US is letting spouses of H-1B visa holders work, in good news for Indian techies
Indian citizens are among the largest groups of H-1B visa recipients.
In what may turn out to be a big relief for Indian and other foreign workers in the US, a judge has ruled that spouses of H-1B visa holders can work in the United States.
The decision to allow spouses of H-1B visa holders to work in the US will be a great help for those who have lost their jobs due to the mass layoffs in tech companies in the last few months.
The US has so far issued nearly 1,00,000 work authorizations to spouses of H-1B workers, a significantly large number of whom are Indians, reported PTI.
What happened
The judgment was given by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan as she dismissed a lawsuit filed by Save Jobs USA. The organisation had approached the court to dismiss the Obama-era regulation that gave employment authorization cards to spouses of certain categories of H-1B visa holders.
Major tech companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon opposed the lawsuit.
What did the court say?
The court said the primary contention of Save Jobs USA is that Congress has never granted the Department of Homeland Security authority to allow foreign nationals, like H-4 visa-holders, to work during their stay in the United States. But that contention runs headlong into the text of the Immigration and Nationality Act, decades of executive-branch practice, and both explicit and implicit Congressional ratification of that practice, the judge said.
Judge Chutkan wrote that Congress has knowingly empowered the US Government to authorize employment as a permissible condition of an H-4 spouse's stay in the United States.
H-1B visas and the controversy over it
The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations. The visa program was established to help US companies hire highly skilled foreign workers for jobs that they are unable to fill with US workers. The H-1B visa is valid for up to three years, and can be extended for up to six years.
Indian citizens are among the largest groups of H-1B visa recipients. The US approved 407,071 H-1B petitions in 2021 and 301,616 of them - almost 74.1 percent - were for Indian workers, according to a report released by the Department of Homeland Security.
Until recently, H1B spouses were not allowed to work in the US, and it often placed a financial burden on families.
The H-1B visa program has also been subject to controversy and criticism as many in the country believe that hiring foreign workers at lower wages displaces American workers.
Big relief for Indian techies
Thousands of Indian IT professionals in the US have lost their jobs due to the recent layoffs at companies like Google, Microsoft Facebook and Amazon. They were struggling to find new jobs.
Even though the US government last week had decided to give more time (beyond 60 days) to laid-off employees to find new jobs, the court's judgment to allow their spouses to work in the country is what's really going to help them.
Not only will this help them financially, but the move will help them stay in the country for a longer period of time and look for better opportunities. Of the thousands of IT workers that were laid off, 30 to 40 per cent are Indian IT professionals, and a significant number of them are on H-1B and L1 visas.