Business: Google tries to unravel red tape costing foreign workers their jobs.
Canada is poised to poach workers, and one frustrated Bay Area tech couple plans to move
Google is urging the federal government to unravel red tape costing foreign workers their jobs, but Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna says processing delays at the root of the problem will likely continue until COVID-19 is under control.
Across the U.S., H-4 visa holders — nearly all Indian women and many in the technology industry — are losing employment to a federal government order requiring them to obtain heavily backlogged fingerprinting services to renew visas and work permits even when they’ve provided their prints before. Others on the H-4 are out of work because work permit processing itself is severely backed up.
The permit for H-4 workers, available since 2015 for people married to H-1B visa holders who are on track for green cards, “has been important to the business community to attract and retain skilled workers,” Google spokesman José Castañeda said in a rare public comment from the Mountain View technology giant on a specific foreign-worker issue. Google declined to say how many of its workers may be affected by the backlogs.
“Unfortunately, the processing delays are disrupting the lives of countless workers and their families,” he said, adding that Google is urging the federal government to eliminate repetitive fingerprinting and “clear the logjam.”
As Pooja Malviya, a Palo Alto software engineer whose work permit expires Thursday, put it, “It’s not like my fingerprints have changed.”
No reliable estimates exist for how many of the nation’s 100,000 H-4 holders with work permits have lost their jobs or are at risk because of the backlogs. The visas and work permits must be renewed every one to three years, depending on the visa status of the spousal
H-1B holder.
Khanna, D-Silicon Valley, said he’s been hearing “a lot” from constituents affected by the problem. “There are many highly skilled women of color who are active contributors to our economy and they’re unable to work,” Khanna said by phone. He is one of five dozen Democratic members of Congress asking President Joe Biden in a letter to extend work permits until fingerprinting delays are resolved.
Work authorization for H-4 holders was meant to fix gender disparities leading to women becoming depressed and isolated in their homes, the letter said. That’s happening again, visa holders said.
“I have started having
anxiety and depression issues,” said Malviya, 31, who came to the U.S. from India in 2016. She worries that her employer, after recently promoting her, will have to put her on unpaid leave indefinitely. She does not want to return to being financially dependent on her husband as she was for her first six months in this country. “I’m highly qualified,” she said. “A right to work is a basic right.”
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration, in a financial crisis after its fee intake plunged amid an immigration crackdown under the administration of former President Donald Trump, has attributed the fingerprinting delays to fallout from the COVID-related shutdown of biometrics collection
at 132 sites across the country between March and June last year. Collection centers began reopening in phases starting in July with social distancing and fewer appointments.
Khanna blamed the Trump administration — which pledged to strip the right to work from H-4 holders but never did — for starting the backlog by slowing processing of foreign-worker visas and work permits. In 2019, the administration added the fingerprinting requirement for H-4 extensions.
Shweta Dutt, a 36-yearold San Jose software engineer on the H-4 who came to the U.S. from India in 2010, lost her job more than a year ago after her work permit renewal application drew a demand for information from Citizenship and Immigration amid a dramatic increase in “requests for evidence” by the Trump administration.
Dutt responded in time, but has heard nothing since, she said. Her employer held her position for three months then gave up and let her go, she said.
Khanna also blamed the coronavirus pandemic for adding delays throughout visa processing. But he stopped short of agreeing with many H-4 workers who say they should not be required to re-submit fingerprints to renew visas or work permits. The government “can’t compromise identity verification,” Khanna said. “You don’t want people abusing the process.”
The Democrats’ letter said some H-4 holders “play tremendously important roles as we continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic,” and Mahima Rani of Fremont fits that profile. A biochemical engineer, her work — until her authorization ran out last month — included developing coronavirus tests
for the Sunnyvale molecular-diagnostics firm where she works. Rani, 34, with a 5-year-old daughter, was promoted this year. Now, she’s on leave and stuck in the fingerprinting backlog, with no idea when she might get back to work, she said.
“It’s affecting me financially, but more than that, career wise,” Rani said. “I want to achieve higher and higher but these are the kinds of thing that come on your way and stop you. It’s really hard. It’s depressing.”
Malviya, the Palo Alto software engineer, said her company is willing to move her to offices in Canada or Ireland. Because all four of her attempts to obtain a lottery-based H-1B visa — intended for jobs requiring specialized skills — have failed, she may be forced to leave her husband behind, she said.
San Jose software engineer Dutt and her husband, an engineer for a major Silicon Valley tech firm, are planning to emigrate to Canada with their four-year-old daughter. “Instead of going through this trauma every three years, we would rather move,” Dutt said.
Canada — which has long sought to divert skilled workers from Silicon Valley, and streamlined immigration processes during the Trump administration — is hungry for talent to feed its booming tech industry. Rana Sarkar, Consul General at the Canadian consulate in San Francisco, declined to comment on the U.S. government’s handling of H-4 visas. However, Sarkar said, “We’re actively looking to recruit talent from around the world and to ensure that of the next million tech migrants, Canada receives its fair share.”