The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has published a proposed rule that would eliminate the sixty-day grace period currently afforded to certain nonimmigrant visa holders.
The grace period currently allows visa holders to remain in the United States for up to sixty days after separation from employment, typically used to pursue new jobs or immigration options.
According to the proposal’s preamble, the current “60-day discretionary grace period disconnects the alien’s lawful status from the very basis of eligibility under these employment-based nonimmigrant classifications.”
USCIS further maintains that eliminating the grace period eases its administrative burden, and public comments on the proposal are due on or before November 10, 2026.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division also released several new opinion letters this week, offering fresh guidance on the application of the Fair Labor Standards Act to real workplace situations.
One letter concluded that even if employees spend up to fourteen minutes walking to a break area, the remaining forty-six minutes of a sixty-minute lunch break still constitute a bona fide, non-compensable meal period.
A second letter addressed whether employees at a nonprofit that breeds and trains service dogs can also volunteer as puppy raisers without triggering additional compensation obligations under the FLSA.
The letter found that dog trainers whose paid duties involve training and socialising dogs cannot volunteer as puppy raisers without payment, since “the volunteer hours are part of the employment relationship and must be counted as hours worked for FLSA purposes as long as they qualify as compensable worktime under the FLSA.”
A third letter addressed tip pools, concluding that a supervisor “is prohibited from receiving any portion of tips from other employees — even if he or she also works bartending shifts alongside other employees or assists other employees performing tipped work.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed Executive Order No. 20 on September 3, 2026, establishing the Mayor’s Office of Worker Power to coordinate agency enforcement and promote workers’ rights across the city.
The order instructs agencies to “prioritise the investigation of employers and entities with a history of labor violations or other indicators of poor compliance with labor standards, with a particular focus on such employers that have large numbers of workers with low wages.”
The Mayor’s Office of Worker Power will be overseen by Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su, who previously served as Acting Secretary of Labor in the Biden Administration.
A Teamsters union affiliate in Kansas this week endorsed Republican Senator Roger Marshall in his reelection bid, citing his cosponsorship of union-friendly legislation including the Faster Labor Contracts Act, the Warehouse Worker Protection Act, and the Railway Safety Act.
Marshall currently serves on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and a successful reelection could position him as one of the committee’s highest-ranking Republicans in the next Congress.
This week also marks twenty-five years since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which killed 2,977 people and prompted Congress to pass Joint Resolution 61 condemning the attacks and vowing a “war against international terrorism.”