Information Week interviews Loren Locke about the IT workforce crisis and immigration's role in addressing talent shortages.
From the Article
"These aren't undocumented immigrants, but the government is treating them as though they are unwanted."
"People can't travel to their home countries. They have no assurance that they will continue to live and work in the US."
"These are people who, in some cases, have been in the US workforce for decades."
Locke Immigration Law's Take
The Information Week piece is dense with the specific mechanisms that make 2025–2026 different from prior immigration-restriction cycles. H-1B registrations down 27% in FY 2025 and 54% from FY 2024; processing fees increased from $10 to $215 per submission; new documentation requirements (education verification, biometric data, support letters); in-person interviews reinstated for most categories with weeks-to-months scheduling delays. The single most operationally consequential change — and the one most easily missed — is the elimination of the 60-day grace period for H-1B workers laid off or changing jobs. Where these workers used to have two months to find a new sponsoring employer, they are now referred directly to immigration court.
Loren's framing in the article is precise: these are workers in full compliance with the law, often with decades of US tenure, families, homes, and US-citizen children. The treatment they're receiving doesn't reflect undocumented status — it reflects a posture shift. For IT departments, that means the operational model that assumed an H-1B holder could be moved between roles, between projects, or between layoff and rehire with normal HR latency no longer holds. A laid-off H-1B without immediate authorization is now a removal-proceeding risk on a 0–60-day timeline.
The retention story IDC quantifies — 90% of organizations facing IT skills crisis pain, $5.5T in losses — is the macro frame. The micro frame is that the executive in the article who boosted international IT retention by a third through early green-card sponsorship isn't running a special program. He's running the only program that survives the policy environment. For senior international IT workers without an employer-sponsored green-card path in motion, EB-1A and NIW self-petitions become the practical alternative; the cases that succeed are usually built two to three years before they file.
Key Takeaways
- The single most operationally consequential 2025 change is the elimination of the 60-day grace period for laid-off or job-changing H-1B workers — they are now referred to immigration court rather than given two months to transition.
- H-1B registrations are down 27% in FY 2025 and 54% from FY 2024 baseline; processing fees jumped from $10 to $215 per submission.
- For IT departments, the operational implication is that H-1B workers can no longer be moved between roles, projects, or layoff-to-rehire windows with normal HR latency.
- Early employer-sponsored green-card filing is now the most reliable retention mechanism for senior international IT workers — the executive in the article who boosted retention by a third isn't running a special program.
- For workers whose employer doesn't sponsor, EB-1A and NIW self-petitions become the practical fallback; the strongest cases are built 2–3 years before they file.