Decision to end H4 work permit in 3 months: US

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration expects to revoke in three months a rule allowing spouses of certain H-1B visa holders to work in the US, most of whom are from India.

This Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told a federal court on Friday that its intention to cancel the rule remains in place and that it “anticipates that the rule (revoking work authorisation for H-4 visa holders) will be submitted to OMB within three months”. OMB, the office of management and budget, oversees US federal budget and performance of federal agencies.

The DHS said it had made “solid and swift progress in proposing to remove from its regulations certain H-4 spouses of H-1B non-immigrants as a class of aliens eligible for employment authorisation”.

The court filing came in a case brought by Save Jobs USA, a group of people who claim to have been displaced by H-1B workers. The case was filed before President Donald Trump took office.

H-4 EAD (employment authorization document) allows spouses of H-1B visa holders who have been cleared for Green Cards, but have not received them yet, to work, by a rule issued by the Obama administration in 2015.

The main beneficiaries of the rule have been spouses of H-1B visa holders from India — 93% of the 126,853 H-4 applications approved till December 2017, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.

Indians have to wait the longest for employment-based Green Card (permanent residency) because of a massive pileup of backlogged cases caused by a rule that limits these visas to a 7% country cap. There are currently 306,601 people from India in that queue and the wait time can be up to 100 years. H-4 EAD was intended to help these families by allowing their spouses to work until they get Green Cards.