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The New Year hasn’t brought much cheer to thousands of Indians working in the US. Dependent spouses of H-1B visa holders, who are on H4 visas, have their fingers crossed as they tensely await a verdict on whether they will be allowed to work in the US or not.The Trump administration is bent on striking down a rule brought in by the previous Barack Obama administration that allowed H4 visa holders to work. The US Department of Justice has said that by the spring of 2020, H4 spouses will lose the right to work. The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, is finalising a proposal to remove H4 dependent spouses from the category of non-immigrant visa holders eligible to work.
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Neha Mahajan, a media professional in New Jersey, is among the more than 1 lakh Indian women granted the right to work in the US. Today, she is worried. Like thousands of others, she received her employment authorisation document or EAD in 2016 after the Obama administration allowed H4 spouses, in some categories, to work through an executive order in 2015. She got a job in 2016 itself but now faces the possibility of becoming unemployed again. (Disclaimer: Mahajan works with Radio Mirchi USA, owned by a subsidiary of the Times Group, which publishes ET Magazine.)Last November, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit observed that the Obama-era regulation, which allowed H4 visa holders to have EAD, increased the competition for US-born tech workers. The case is now back in a lower district court, where it was originally filed. Many are concerned that the case would eventually go in favour of Save Jobs USA, a group of Americans who claim they lost their jobs to H-1B and H4 workers.”With the Department of Homeland Security setting Spring 2020 as the time frame to bring in rules, and several influential organisations closely following the case, it is likely that the judgment will be given soon,” says Sudhir Shah, a Mumbai based immigration attorney.
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The situation looks grim for Indians, says Shah, with the Trump administration taking an increasingly rigid stand on H-1B visa applications over the last couple of months. The rate of denial of H-1B visas by US Citizenship & Immigration Services or USCIS has been rising over the last several months.In the third quarter of financial year 2019, the rate of denials rose to 24% for new H1B petitions for new employment compared with 6% for the corresponding period in 2015, according to National Foundation for American Policy. For thousands of Indian families in the US, the revocation of the right to work for H4 visa holders will be a big blow as it will hit the family’s income and impact everything from children’s education to home mortgage payments.
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“For skilled Indian professionals working overseas, it is important to have more earning heads than dependents,” says Netra Chavan, an immigration consultant. Chavan, who lives in Silicon Valley, too was on an H4 dependent visa for 11 years before getting her green card. She feels the decision of the Trump administration to go back on the H4 employment privilege will make life more difficult for families already suffering because of the huge green card backlog.”If the US, a country which has so many immigrants, returns to old H4 visa norms, it will keep several young, talented, experienced and eligible candidates away from employment. They will have to sit at home for what could be decades for a green card. This law will not only keep H4 visa holders from entering the American workforce but also from working remotely for non-US firms.” Besides, struggle will be greater for women who are dependent spouses of H-1B visa holders and become victims of domestic violence.
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“Indians on H1-B and their dependent spouses face the longest backlogs to get green cards and get trapped in this situation, sometimes for decades. The H4 EAD often came as a relief for women trying to escape an abusive marriage. They could work and live independently even if unable to leave the US or seek divorce because that could result in deportation,” says Amy Bhatt, associate professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at University of Maryland, Baltimore.Even more traumatic is the case of Bobby Sowjanya, whose husband Shiva Chalapati Raju, an H-1B visa holder, died in November 2019.Sowjanya, as a dependent spouse, was rendered out-of-visa status and had to leave the US even though her husband had filed a petition for a green card. Suhas Khamgaonkar went through a similar trauma. In 2015, when her husband died of a heart attack in Chicago, she was not ready to move back to India because her green card petition was in process and so was her H4 EAD. After working for three years, Khamgaonkar had to leave the US in April 2019 when the visa expired and USCIS refused to grant an extension. She will now have to wait for her green card application to be current, which may take years. “I am not sure if I will even be granted a visitor visa for the US to meet my only daughter,” she says.
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