Slain Indian techie’s widow gets work visa
Her residency was tied to marriage
Washington, Sept. 14: An Indian woman, who lost her residency rights in the US following the murder of her techie husband in a suspected hate crime, can stay in the country for now after an influential lawmaker helped her get a temporary work visa.
Sunayana Dumala, whose 32-year-old husband Srinivas Kuchibhotla was killed at a Kansas bar in February, fell out of status because her permission to reside in the US was tied to Kuchibhotla through marriage, Congressman Kevin Yoder was quoted as saying by the NBC News.
“We’re not going to let this happen to Sunayana,” Yoder said on twitter. Ms Dumala managed to regain her residency status, which she had lost after the killing of her husband.
Mr Kuchibhotla, an aviation systems engineer and programmes manager at GPS maker Garmin, was in the US on a temporary non-immigrant H-1B visa, granted to highly skilled workers.
“When Sunayana lost her status, to me it really added insult to injury,” Mr Yoder told NBC news.
Mr Yoder later helped her get a temporary work visa of her own.
“It would have been a real tragedy, on top of the initial tragedy she suffered, to attend her husband’s funeral in India and then be locked out of the US because of it,” Yoder was quoted as saying by The New York Times. In a Facebook post, Mr Yoder said Ms Dumala lost her husband and Grill in Olathe — a senseless murder no one should ever have to endure.