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Sunday, December 8, 2024
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Spouses of Some H-1B Visa Holders to Be Allowed to Work in US

The 5 things you need to know about H-1B work visaSpouses of H-1B visa holders being sponsored for a green card by their employers will be allowed to work in the U.S. as part of a new initiative by the Obama administration to attract high-skilled foreign workers.

Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker announced Tuesday that the administration plans this and other revisions to regulations for the H-1B and other skilled-worker visas.

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Mr. Mayorkas said the goal was twofold: to โ€œencourage highly skilled, specially trained individuals to remain in the United Statesโ€ and to maintain U.S. โ€œcompetitiveness with other countries that attract skilled foreign workers and offer employment authorization for spouses.โ€

Ms. Pritzker said that 28% of new U.S. businesses are launched by immigrants, who represent 13% of the population, and that four of 10 Fortune 500 companies were started by immigrants or their children. She mentioned Andy Grove, the former CEO ofย IntelCorp.ย INTCย +0.11%ย , who was born in Hungary; Google Inc. co-founderย Sergey Brin, born in Russia; andย Jerry Yang, who co-founded Yahoo and is originally from Taiwan.

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The rules, which will be published soon in the Federal Register, are expected to go into effect after a 60-day public-comment period.

Congress allows 85,000 new H-1B visas to be issued each year, 20,000 of which are reserved for people with advanced degrees. Under existing regulations, the Department of Homeland Security doesnโ€™t extend employment authorization to dependents of H-1B visa holders, who normally have specialized skills in engineering, programming and other high-tech fields.

The decision stops short of giving spouses of all H-1B visa holders blanket approval to work in the U.S. Spouses would become eligible only after the visa holderโ€™s company has petitioned for an immigrant visa for the foreign employee, putting the employee on track for legal permanent residency, known as a green card. Lawful permanent residents generally qualify to become U.S. citizens after five years.

โ€œAllowing H-1B spouses to work would be an important change. Sometimes people arenโ€™t willing to come to the U.S. if their spouse canโ€™t work,โ€ said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell Law School.

Another revision announced Tuesday will ease requirements for applicants of an EB-1 work visa, which is issued to researchers and professors with extraordinary ability. To qualify, applicants for the visas currently must submit awards, scholarly articles and a host of evidence to prove their outstanding recognition in and contribution to a particular field. The new rule will allow applicants to present comparable evidence that is acceptable, the official said. The U.S. issues 40,000 such visas each year.

-WSJ

 

Spouses of Some H-1B Visa Holders to Be Allowed to Work in US

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