US LIKELY TO STOP SPOUSES OF H1B VISA HOLDERS FROM WORKING
AMERICAN DREAM IN JEOPARDY Move to hit thousands of Indians who are on H1B visas. More than 41,000 H1B spouses got work permits in 2016
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration plans to roll back an Obama-era rule that allows spouses of H-1B visa holders to work in the US, a move that could impact thousands of Indian nationals and their families.
Since 2015, the spouses of holders of H-1B visas, have been allowed to work in the US on H-4 dependent visas. Indians account for almost 70% of the 85,000 non-immigrant, temporary work visas issued by the US every year.
The department of homeland security (DHS), which has proposed the change, said its action was in light of President Donald Trump’s executive order 13788 of April on “Buy American and Hire American”. The change is expected to be introduced in 2018.
“On February 25, 2015, DHS published a final rule extending eligibility for employment authorization to certain H-4 dependent spouses of H-1B nonimmigrants who are seeking employment-based lawful per- manent resident (LPR) status,” the department said in a statement on Thursday.
“DHS is proposing to remove from its regulations certain H-4 spouses of H-1B nonimmigrants as a class of aliens eligible for employment authorization,” it said.
Besides scrapping the rule allowing spouses to work, the DHS statement mentioned plans for other changes in the H-1B visa programme, including revising the list of occupations eligible for the scheme “to increase focus on truly obtaining the best and brightest foreign nationals”.
Most Indian H-1B visa holders are employed by the tech sector, including American firms such as Microsoft and Google and Indian firms based in the US such as TCS and Infosys.
The Trump administration’s proposed changes to the H-1B visa programme have emerged as an irritant in India-US relations.
During a visit to the US in October, finance minister Arun Jaitley told his American interlocutors that Indians coming to America on H-1B visas are high quality professionals and not “illegal economic migrants”, and their position must thus be considered “appropriately” in future policy decisions.
India’s concerns about changes in non-immigrant visa regimes were conveyed by Jaitley to treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and commerce secretary Wilbur Ross. “These are very high quality, highly paid professionals. They have contributed immensely to the US economy, therefore they add value to the US economy,” Jaitley told reporters at the time.
The rule allowing spouses to work on H-4 visas has already been challenged in court by Save Jobs USA, which said in a April 2015 lawsuit that it threatens American jobs. Attorney general Jeff Sessions too has said the rule “hurts American workers”.
In 2016, more than 41,000 holders of H-4 visas were given authorisation to work, while the figure till June this year was more than 36,000.
The Trump administration has also toughened the renewal process for H-1B visas, which are valid for three years and can be renewed for three more years.