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Laid off on H-1B, Indian man took up cleaning job to survive in the US: ‘Money ran out faster than I thought’
After losing his US job and running out of savings, Vinay Maheshwari cleaned a hostel to survive before returning home and authoring a book.
Vinay Maheshwari’s carefully-structured life in the United States was upended with just one call. Sometime last year, while he was working in Philadelphia on a H-1B visa, Maheshwari received a call from his manager informing him that he was being laid off.
Maheshwari, who is originally from Indore in Madhya Pradesh, had spent years in the US — first as a student and then as a corporate employee. The 15-minute phone call brought an abrupt end to years of hard work.
The H-1B anxiety
Working in the US on an H-1B visa, the Indian man had just 60 days to look for a new job or face the prospect of returning to India.
“On a work visa, a layoff isn’t just losing a job. You get 60 days. Find someone to sponsor you or leave the country,” he told NRI Pulse.
Maheshwari described the two months following his layoff as the most anxiety-ridden and stressful period of his life. He applied to hundreds of positions, but could not land a job in the United States.
“Those two months were the most uncertain and stressful of my life. Every single day felt like sitting next to a ticking time bomb. I applied everywhere. Hundreds of places. Recruiters would be interested, then they’d ask about work authorization, and after that, nothing. Not even a rejection. Just silence,” he said.
(Also read: H-1B techie fired over call during India visit to meet critically ill father)
Maheshwari’s experience of working and losing a job in the US inspired the story of his recently-released book, Rerouted.
After returning to India at the end of last year, he began to notice many similar cases. While Reddit was full of stories about Indians getting laid off on H-1B, these incidents did not find a reflection in the larger discourse surrounding immigration.
Maheshwari’s book is an attempt to address the gap — “Everyone talks about going. Nobody talks about coming back,” he told NRI Pulse.
“I was holding a mop”
Speaking to the publication, he also recounted how he took up a temporary cleaning job in the US as his savings ran out.
The Indore native said that he asked his manager if he could have more time before his employment came to an end. “I asked if I could get a little more time. Another month. A few weeks. Anything. The answer was no. That’s the part that stayed with me. I wasn’t even angry. Just empty,” he recalled.
When two months of applying for jobs bore no fruit, Maheshwari applied for a B1/B2 visitor visa so he could “stay a little longer” in the US.
At this point, he also realised that he was quickly running out of savings to sustain himself.
“Money ran out faster than I expected,” he admitted.
In order to continue staying in the US, he ended up doing a work trade at a hostel in Asheville, North Carolina.
In exchange for room and board, he had to clean rooms and make the bed – general housekeeping that was a far cry from the professional work he was doing just two months ago.
“A few months before that, my company was putting me up in Marriotts for work trips. Now I was holding a mop,” he said in a piece for American Kahani.
Ironically enough, the time he spent at the North Carolina hostel was a refreshing change for Maheshwari.
“Funny thing is, those turned out to be some of the better months I’ve had. The people at that hostel had no idea what an H-1B was. Nobody asked about my work authorization or my notice period. They asked where I was from and what India was like,” he recalled. “Travellers passing through, people who’d quit their jobs, people figuring things out. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t a visa status with a countdown attached to me.”
Today, Maheshwari is back in India. He may not have everything figured out, but he is getting there
