So I am an Indian in the US on an H1b. Before you start thinking that I am stealing jobs from American workers, I assure you I am not. I am not your enemy.
- I came into the country legally. I have paid my taxes and everything for the last 8 years. I have maintained my legal visa status for 8 years now. I have not overstayed my visa even by a single day.
- I have only gotten two speeding tickets so far. Which I have paid off completely. I have not broken any major laws.
- I got my masters here in America from a top 30 university and I was recruited directly from college. I did not get my jobs through any consultancies or anything. My first job out of college was paying me 150K in an area where my rent was 600$. I assure you I am not displacing any American workers. I am just relatively better at software engineering than the average person.
- Before accepting any position, I always check levels.fyi and glassdoor to make sure these companies are paying me at least the median salary for these roles. Because of this I am confident that I am not getting paid less than any of my American co-workers.
Now at my current job, I had an absolute asshole racist manager. He would say things like “You Indians are scammers, you Indians are toxic people”. “Junior engineers do better job than you.” “Nobody likes you, nobody wants to work with you”. Some of this stuff was said in a recorded meeting and I filled a complaint with the HR and they absolutely did nothing to him. It was around this time, I found out that my dad beats my mom. I am 8000 miles away from home. I was feeling helpless. I was very worried about my mom.
After months of interviewing, I finally found a job. I went to a bar to celebrate. I had too much to drink. I started crying and stuff. I went to the nearby pier with the intention of committing a suicide. I thought before I commit a suicide, I will expose my manager and wrote some really nasty things in my company's internal slack channel. Someone from the HR reached out to me that night and talked me out of committing a suicide.
They did not fire me for a month. They were paying me salary and put me on a paid vacation time. In this time the background check at the new company cleared and they started the visa transfer process.
Last Friday I was fired. There is about a month left on my visa transfer process, I get 2 months of unemployment time on my visa. I have been telling these new people that I will be quitting my job early. Last Friday I informed the lawyer firm that was handling my visa transfer process that Friday was my last working day. They have not responded back to me yet.
If the lawyer firm or my recruiter asks me if I was fired what should I tell them? How should I handle this situation?