President Trump’s administration has begun the process to abolish an immigration program under which spouses of H-1B visa holders are issued with work permits.
Last week, the US government issued a notice for the proposed plan to ban the H-4 EAD (Employment Authorization Document).
H-4 EAD is a work visa program launched by the Obama administration to leverage skilled spouses of H-1B visa holders and address skill shortage in the technology sector.
If it sails through, the move would affect the families of hundreds of thousands of hi-tech workers in the US.
The Department of Homeland Security said the move would benefit US citizens “by having a better chance at obtaining jobs that some of the population of the H-4 workers currently hold.”
This is the latest of the many moves the US has made to tighten immigration policies since President Trump assumed office in 2017.
Immigration analyst Sarah Pierce said: “A fallout of the scrapping of the visa would be a shortage of talent for US tech firms as these families are likely to return to India.”
“There is no doubt that ending the opportunity for spouses of certain H-1B visa holders to work will have negative consequences for tens of thousands of immigrant families in the United States, as well as for the US companies that employ them,” said Pierce.
Good job mr trump for…
Good job mr trump for keeping yr promise of putting the americans first n that’s what any president of any country should do.Why give others opportunities to get job n the so called americans don’t have.There is unemployment problem in the usa n this jobs given to foreigners should first go to americans??I will also ask president uhuru to follow suit juu most of the foreigners we have in kenya both blacks/whites/asians their permits b cancelled or don’t get renewed especially for them jobs kenyans can do.
“A fallout of the scrapping…
“A fallout of the scrapping of the visa would be a shortage of talent for US tech firms as these families are likely to return to India.”
That is a good thing. That shortage will cause employers to bid up for those Americans with the required skill set resulting in higher wages. Those weak employers who can not pay up will do without. That is a good thing. Free market capitalism is very good at weeding out weak players. Cheap foreign labor interferes with that weeding out process keeping weak players in the market and therefore hurts the market by keeping weak participants who ought to fail in the market.
They all outsource most of…
They all outsource most of IT jobs in India. More jobs will move overseas.
Two points: (1) spousal…
Two points: (1) spousal eligibility to work as an H-1B dependent has not always been the case, and this will just revert to earlier times when they were not eligible. This will do very little to deter anyone who is moving from India, or Kenya for that matter, to seek this visa unless they really don’t need it. (2)to JJ’s point, market forces also mean that if US companies have to pay an extremely high labor, they will eventually relocate to areas where labor is more reasonable, and for IT jobs which are the biggest chunk of H-1b visas, they will go to India and China. Sure, some jobs, like in the service industry would end up losing the H-1bs and hiring more Americans, but tech companies will follow the labor to those nations. The executives and HQ will be in US but all the factories, laboratories, IT departments will elsewhere. The you will see the government try to tax those that are sourcing labor from outside and that’s when the whole company will be based either in some developing country or an European country that doesn’t punish offshore business activities.