By Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN | Updated: Mar 08,
2017, 08.19 AM IST The Economic Times of India
WASHINGTON:
The Trump administration is moving quickly to drain the American economy and
its workforce of immigrant labour and foreign workers, not just those who are
illegal but also those who have won permission to work legally.
It has now come to light that the new administration's
department of justice (DOJ) has filed a brief in the Washington DC court of
appeals seeking a 60-day freeze in a case involving employment authorisation
for H-4 visa-holders, who are primarily dependent spouses of H-1B visa-holders.
Thousands of Indian spouses come in this
category, and they won a hard-fought permission to work in America in February
2015, when the Obama administration issued a rule through the department of
homeland security allowing eligible spouses to be employed while the H-1B
visa-holder awaits the receipt of his/her lawful permanent residency card
(green card).
Soon after the rule was issued, a group called
Save Jobs USA filed a lawsuit, but a district court ruled that it had no locus
standi to sue and upheld the Obama administration's rule.
Taking
the case to the appeals court, Save Jobs USA filed its initial brief soon after
the Trump administration took charge, and found immediate support from the DOJ,
which filed a document on February 1, 2017 titled "Consent motion to hold
proceedings in abeyance for 60 days", asking the court to "allow
incoming leadership personnel adequate time to consider the issues".
The writing is pretty much on the wall,
according to immigration activists, since attorney general Jeff Sessions, when
he was a US senator, had called the H-4 rule a "change [in] immigration
law in a way that hurts American workers".
Aman Kapoor, co-founder and president of
Immigration Voice, which has now filed a motion to intervene in the case on
behalf of thousands of H-4 visa-holding spouses, says: "There is nothing
for the DoJ attorneys to confer with their leadership about given the district
court's clear decision stating that this case had no basis for ever being
filed."
"Any failure to provide the strongest
possible defence of the district court's decision risks establishing a
precedent prohibiting H-4 visa-holders from working under the current statutory
regime," Kapoor said.
Contrary to the popular image or impression, it is not just
the bored Indian spouse who won permission to work through the H-4 route. In
fact, the Immigration Voice intervention cites the case of highly qualified
spouses, who, in many instances, added to the US economy both in terms of
revenue and jobs.
Sudarshana
Sengupta, one of the interveners, says she has been involved in biomedical
research for the last 13 years in the US, initially as a J2 dependent (work
authorisation) and later on an H-1B visa. In August 2015, she decided to use
H4-EAD (employment authorisation document) work authorisation to continue her
research after her H-1B ended.
"During the course of my research career, I have worked
at and published from notable academic institutions, like Harvard University,
University of Chicago and Boston University, investigating molecular biological
aspects of diseases such as cancer and certain cardiovascular conditions. I am
currently involved in preclinical research developing effective strategies for
cancer immunotherapy. I am on the verge of launching my own start-up developing
cancer immunotherapy strategies based on mypreclinical studies. However, if
H4-EAD is taken away, then I will be unable to launch my start-up," she
said in her intervention.
In
another case, Anuj Dhamija, related how he had been legally working in the US
since 2010 as a project manager for a reputed Fortune 100 company. Due to a
decades-long wait for a green card, he made a switch to the H4 EAD programme as
it was the only option for him to pursue his business ventures in the interim.
In this programme, he was able to keep his existing job and also start his own
small high-end luxurious home remodelling business.
Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/57528187.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
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