Big technology companies won a major court victory in Washington, where a judge dismissed a suit challenging the rights of highly skilled H-1B visa holders’ spouses to work in the US. US District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Tuesday issued a decision upholding the Obama-era rule under which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has issued H-4 visas to the spouses of hundreds of thousands of H-1B workers in the US, 70% of whom hold science and engineering jobs in the tech sector.
Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Google, Microsoft Corp. were among the companies who urged the judge to let the rule stand.
The ability of H-1B holders’ spouses to also get jobs in the US has been a major attraction for highly skilled foreign workers, the tech companies have argued.
In her ruling, Chutkan rejected arguments by Save Jobs USA, a group representing Southern California Edison computer professionals who said they had been replaced by H-1B visa-holders. Save Jobs had claimed Homeland Security wasn’t legally permitted to put the rule in place and sought to eliminate work authorizations for more than 90,000 new H-4 visa holders.
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