Dream jobs brought them to Silicon Valley. Now they’re laid off and in an ‘impossible’ situation

Layoffs have made a precarious situation for noncitizens even worse, forcing them to play a game of chance to stay in the US

Less than a year ago, K was working with a US-based team at Amazon from one of the e-commerce giant's many international outposts in east Asia. While the distance between himself and those on his team had made his role tricky, he was at a stable job, at a company in his home country where labor laws protected workers from layoffs and sudden terminations.

To make it easier for him and his team to work together, Amazon offered him a role in the US and said it would sponsor his L visa - a temporary worker visa available to employees of US-based companies who transfer from an international office. Though that meant uprooting his family, including his children who did not speak English, K took the job, confident in the importance of his department, the Amazon's devices team, to the company.