The US will now provide automatic work authorisation permits to the spouses of H-1B visa holders. The immigration-friendly move of the Biden administration is likely to benefit thousands of Indian-American women.

An H-4 visa, a non-immigrant visa, is issued by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to immediate family members (spouse and children under 21 years of age) of the H-1B visa holders. The visa is normally issued to those who have already started the process of seeking employment-based lawful permanent resident status in the US.

The H-1B visa allows US firms to recruit foreign workers in speciality occupations requiring theoretical or technical expertise. The visa is crucial for technology companies as it allows them to hire thousands of employees every year from nations like India and China. Most of the H-1B visa holders in the US are Indian IT professionals.

A class-action lawsuit was filed by the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) on behalf of immigrant spouses earlier this year, following which the Department of Homeland Security facilitated the decision to issue automatic work authorisation permits.

Jon Wasden from AILA said: “This (H-4 visa holders) is a group that always met the regulatory test for the 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.”

Earlier, the USCIS policy prohibited H-4 spouses from taking from the automatic extension of their employment authorisation during the pendency of standalone EAD applications.

“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 executives and managers will no longer have to apply for employment authorisation prior to working in the United States,” AILA stated.

“We are delighted to have reached this agreement, which includes relief for H-4 spouses, through our litigation efforts with Wasden Banias and Steven Brown. It is gratifying that the administration saw that settling the litigation for non-immigrant spouses was something that should be done, and done quickly,” said Jesse Bless, AILA director of federal litigation.

Certain categories of spouses of H-1B visa holders had been given work authorisation by the Obama administration. So far, over 90,000 H-4 visa holders, a significant majority of whom are Indian-American women, have received work authorisation.