Relief for H-1B visa holders' spouses

Representational Image

The Trump administration has delayed its decision on termination of work authorisation for spouses of the H-1B visa holders, in a big relief to a significantly large number of Indian workers and their families.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in a court submission this week said that it would not take a decision on terminating the work authorisation of H4 visa users, spouses of H-1B visa holders, till June as it needs time to review the economic impact of such a decision. Since 2015, the spouses of H-1B, or high-skilled, visa holders waiting for green cards have been eligible to work in the US on H-4 dependent visas, under a rule introduced by the previous Obama administration.

The DHS was previously scheduled to take a call on it by February 28. It said the revisions required a new economic analysis which required an additional several weeks. "Under the revised time-line, DHS anticipates submitting to the Office of Management and Budget for review and clearance the proposed rule in time for publication in June," it said.

The H-1B programme attracts foreign specialised workers to come to the United States for employment, many of them from India. "We want to believe that DHS is re-looking at this because of our efforts," Jansi Kumar, co-founder of the group Save H-4 EADs, told India-West, a local Indian newspaper from California. The court submission by DHS comes as part of a petition by Save Jobs USA, an organisation of IT workers who claim they lost their jobs to H-1B workers.

Catch up on all the latest Crime, National, International and Hatke news here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates

This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever