Zoe Thomas: This is your Tech News Briefing for Tuesday, February 21st. I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal. In the last year, there have been more than 257,000 job cuts in the tech sector, and they haven't just affected Americans. By some estimates, foreign workers make up a quarter of the US tech industry and they haven't been immune from the layoffs. For workers on temporary skilled employment visas known as H1Bs, losing their jobs sets in motion a countdown that can force them to leave the country and the lives they've built here. On today's show, we'll hear from one man facing that situation and our reporter, Te-Ping Chen, will join us to talk about the wider impact. That's after these headlines.

A large number of workers in the US tech field are foreign and they have not been immune from the layoffs that have ripped through the sector. For those in the US on temporary skilled employment visas known as H1B Visas, the impact goes beyond losing their jobs. If an H1B Visa holder loses their position they have just 60 days to find a new role in a similar field. Sushant Arora is a 30-year-old project manager living in Boston. He lost his job as an analyst at a data analytics company about a month ago.

Sushant Arora: It was a trauma for me at least for a week, so I was so depressed and it's very hard to believe you are not part of the company. And in addition to that you have bills to pay, right? You have rent to pay.

Zoe Thomas: Now Arora is scrambling to figure out what to do before he's forced to return to his home country, India. But redoing his résumé and going through several rounds of interviews can take weeks. Under the H1B Visa rules Arora says he's only allowed to apply for jobs with the title business analyst, data analyst or project manager.

Sushant Arora: I'm working with two to three companies right now. I told them, can you please expedite my process because I don't have much time. If you take more time, then I have to leave the country. I'm doing more than like hundred applications a day. Try to do that and try to enhance my skills so that I can crack the interview.

Zoe Thomas: And leaving doesn't just mean throwing his stuff in a suitcase. Arora will have to divest his life in the states.

Sushant Arora: So I've invested like three to four grants in my furniture and this month I bought a new car, that is for $60,000. So in 60 days, I can't sell my furniture. In 60 days, I can't sell my car and pay the bank debts. It's very difficult to do that.

Zoe Thomas: If he's forced to leave now, Arora says he's not sure he'll ever want to come back to the US.

Sushant Arora: Definitely I won't do that because I don't want to be in the same cycle. Or else if I want to live in another country, then I'll find the immigration-friendly country.

Zoe Thomas: Sushant Arora is not all that unique as the tech layoffs pile up. Joining me now to discuss the bigger impact of these job losses is Wall Street Journal reporter Te-Ping Chen. Hi, Te-Ping. Thanks for joining us.

Te-Ping Chen: Thanks for having me.

Zoe Thomas: So start by telling us how important are foreign workers to the tech industry.

Te-Ping Chen: These workers are extremely important. Foreign-born workers by some estimates account for almost one quarter of all workers in STEM fields. That does include Green Card holders as well as naturalized citizens. But as you can see, that's an extraordinary proportion of the talent that is fueling the tech industry.

Zoe Thomas: Right, and now we're seeing these huge layoffs in the tech sector. I mean obviously that's not all H1B Visa holders, it's not all foreign workers, but do we have a sense of how many temporary visa holders have been affected?

Te-Ping Chen: There isn't any reliable way to track these figures. Companies aren't releasing them. But in terms of the number of H1B workers affected, certainly the folks that I've spoken to in recruiting and also lawyers who work with affected workers have said very comfortably you could say in the tens of thousands of workers who are being affected by these layoffs and hold these kinds of temporary work visas.

Zoe Thomas: Te-Ping, we heard Sushant Arora's story. Apart from the 60-day timeframe, are there other restrictions or catches that may surprise H1B Visa holders who lose their jobs?

Te-Ping Chen: Yeah, there have been some surprise implications for folk who've been laid off while on these visas. In some cases when traveling abroad, outside of the US that is, some of them have found not only were they laid off but also that their work visa was no longer valid to get back into the country. And so we're talking about people who have lived in the US for many years and now find themselves effectively locked out of the United States and grappling with what to do and how to get back in and how to pack up these lives that have suddenly been jettisoned from them.

Zoe Thomas: You've spoken to a number of people in this position. Can you tell us a little bit about their stories. What has their experience been like?

Te-Ping Chen: Sure. Well, in the case of one worker we spoke to who was laid off from Twitter in December, he was traveling on vacation in Malaysia and got the notice that he was laid off and then realized that, oh, how am I going to get back in? He consulted with a lawyer. The lawyer advised him against trying to travel back to the United States for fear that doing so would set him up for all kinds of complications down the line if he's perceived as trying to misrepresent his status. And so since then he's just been stuck outside of the United States, which is a place that he's lived for over a decade now. There's a chance that if he was to get a job while abroad, he could transfer status and reenter in that way. And he's trying to pursue and think through other options. In the meantime, he just has someone, a friend, watering his plants in Los Angeles and another neighbor who is periodically driving his car to make sure the battery doesn't die. And his apartment is just sitting empty.

Zoe Thomas: What about for people who are in the US when they lose their job and they're going through that 60-day period, what have they told you about their experience?

Te-Ping Chen: Well, if you think about trying to job hunt at this moment especially in the tech industry, which is going through such massive layoffs, it's not a very opportune time to find a new role. That's particularly the case for some of the workers I've spoken to who are more in junior positions, maybe got hired fresh out of college and when they got hired, it was a different time in the job market. There was a lot of opportunity. And at this point now trying to look for roles again, feeling a lot of stress, feeling the clock ticking, and just that sense of desperation. What am I going to do if I can't find a job within 60 days? Even in the best of times, getting a job in 60 days, when you think about going through the interview rounds, it's just a back and forth waiting to get any sign or response from employers. It's a tough process already. You add on the 60-day clock and the workers that we've spoken to are just feeling under a lot of strain. Something we heard from a lot of folk were just wishing that they had more of a grace period because 60 days, again, is really not a lot of time.

Zoe Thomas: Have we heard anything from tech companies about this? Were they trying to do anything to help workers in this position?

Te-Ping Chen: In some cases we know companies have been trying to extend the date of termination to try and give workers a bit more of a cushion. Or if layoffs are coming to sort of give more of a heads-up and that way workers can start looking for jobs earlier. But fundamentally, they don't have many obligations to workers who are on these temporary work visas. In the case of H1B, the only requirement really that they have is to notify federal authorities that their employment has been terminated and then also to help pay for airfare home.

Zoe Thomas: Big picture, because there are so many foreign temporary workers in the tech industry. What is this going to mean for the sector going forward?

Te-Ping Chen: People that I've spoken to in recruiting have mentioned just the fact that all of these layoffs, which of course are hitting the industry broadly but have a particular impact for foreign temporary workers, have noted that there is a chilling effect, right. If you are someone who is looking at your options and you're trying to consider where do I want to try and build a career? And you see all this upheaval and you see that, hey, as a foreign worker in the US, I see a lot of these workers getting laid off and having to abruptly leave the country. Well, as one of the people we speak with was saying was you might consider Canada, you might consider ultimate locations like that. Canada did recently eclipse the United States as the most preferred global destination for overseas talent, per some recent surveys. And there's reason to think certainly when we're thinking about this particular class of workers with this certain skillset that, I mean they obviously have other options.

Zoe Thomas: All right, that's our reporter Te-Ping Chen. Thanks for joining us, Te-Ping.

Te-Ping Chen: Thanks for having me.

?