Thousands of Bay Area staff, mostly women from India and plenty of within the technology industry, can breathe a sigh of relief after a court ruling upheld their right to work. But the case, which affects spouses of H-1B visa holders and Silicon Valley's technology industry, could still find yourself before the U.S. Supreme Court.
A ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Friday puts a cap – a minimum of for now – on a years-long legal battle over work permits for the wives and husbands of H-1B staff. Since 2015, they’ve been allowed to work while their spouses are on the strategy to a green card.
Two months after holders of the H-4 visa – a residency permit for spouses of individuals with H-1B expert employee visas – were granted the fitting to work in 2015, a bunch of tech staff sued the federal government, arguing that the work permit illegally and unfairly forces them to compete with noncitizens for jobs.
The DC panel's ruling on Friday upheld a lower court ruling that H-4 labor rights remain in place.
“We want to be here, work and support our families,” said economic systems analyst Mebi Babu from San Ramon. “I have been living with this uncertainty for eight years.”
John Miano, a lawyer representing the group of tech staff suing under the name Save Jobs USA, said the appeals court ruling didn’t answer the crucial query within the case: whether the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which allowed the employment of H-4 staff, had the legal authority to accomplish that.
“If this continues, the Department of Homeland Security can allow anything,” Miano said Monday. “We now have a separate immigration system created by the administrative state.”
“The courts are now working with big business to eliminate protections for U.S. workers in the immigration system.”
The importance of this litigation for Silicon Valley's big tech firms was highlighted when Google, Apple, Cisco, HP, Intel, Salesforce and the previous Twitter took the bizarre step of asking the court hearing the case in 2021 to permit the estimated 90,000 H-4 staff to proceed working within the U.S. The majority of those staff are more likely to be based in Silicon Valley.
“This ruling is good news for thousands of families across the United States, including some of our own employees,” said Google attorney Halimah DeLaine Prado. “We are proud to have led a broad coalition of companies supporting families in this process. We will continue to advocate for the support of our employees and their families and continue to push Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform to maintain U.S. economic competitiveness.”
The H-4 visa, just like the H-1B visa for expert staff, has grow to be entangled within the American immigration debate. Cases of U.S. staff being replaced by H-1B visa holders – as alleged in Save Jobs USA's lawsuit – have complicated the skilled futures of H-4 holders, as have abuses by staffing and outsourcing firms. Adding to the difficulties are the extremely long wait times for the green cards that allow H-1B and H-4 visa holders to be released from their visas and grow to be everlasting residents.
“You can't really expect people to stay home for 20 years,” said Pratima Joglekar, an assistant at an immigration law firm who lives in Fremont and received her green card in December after holding the H-4 card for seven years. “It took me 14 years to get my green card. It took my husband 19 years.”
Joglekar, a neighborhood leader of an advocacy group that works to preserve the H-4 work permit, said allowing visa holders to work boosts the economy. “People are making money – they are putting the money into the economy in different ways, either by buying things or by providing for their families,” said Joglekar, 39.
The Save Jobs case was dismissed in March 2023 by U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Tanya Chutkan, citing federal immigration and nationality law in addition to “decades of executive branch practice and both explicit and implicit ratification of that practice by Congress.”
“They are taking power away from Congress and giving it to bureaucrats,” Miano said. “We have the courts taking democracy away from the American people.”
Many H-4 holders would love to see Congress take motion to make sure they’ll work. Employers are sometimes reluctant to rent them because their right to work — which can be under threat from former President Donald Trump, who has promised to strip it away — is uncertain, said Babu, 40. Employment brings not only more financial stability and infrequently medical health insurance, but in addition financial independence and self-confidence, Babu said. Speeding up the green card process would solve the underlying problem, Babu added.
Trump's promise to strip H-4 visa holders of their work permits was never kept, but they still fear losing their work permits if he wins the presidency again.
“It scares me a lot,” said Babu, whose husband also works in technology. “I'm pretty sure we'd have to leave California – it's so expensive here.”
Originally published:
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