Work ban is delayed for H1B spouses

Spouses of H1B visa holders have another temporary reprieve from the government’s attempts to ban them from working in the United States.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a letter this week that it will take at least until spring 2020 for publication of a proposed rule to remove H1B spouses from those eligible to work. Even that time frame is “aspirational,” said the letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

The proposed rule change has gone through several other delays. Most recently, the government had aimed for a deadline of this past May.

The spouses, who are largely women, with some 93% from India according to a University of Tennessee study, hold visas called H4s. A disproportionate number live in the Bay Area, where technology companies heavily rely on H1B visa holders for technical jobs.

“We’re chasing away talent if we make it more difficult for (H1B visa holders) to bring spouses and have them work,” said Peter LeroeMuñoz, vice president of technology and innovation policy at Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which advocates on behalf of local companies.

Spouses of H1B skilledvisa holders who are on track for green cards got authorization to work in 2015 thanks to a new rule from the Obama administration. About 100,000 have applied for work permits.

The Trump administration wants to revoke that permission. The government has held eight meetings with interested parties about the ban’s potential impact, the letter said.

Before the work permits were available, some H4 visa holders felt trapped, bored and even depressed, some have said in previous interviews with The Chronicle. Many of them are as highly educated and as skilled as their spouses who qualified for H1B visas. They embraced the ability to join the workforce, particularly in the Bay Area where it often takes two incomes to make ends meet.

Now with the threat of a ban looming — as it has for two years — the spouses face a return to forced unemployment. Even finding a job can be harder as employers are aware that their work authorization may be shortlived.

Opponents of H4 work authorization, such as the group Save Jobs USA, say the spouses are taking jobs that could be filled by Americans.

“Some U.S. workers would benefit from this proposed rule by having a better chance at obtaining jobs that some of the population of the H4 workers currently hold,” the Department of Homeland Security wrote in defense of banning the work permission.