> and in some cases it'd mean deportation.

I completely understand the shittiness of this issue and I'm not from a developed country, but I mean, this is the reality of a temporary work visa, no?

I might be more pessimist/realist, but until I receive a permanent residency visa, I'd treat everything as temporary, ready to move back in a couple days notice.

In (some?) other countries work visas are not tied to employer but rather job category, and the length of time waiting for permanent residency is usually 2 years. In the US an H1B can be transferred once you reach the portability threshold if you can find another employer, and depending on the country of origin you can be waiting for permanent residency (green card, not citizenship) for 2 decades. An L1B is tied to an employer and you're effectively illegally in the country as soon as you're laid off. In practice the government gracefully gives you a week to completely uproot your life and get the hell out. I was lucky, I went from arriving in the country to receiving citizenship in ~10 years, but the 4 years trying to get permanent residency were the most stressful of my life, and being spared by layoffs did little to help. Even being privileged knowing you can go elsewhere, and fully open eyed about the situation, it still sucks.

Unfortunately, if you are a chinese or indian citizen on an h1b the wait time for a green card is outrageously long. You can't really live in a "ready to move back in a couple days notice" state for decades. People buy homes, getting married, and have kids.

Well there are temporary work visas out there in various countries that are fixed-term, e.g. a visa holder is entitled to stay in the country for 2 years. If they lose their job they're still entitled to stay for the remainder of the term, and have plenty of time to find other work (which doesn't require any sponsorship). Examples of this include the J-1 visa in the US which is explicitly a 2-year inextensible cultural exchange visa that lets you work whatever job you want.

The thing that makes the H-1B and visas like it insecure is their being tied to employer sponsorship. I don't think that's inherently unfair - the whole point of the visa is to bring in skilled workers in valuable industries.

What I do think is shitty about the H-1B in particular is just how short the grace period is to find a new sponsor. 60 days is a tight schedule even for a skilled worker in a good market, and layoffs don't tend to happen in good markets. It definitely opens up visa holders to exploitation by employers, and temporary downturns can end up kicking out a lot of valuable people.

There are other countries with skilled worker visas with more generous grace periods - e.g. Ireland's Critical Skills Employment Permit allows you 6 months to find a new job if you're laid off. I don't see the problem with that if the visa holder can support themselves financially over that timeframe.

In the US there's an H-1B Visa program that allows skilled workers to come over as a path to citizenship. However the program is fraught with all manner of requirements like company sponsorship. Changing jobs under the H-1B program results in your journey to citizenship being reset, and current bureaucracy and politics have resulted in that journey taking upwards of a decade or more.

As a result of policy, H-1B workers will take substandard pay, abuse, and burdens to maintain a job with a company willing to sponsor them until they can get their Green Card. This creates a from of indentured servitude.

The knock on affect is that it lowers wages for everyone because there's a vast pool of skilled workers willing to accept lower pay from a company willing to maintain sponsorship of them for 10+ years.

Imagine on year 9 you get laid off, now your indentured servitude got extended another 10 years if you can find a new sponsor.

Tying healthcare to employment is a uniquely stupid idea.

I'd be fine with getting money for healthcare from my employer (especially if it was in a special pre-tax account, like a 401k that I could then use to purchase healthcare), but my being tied to whatever 2-3 plan options the head of HR and company president were wined and dined for seems a little crazy to me.

401ks are also dumb. Just set the IRA cap higher. Why do I need a whole bureaucratic system to decide I'm worthy of 18k of tax shelter instead of 6k?

Or get rid of tax shelters. Everyone I know who's broke is too broke to be buying stocks anyway. I can afford some tax.

Not only because sick people might be too sick to work since they’re sick

It is the case in much of EU also: In Germany most of the healthcare is covered by the employer. In Denmark, where I reside, you get an extra coverage with most (tech-)employments that provides access you wouldn't have otherwise.

Yes, the employers pay, but you do not lose your healthcare immediately after being fired. The state provides it for you as part of the social security net. I don't know specifically about Germany or Denmark, but I suppose it's the same across the EU.

In France you can keep the insurance you used to have from the employer who fired you, but you'll have to pay for it out of pocket. I don't know whether you'll also keep the same price or if it'll be adjusted up (since you presumably don't benefit from whatever deal the employer managed to get).

If you don't have this insurance (mutuelle), the State does provide the social security (it's provided either way, the mutuelle is on top of this).

But this is basic social security. If you're in a car crash or something, you're mostly covered. If you need work done on your teeth, you're on your own.

When I needed to spend the night in a hospital after breaking my wrist, basic social security covered the ambulance and the actual procedure of putting my arm back together, but had I not had a mutuelle, I would've been on the hook for the hospital stay.

It's the same in the UK. But the interest difference with the IS I've noticed is the effect of price anchoring: because everyone has a provider of last resort, the private providers compete on features and price. IIRC my employer payed ~100gbp for Bupa, while my current employer in the US pays ten times that for my current provider.

I stayed a few times at the hospital and the price was something like 20€/day. Quite affordable, especially that the price is decreasing when the stay is longer.

It may be a bit more (would need to dig the bill but it was of that order of magnitude) and I am writing this do that a non-EU person does not get the idea that it was 1000€ a day or something.

> covered by the employer

Only 50%, no?

Also, in Germany the cost of insurance is tied to income. So I went from the bizarre situation where I went from paying ~500€ while employed to less than 200€ now that my business is not generating substantial revenue.

It is the bizarre idea of socialized healthcare, were all (publicly insured) Germans share the costs and pay according to their ability to do so, while even poor people (or founders like you) can afford to have all necessary procedures done without going bankrupt.

I don't mind socialized healthcare, but this is what taxes are for. Having an "insurance" system where the premium people pay is not related to actuarial risk is indeed bizarre.

You are required to pay them, everyone gets (essentially) the same, everyone pays (essentially) the same, both of which the government controls.

We are (again essentially) talking about taxes, just calling it social insurance.

Cobra enables continued healthcare, many states have unemployment benefits, and I believe in all cases (?) you have some number of days to get a new visa sponsor.

The way you speak of all of these things just makes it obvious you've never been laid off and in the position to need to utilize these things. COBRA lets you keep your existing plan, but you pay for the entire premium. In most cases this is $1000-2000 per month. For someone in survival mode and needing to find where to cut costs, 2k per month could be more than their rent.

The max unemployment benefits for any state is not going to cover much of anything, you better have savings to fall back on.

And for those on H1B, there is a 60 day grace period. Maybe in 2021-2022 it was extremely easy, but today? A lot of people will be lucky to get through a full interview loop in that time.

I haven’t been laid off, you’re right. I’m just saying the GP made lots of absolute claims that aren’t absolutely true. Of course many European countries have bigger and better safety nets than the US, but it’s not like the US has none.

Most of the world (which isn’t the U.S. or Europe) is even worse.

Looks like you never actually had to pay for COBRA out of pocket. It's not financially feasible for the large majority of people, especially those who didn't have to pay out of pocket for their coverage previously. A single person can be ~$800USD, and if you want to cover dependents in your family, at least double it.

My partner is losing their healthcare very soon and it's cheaper to pay out of pocket for regular doctors and prescriptions than pay for COBRA. You basically have to be in the hospital for COBRA to be worth it.

My family coverage was $1900.

Mine was going to be around $2200/month. Thankfully my company paid for the first 6 months following the layoff.

Mine covered 4 months. I'm glad I was able to find another job before that ran out.

Paying one's own insurance when you don't know how long you'll have no income is outrageously expensive. Last time I changed jobs I just went without because the COBRA offering was so expensive.

I have no clue how unemployment works. I don't think I've ever paid into it?

if you’ve worked a w2 job in the US you’ve paid into it indirectly —your employer pays it on your behalf.

You should look up what max unemployment benefit payments are for your state, because they probably won't cover rent/mortgage if you live in any moderate CoL area.

You need to have some serious savings to pay out the monthly cost of COBRA. The last time I was in this position, it was ~$1,800/month to cover my family.