The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman (CIS Ombudsman) invites stakeholders to participate in a listening session on immigration concerns and options for laid-off foreign workers. The session will take place via phone on Thursday, January 19, 2023, from 1 to 2 p.m. ET.
CIS Ombudsman Phyllis Coven, her staff, and officials from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin with a brief overview of options for workers following termination of employment. We encourage you to read USCIS’ Options for Nonimmigrant Workers Following Termination of Employment web page before the listening session. We will then open the phone lines to hear from stakeholders. In particular, we are interested in hearing about:
- Any immigration-related issues you are experiencing as a result of being laid off;
- Any questions related to periods of severance and immigration status;
- Your experience with trying to use the immigration options USCIS has presented for laid-off workers; and
- Any ideas for how USCIS could practically mitigate the immigration impacts of layoffs on foreign workers under existing immigration laws and regulations.
If you want to send written feedback about these topics ahead of time, please email those comments to [email protected]. The CIS Ombudsman will share additional input from this listening session (without attribution) to USCIS. We may also use the feedback to make recommendations to USCIS on implementing flexible processes and policies for laid-off foreign workers.
As a reminder, the CIS Ombudsman is an independent office within DHS and is not part of USCIS.
We look forward to hearing from you on these issues and invite you to register for this engagement using the link below. RSVP here
