With the aim to benefit thousands of Indian-American women, the United States has agreed to provide automatic work authorisation permits to the spouses of H-1B visa holders.
This settlement has been reached by the Department of Homeland Security following the filing of a class-action lawsuit on behalf of immigrant spouses by the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association.
“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 high-paying jobs for absolutely no legitimate reason causing harm to them and US businesses,” Jon Wasden from the association said.
“Although this is a giant achievement, the parties’ agreement will further result in a massive change in position for the USCIS, which now recognises that L-2 spouses enjoy automatic work authorisation incident to status, meaning these spouses of executive and managers will no longer have to apply for employment authorisation prior to working in the United States,” the association said.
As a result of this settlement, spouses of H-1B and L-2 visa holders will no longer have to apply for work authorization and need an employment authorization document as proof in order to work in the United States.
Dependents of H-1B visa holders are issued H-4 visas. For H-4 spouses who have lawful status and merely need to renew their employment authorization, they will now enjoy an automatic extension of their authorisation for 180 days after expiration should the agency fail to process their timely-filed applications.
The lawsuit sought to remove the bottlenecks in the policies that caused many spouse’s job loss as it may take two years to process the applications for the spouses.
