Big relief for tech workers! Spouses of H-1B visa holders can work in US

In a big relief to foreign workers in the US technology sector, a judge ruled that spouses of H-1B visa holders can now work in the United States.

The decision was made as US District Judge Tanya Chutkan dismissed a lawsuit filed by Save Jobs USA, which had approached the court to revoke the Obama-era regulation that gave employment authorisation cards to spouses of certain categories of H-1B visa holders.

Save Jobs USA is an organisation comprising IT workers who claim they lost their jobs to H-1B workers.

Tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft had opposed the lawsuit. The US has so far issued nearly 1,00,000 work authorisations to spouses of H-1B workers.

In her order, Judge Chutkan stated that the primary contention of Save Jobs USA was that Congress had not 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, according to a report by PTI.

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, she wrote.

The judge wrote that Congress has expressly and knowingly empowered the US government to authorise employment as a permissible condition of an H-4 spouse's stay in the United States.

The Department of Homeland Security and its predecessors have authorised employment not just for students, but also for their spouses and dependents, Judge Chutkan wrote in the ruling.

While Save Jobs USA said it plans to appeal against the court ruling, Ajay Bhutoria, a prominent community leader and advocate for immigrant rights, applauded the court's decision to allow H-1B spouses to work and support their families.

"Allowing H-1B spouses to work is not just a matter of economic fairness, but it is also a matter of family unity and stability. I applaud the court's decision, and I hope that this is just the first step towards a more compassionate and equitable immigration system," he said, according to the the news agency's report.

The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. Technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.

(With PTI inputs)

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