
USCIS to End Work Permits for Spouses of H-1B Visa Holders [pdf] - virtuabhi
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2018-04-04%20USCIS%20to%20CEG%20-%20Buy%20America%2C%20Hire%20America%20update.pdf
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vilhelm_s
Note that, in general, spouses of H-1B holders are not allowed to work. What
this change would do is remove the "Employment Authorization for Certain H-4
Dependent Spouses" regulation from 2015, which said that if you hold an H-1B
visa and you have an approved I-140 (application for permanent residency),
then your spouse may work.

In most cases, if your application for permanent residency is approved, then
you just immediately become a permanent resident and you and your spouse have
the right to work regardless. The exception is if you come from China or
India, where the number of immigrants have hit the statutory caps, and there
is a waiting time (currently between 6 and 10 years, depending on the type of
green card application [2]). So I think the upshot is that this will make
things more difficult for Chinese and Indian green card applicants.

[1] [https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-
worker...](https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-
workers/employment-authorization-certain-h-4-dependent-spouses)

[2] [https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-
law0/v...](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-
bulletin/2018/visa-bulletin-for-april-2018.html)

~~~
s2g
> In most cases, if your application for permanent residency is approved, then
> you just immediately become a permanent resident

Except that process takes another year or so.

> So I think the upshot is that this will make things more difficult for
> Chinese and Indian green card applicants.

Oh how wonderful, keep the lower classes down.

How delightfully racist.

edit: I'm sorry. TIL what upshot actually means.

~~~
hactually
Please don't be that guy and actually learn what the OP meant before jumping
on the name calling wagon.

The usage of upshot simply means the final outcome - neither a good thing or a
bad.

~~~
tdb7893
It is very confusingly worded. People nowadays often use it the same as
"upside". I've been confused by this word before and this is what I found when
I looked it up
([http://grammarist.com/usage/upshot/](http://grammarist.com/usage/upshot/)).
The dictionaries still seem to only have the older definition but I've
personally run into the newer definition more often in the wild.

~~~
s2g
That's the only one I've ever seen.

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mankash666
Summary:

1\. Spouses of certain H1-B holders were allowed to work, without restrictions

2\. The restriction part is worth talking about. H1-B ties you to an employer,
the H4-EAD doesn't. Along with that comes portability, and freedom - things
that should not affect wage depreciation.

So - the proposal is to take away work privileges from honest, legal, tax
paying individuals that (in theory) do not contribute to wage depreciation. At
a time when social services are stretched, and with record low-unemployment,
this seems like a bad idea for America, and lost tax wages for the government

~~~
dragonwriter
> Spouses of certain H1-B holders were allowed to work, without restrictions

Specifically, those with approved petitions for permanent residency but who
have not yet become permanent residents (because they are from a country where
the per-country per-year visa limits in their immigration category have
created a backlog.)

> So - the proposal is to take away work privileges from honest, legal, tax
> paying individuals that (in theory) do not contribute to wage depreciation.

Why would you think that they are exceptions to the rule that added supply
reduces market clearing cost?

> At a time when social services are stretched, and with record low-
> unemployment, this seems like a bad idea for America, and lost tax wages for
> the government

The idea is to make the conversion to permanent residence (and H-1B status
itself) less attractive and get immigrants to voluntarily self-deport. It's a
great idea if you are a xenophobic nativist, and it might have some small
short-term benefits in terms of wages in some fields, until the jobs move
overseas to follow the workers chased out.

~~~
mankash666
"Why would you think that they are exceptions to the rule that added supply
reduces market clearing cost?"

Wage deprecation (allegations) from H1-B isn't from an increased supply. It's
from the lack of portability once employed. Optimally, every 3-5 years, a jump
would result in higher wage growth than working for the same employer. The
H4-EAD allows for free movement, alleviating this one sub category of wage
deprecation.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Wage deprecation (allegations) from H1-B isn't from an increased supply.

So, you think H-1B _as well as_ H-4 EAD are exceptions to the basic dynamics
of supply and demand?

Even if you assume the immigrants involved have the same distribution of
salary demands as the general American workforce, adding them to the domestic
labor supply decreases market clearing costs for labor of the type they are
available to do, all else being equal. (Of course, if they have lower salary
demands, this is even more pronounced without a prevailing wage rule, which
H-1B has but H-4 EAD does not.)

~~~
mankash666
So you think the H1-B is a scheme to suppress wages with oversupply?

The H1-B's aim is to fill a _shortage_ of skilled labor. Annual caps exist
explicitly to control supply and prevent wage depreciation.

The thing that wasn't accounted for was captivity of H1-B holders from certain
countries who'd applied for their greencard. Given the long wait times, they
are effectively enslaved to their employer. With reduced portability comes
reduced wage increase

------
partycoder
The idea of the H-1B program as it was initially conceived was to hire
specialists as 1) non-immigrants, temporary workers, with 2) competitive
salaries, 3) with quotas.

About 1): Non-immigrant means a person that doesn't have an intention to stay.
In practice, many people with H-1Bs end up applying for a green card. Meaning
that most do have an intention to stay.

Note that grabbing a productive, educated, working-age professional from a
country can be seen as a good thing. Similar to how large cities grab
professionals from smaller cities.

About 2): The wage requirements were not updated for many years, not even for
inflation and this resulted in a lot of people being hired for salaries that
were lower than market value. This is bad for local workers.

About 3): Some companies like Infosys and Tata tricked the quota system by
sending multiple applications per candidate until they got in. Personally I
think that Infosys and Tata should have been penalized more aggressively.

Mostly because of 2 and 3 I think the system needed reform. About spouses I am
mostly neutral.

Finally, there is more going on. There are a bunch of people interviewing at
large companies violating interview NDAs and passing interview questions
around in websites. The country of origin of most of those sites? India. While
there is merit in learning CS, and there's merit in becoming a stronger
software engineer, violating NDAs makes technical interviews harder for good
faith applicants and is a good way to build a bad global reputation.

~~~
virtuabhi
> About 1): Non-immigrant means a person that doesn't have an intention to
> stay. In practice, many people with H-1Bs end up applying for a green card.
> Meaning that most do have an intention to stay.

H1B is dual intent (unlike, lets say F1). You are allowed to file for
immigration if you want to.

> About 2): The wage requirements were not updated for many years, not even
> for inflation and this resulted in a lot of people being hired for salaries
> that were lower than market value. This is bad for local workers.

You are blindly comparing salaries of Bay Area and other tech hubs with
salaries in midwest. In 98.7% of the cases, the companies with low salaries on
H1B have employees in remote regions of USA with above average salary, or they
work in different fields which have lower median salaries.

~~~
partycoder
You are correct about the dual intent, I forgot that one. +1

Now, regarding the wages, that's a bit more controversial. IEEE-USA published
this: [http://theinstitute.ieee.org/ieee-
roundup/blogs/blog/ieeeusa...](http://theinstitute.ieee.org/ieee-
roundup/blogs/blog/ieeeusas-stance-on-the-h1b-visa-program)

~~~
partycoder
Now, some companies, like Tata, are extremely shady.

They demand employees to give them power of attorney, they force employees to
let them calculate their tax returns, and demand that employees give them
their federal and state tax refund money. Maybe this is no longer the case,
but doesn't change the fact they're shady AF.

They could be possibly paying people less than what they're required to as
well.

Source: "Who Cheats and How?: Scams, Fraud and the Dark Side of the Corporate
World" By Robin Banerjee

Those guys should not be allowed to do business here.

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garyfirestorm
yup. lets rob an engineers or biotech specialists ability to work. that will
make this country great for certain.

~~~
partycoder
You can blame the bad actors like Infosys and Tata for ruining it for
everyone.

~~~
screye
I have always found this argument to be very weird. The US has full knowledge
of a handful of companies (IBM, Infosys, etc) that are exploiting the h1b
system.

Why bring round about changes that hurt the MIT grad as much as a random code
shop employee bought in by Infosys ? Why not directly target these abusers ?
Why not have an element on merit when evaluating PR requests ? Australia does
it, and it works pretty well. A degree from an R1 institute / high
compensation / English tests are all possible ways to go about it. Why not
clamp down on universities like Northwestern Polytechnic University to avoid
bogus F1 students in the first place ?

Affirmative action, means it is already easy for underrepresented communities
to get admitted to get admitted to CS programs. Diversity programs makes
getting jobs a lot simpler for such groups as well. It is not like Asians &
Indians are unjustly taking away jobs from good and honest hard working
Americans. The ones making big bucks are the best students from 2 countries
with an unbelievable amount of competition.

You know what the most funny thing is ? Most Infosys employees usually don't
earn enough to have better QOL to settle with their wives in the US. These
guys are all sending money back home. It is the top university grads who don't
get the same kind of compensation in India, that will look to settle with
their family in the US. This change might actually have the opposite of it's
intended effect.

That is assuming that it is not based just blatant xenophobia.

~~~
partycoder
Students visas are a different discussion.

Today, most graduate students are foreign. Letting those go is a huge brain
drain. Ideally you want them to stay and transfer their knowledge through
work.

