10 people on weathering 12 months of immigration turmoil

Soumi Chanda had spent 13 years building a life in the US when a 2025 layoff put her H-1B status at risk.

Chanda moved from Kolkata to Spokane, Washington, in 2013 for graduate school. She was selected for an H-1B on her first attempt in 2021 — "pure luck," she said — and Amazon later took over her sponsorship, prompting her move to Seattle.

When Amazon laid her off, Chanda had 60 days to find a new sponsor or leave the country. "Sixty days sounded impossible from the start," she said. Her search came as debate intensified over the proposed fee. "Even with Amazon on my résumé, I didn't get a single interview the following month," she said.

When preparing to leave the US, Chanda made her two cats her priority. She spent weeks arranging their international travel and paid roughly $5,000 for paperwork, along with thousands more to break her lease, dispose of her belongings, and secure last-minute travel. In total, she estimates the move cost her $18,000.

Now back in Kolkata, she's still working out whether India will be her long-term home. "There's plenty here I value, and other things, as a feminist, I find harder to reconcile."

Read: She was picked for an H-1B visa on her first try, but got laid off

Luciana Pereyra moved from Peru to the US at 17 on a tennis scholarship. After graduating, she landed a marketing role at Ohio State. Her H-1B was approved in April 2024. She described that time as living in "survival mode," knowing that losing a job could also mean losing her home.

In December 2025, Pereyra said HR contacted her to say that her position would end the following month. She had 60 days to find another employer to sponsor her visa or leave the country. "I treated the job search like the last match of my career," she said.

She focused on university jobs, but the timing worked against her: Many campuses closed for winter break as her grace period began. She said two promising opportunities fell through after prospective employers raised concerns about securing a visa amid the proposed H-1B fees.

Pereyra returned to Peru in March. In Lima, she freelances for a US marketing client, coaches tennis, and is building a small business. She said she would consider moving to the US again, but only if it came with "a real path to permanent residency."

Read: She played college tennis, earned 2 degrees, then lost her H-1B job

Recent changes to US immigration policy have made Mohamed Zeeshan, a green card holder, more concerned about whether immigrants like him can build stable lives in the country.

He's seen relatives and friends consider countries such as Germany and Australia, rather than the US, because of the difficulty of securing jobs and visas after graduation. The instability surrounding H-1B visas — including the proposed $100,000 fee for new applicants — has reinforced his concerns.

Zeeshan self-petitioned for a green card and received it in 2023, enabling him to live in the US without needing employer sponsorship.

In 2025, he started his own consulting firm. Over the past year, Zeeshan said he has watched the immigration landscape become more uncertain.

He still plans to become a US citizen but says that if he had to rely on an H-1B visa today, he doesn't think he'd do it: "When you're on an H-1B here in the US, you're kind of always on tenterhooks."

"You don't know if you're going to be here next month or two months or three months down the line. That's a very difficult position to be in."

His wife is still waiting for her green card, and the couple is holding off on having children until they have more clarity about her status.

Read: He moved to the US on a green card and wouldn't do the same on an H-1B

Vivienne Yang found out she was being laid off from her H-1B-sponsored job while she was on vacation in Japan in October 2024.

She spent the rest of the trip speaking with immigration and labor lawyers, emailing her employer, and trying to enjoy sightseeing with her partner.

Yang, who is from Taiwan, managed to get her employment extended for a few weeks, allowing her to fly back to New York. She then switched to a B-2 tourist visa so she could stay in the US longer and search for another job. She went through over 20 job interviews in the next year, all of them unsuccessful.

So, she decided to pivot.

Yang was accepted into a New York acting program, but her application for a US student visa was denied after she returned to Taiwan to apply for it in December 2025. Her American partner now looks after her two cats in Brooklyn while she remains in Taiwan, living with her family and working as a content creator, business English coach, and freelance consultant.

She has put her US plans on hold. "I don't want to deal with visa issues anytime soon," she said.

"Now I can move on with my life without any regrets because I know I have tried," she said. "I have a better understanding of what living abroad looks like and what American dream looks like in reality."

Read: She lost her job and left behind her American dream — and her cats

Watch: Vivienne Yang on letting go of her American dream

Ananya Joshi's plans to build a career in the US came apart in 2025, when a visa setback and a sudden layoff pushed her to look for a future elsewhere.

Joshi had moved from India to Illinois to pursue a master's degree. After graduating in 2024, she joined a Chicago startup developing cultivated meat as a scientist, working on an F-1 Optional Practical Training, or OPT visa.

She was enjoying the work until she learned that her employer could not complete E-Verify, which employers must use to sponsor an extension of STEM graduates' OPT.

From May through July 2025, Joshi interviewed for jobs around the world. She received offers in Canada and Germany and ultimately chose Germany. "Having gone through so much, I realized I needed that stability," she said.

In January, she moved to Rostock, about three hours north of Berlin, to join another lab-grown-meat startup. These days, Joshi is taking German classes and adjusting to what she describes as a slower work culture. She's also learning to navigate a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend, who remains in the US.

Joshi said she would still like to return to the US, but said, "I can't forget what I went through."

Read: Her American dream hit a visa roadblock; she found a job in Germany

Watch: H-1B visa hopeful had her life upended, moved to Germany

Gu Yichen's path to working in the US began in high school, when he spent a year as an exchange student in Yacolt, a small town in Washington State. He later attended college in the US, interning at Amazon before joining the company full-time after graduation.

With a STEM degree, Gu had three chances to enter the H-1B lottery. He was selected on his third try.

In late 2022, Gu left Amazon for a job at Google, despite his manager's warning that the market was becoming unstable. He was laid off the following month, before he had done "a single day of real work."

Gu faced pressure to find a new employer within the 60-day grace period. Rather than take a stopgap role, he returned to China for a break before ultimately rejoining his former Amazon team in the US on an I-140, an immigration petition that can support a green-card application.

He has since applied for a green card, hoping it will give him "more freedom in both my personal life and my career."

Over the past year, he said the biggest challenge has remained the same: His ability to stay in the US is tied to his job. "I've been thinking what kind of life I really want to live and what is my real interest in life."

Read: Google laid him off a month after hiring him; he was on an H-1B visa

Leaving a six-figure data-scientist job in New York and returning to India in May was not an easy decision for Disha Lamba, but she says being closer to her family — and free from the limits of an employment visa — made it worthwhile.

Lamba moved to the US in 2021 to pursue a master's degree. She later joined CVS Health as a data scientist and learned that she had been selected in the H-1B lottery in March 2026.

By then, however, Lamba had already decided to move home. Though she had a fulfilling job and social life in New York, she struggled with the distance from her parents.

The prospect of managing an H-1B long-term reinforced her decision. Lamba was concerned about the difficulty of obtaining visa stamps to travel, as well as the limits the visa can place on changing employers, taking a career break, or pursuing additional income.

"Anything comes with its pros and cons. H-1B has its pros but also has its cons. I wasn't OK with the cons of being in these restrictions," she said.

After resigning, Lamba moved back to live with her parents and brother. She took a two-month career break and secured a short-term contract role, but she's still looking for a permanent job. Nonetheless, she's still happy about her decision.

"Every moment when I get to hug my parents, that's when I realize, no, this was all worth it," she said.

Read: She moved back to India to be near family and leave H-1B limits behind

After three failed attempts to obtain an H-1B visa, Sunjana Ramana is reinventing her "American Dream."

Ramana moved from Hyderabad, India, to New York in 2021 for her master's degree. After graduating in 2023, she joined a global insurance company. Her employer entered her in the H-1B lottery in 2023, 2024, and 2025. She was not selected.

When her work authorization ended in early 2026, Ramana had to leave the US.

"When I didn't get the visa, I was really, really clueless. I thought that was the end of everything that I had built for three years," she said, adding, "but I realized just a couple of months later that there are so many additional options that I didn't know existed."

Instead of returning to India, Ramana secured a 2-year UK visa that is not tied to one employer. She chose London as her base, where she could pursue the entrepreneurship she had wanted to explore in the US.

Ramana was accepted into Antler's founder-in-residence program and spent two months building Flax, a two-person tech company that helps AI founders and builders. In May, she moved into a product-management role in fintech.

"I want to go back and tell my younger self not to associate the 'dream' with America or a country for that matter, because it doesn't matter where you are. The dream should be aligned to you and your goals."

Read: She left the US when she didn't get an H-1B visa. Now, she's living a new dream.

An H-1B selection brought immediate relief for Madhur Mehta this year, but it has not resolved the uncertainty that shapes his and his fiancée's plans in the US.

Mehta moved to the US in 2021, earned a master's degree in 2023, and was eligible for three years of student work authorization. Amazon offered him both a job and sponsorship.

He joined the company in 2025 as a program manager.

But over the past year, while the company was trying to get him an H-1B, Mehta grew concerned about changes to the lottery. He began exploring backup plans for his US life, including an EB-1A visa and opportunities in Canada and Australia.

He learned he was selected for an H-1B in March, potentially giving him the chance to work and remain in the US for another three years.

"It was a big relief," he said, adding, "It's like someone has taken a 100-pound load off your mind," he said.

Mehta's fiancée, who is also from India, has one remaining chance in the H-1B lottery before her work authorization expires.

"It's hard, you know, obviously you can't plan," Mehta said, adding, "unless we are both very clear on what our visa status is."

Read: He got an H-1B visa, but uncertainty makes it hard to plan his future

Shreya Mishra Reddy left the US in January after not being selected for an H-1B visa. Her plan was to leave the country and keep applying for US jobs from abroad.

That plan, however, started to feel unrealistic after the Trump administration proposed the $100,000 fee on some H-1B applicants.

Though the fee has been challenged in court and is not being enforced, she said the uncertainty changed her mind: "I've decided not to pursue H-1B or any role in the US right now."

Reddy had moved to the US in 2021 for a master's degree in engineering management at Duke University. After graduating, she was hired by Visa, but her student work authorization expired before she could secure an H-1B visa.

She's now in Toronto with her husband on a tourist visa and weighing whether to base herself in Canada or India. During a career break, Reddy has been writing a fiction book and building a handloom brand while exploring fintech roles.

In March, Reddy was accepted into a master's program in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She decided not to attend, citing uncertainty around student visas and the US job market.

She said she's optimistic about her future and wishes she'd been more open to opportunities in other countries earlier, rather than banking everything on the US.

"I was thinking that H-1B would pan out for me, it didn't, and it's something that I definitely regret."

Read: She gave up on H-1B amid $100K fee; now she's weighing Canada or India

Watch: Why an H-1B visa hopeful decided to give up on work in the US

Read: I changed course on my H-1B plans because of the proposed $100,000 fee. Why I'm optimistic about my life outside the US.

Watch: Why an H-1B visa hopeful decided to give up on work in the US