Spouses of H-1B visa-holders to get automatic work permits: US

Washington, November 12

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In yet another immigration-friendly move that would benefit thousands of Indian-Americans, the Biden administration has agreed to provide automatic work authorisation permits to the spouses of H-1B visa-holders, most of whom are Indian IT professionals.

An H-4 visa is issued by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to immediate family members (spouse and children under 21 years of age) of the H-1B visa-holders. The visa is normally issued to those who have already started the process of seeking employment-based lawful permanent resident status in the US. The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. The technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China. A settlement was reached by the Department of Homeland Security in a class-action lawsuit, which was filed by the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) on behalf of immigrant spouses this summer. “This (H-4 visa holders) is a group that always met the regulatory test for automatic extension of EADs (employment authorisation documents), but the agency previously prohibited them from that benefit and forced them to wait for reauthorisation. People were suffering. They were losing their jobs for absolutely no legitimate reason causing harm to them and US businesses,” Jon Wasden from AILA said. The litigation successfully achieved the reversal of the USCIS policy that prohibited H-4 spouses from benefiting from the automatic extension of their employment authorisation during the pendency of stand-alone EAD applications. — PTI

Indians will Benefit

• Obama admn had given work permits to some categories of spouses of H-1B visa-holders
• So far, over 90,000 H-4 visa-holders, a majority of them Indian-American women, have got work authorisation