Trump administration pushes to allow H-1B spouses to continue working
Trump administration pushes to allow H-1B spouses to continue working
Workers in computer-related jobs suffer because of H-4 visa job authorization: lawyer
By Ethan Baron | ebaron@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: May 11, 2020 at 1:33 p.m. | UPDATED: May 12, 2020 at 3:22 a.m.
The administration of President Donald Trump is pushing in a court case to allow tens of thousands of spouses of foreign citizens on the H-1B visa to continue working.
In a long-running case filed by a group of technology-industry workers, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has argued that those workers have failed to show they’ve been sufficiently harmed by the foreign spouses’ employment to warrant an order halting new and renewed work authorizations.
The case revolves around the H-1B visa, intended for skilled workers, and the H-4 visa, which authorizes the employment of spouses of H-1B workers who are on track for green cards. An estimated 100,000 people, nearly all women from India, hold the H-4 visas that are issued to H-1B spouses. Since 2015, the H-4 visa has included the right to work. The plaintiffs in the case, calling themselves “Save Jobs USA,” claim they were were laid off after training their own H-1B replacements and that H-4 holders unfairly compete for jobs against U.S. workers.
Homeland Security has been pledging since 2017 to strip the H-4 work authorization, but has repeatedly missed deadlines it has set for removing it. The authorization has powerful support from U.S. industry and Silicon Valley. Last year, The Information Technology Industry Council, which represents a who’s-who of major Bay Area technology firms including Apple, Google, Facebook, Oracle and HP, joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers in filing an argument supporting continued employment for H-4 holders.
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Homeland Security, in its court filing last week, opposed the tech workers’ motion for an injunction halting new and renewed employment authorizations for H-4 holders, saying the workers have not shown “irreparable harm.”
The workers’ affidavits filed five years ago “say nothing about the present job market or threat of impending economic harm,” and the workers have failed to show that allowing H-1B spouses to work causes them to suffer “serious” economic losses, the agency said in the filing.
The case is playing out in Washington, D.C. federal district court, after the workers initially lost the case, then appealed. A three-judge appeals court panel in November kicked the case back to district court, ruling the workers had proven that H-1B holders compete against them for jobs and that letting H-1B spouses work increases that competition because if the spouses couldn’t work, some H-1B holders would leave.
The workers’ lawyer, John Miano, said in a court filing that an injunction stopping new and renewed H-4 work authorizations would not immediately wipe out the damage to the workers but would lead to a “gradual tapering off” of the harm and prevent it from growing.
Computer-related occupations “bear the brunt harm from the of influx of nonimmigrant labor under the H-4 Rule” and “the most common industry for H-4 workers is the technical-services industry,” Miano argued. “The harm is irreparable because there is no method of recovery.”
The H-4 visa and the H-1B have been caught up in America’s immigration furor, with Trump promising to reform the H-1B program but, critics say, failing to carry out promised changes including removal of the H-4 work authorization and changing the definition of the “specialty occupations” eligible for the visa. Silicon Valley tech giants rely heavily on the H-1B, and push for an expansion to the annual 85,000 cap on new visas, arguing they need more visas to obtain the world’s top talent.
Opponents of the H-1B program contend that outsourcing companies and major tech firms use the visa to supplant U.S. workers with cheaper foreign labor, drive down wages and facilitate outsourcing.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/...tinue-working/
