders continue to make adjustments.

“Those decisions will be shared with impacted employees and organizations early in 2023”, said Andy Jassy, who became the company’s Chief Executive Officer in 2021, in a letter to Amazon employees.