The Department of Homeland Security has released the text of its proposed rule eliminating the 60-day grace period for employment-based nonimmigrants. The proposal goes on public inspection ahead of formal publication in the Federal Register on September 11, 2026, which starts a 60-day public comment period. The rule cleared White House review in late August; what is new now is the actual text, DHS’s justification, and the agency’s own estimate of who it affects.
The grace period at issue lets a worker whose employment ends early remain in the United States for up to 60 days — or until the end of their authorized validity period, whichever is shorter — to find a new employer, change status, or depart. It was created by regulation in 2016 and took effect in 2017. Before that, no such period existed. The proposal would remove it for workers in E-1, E-2, E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, L-1, O-1 and TN status, along with their dependents.
DHS frames the change as restoring a “direct relationship” between immigration status and employment, and cites administrative burden: the agency says USCIS had to assess grace period applicability in more than 1.9 million petitions between 2018 and May 2026. “By removing the up to 60-day discretionary grace period, as this rule proposes, aliens in these nonimmigrant classifications would know with certainty that they are required to depart the United States,” the department wrote.
The numbers DHS puts on the rule are worth reading closely, because they cut against its framing as a minor administrative fix. The agency estimates that roughly 3,795 workers a year actually rely on the grace period, nearly all of them H-1B holders — a small population. But it also acknowledges that more than 208,000 spouses and children hold status that derives from these workers, and dependents lose the grace period on the same terms. A layoff that today starts a two-month clock would instead put an entire family out of status at once. Adam Klein, a former DHS official, put the practical effect bluntly: someone who loses a job on Friday could be expected to leave the country beginning Saturday.
Nothing changes yet. The current 60-day grace period stays in effect throughout the rulemaking, and DHS must review comments before it can issue a final rule — a process that typically takes months and can be challenged in court afterward. The comment period closes in mid-November, and comments from affected workers and employers are part of the record DHS must respond to. For anyone in one of the listed categories, the planning implication is not panic but margin: if this is finalized, the window to line up a transfer or a change of status after a job ends could be zero, which makes having a current resume, an employer willing to file quickly, and an understanding of your I-94 expiration considerably more valuable than it is today.
Need help with your immigration petition? Visit QuickFiling.us for AI-guided NIW and EB-1A petition preparation.
Source: X (Twitter) @cojobrien