Spouses on H-4 visa can keep working, but fight goes on

Thousands of Bay Area workers, mostly women from India and many working in tech, can breathe a sigh of relief after a court ruling upheld their right to employment. But the case affecting spouses of H-1B visa holders and Silicon Valley’s technology industry may still end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

A decision Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia puts a cap — at least for now — on a years-long court battle over work authorization for the wives and husbands of H-1B workers who have been allowed to work since 2015 if their spouses are on track for a green card.

Two months after the right to work was granted in 2015 to holders of the H-4 visa — a residence permit for spouses of people on the H-1B skilled-worker visa — a group of tech workers sued the federal government, claiming the employment authorization illegally and unfairly forced them to compete for jobs against noncitizens.

Friday’s ruling by the D.C. panel upheld a lower-court decision maintaining H-4 employment rights.

“We want to be here working and supporting our families,” said business systems analyst Mebi Babu, of San Ramon. “I’ve been living with this uncertainty for the past eight years.”

John Miano, a lawyer representing the tech workers group suing as “Save Jobs USA,” said the appeals-court ruling failed to address the crucial issue in the case: whether the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which allowed H-4 employment, had legal authority to do that.

“If this stays in place, (Homeland Security) can allow anything,” Miano said Monday. “We now have a separate immigration system being created by the administrative state.

“The courts are now allied with big business to wipe out the protections for U.S. workers in the immigration system.”

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