Partners of H-1B visa-holders can work in US, says judge

A judge has ruled that spouses of H-1B visa holders can work in the United States, which is a huge relief for foreign workers in the US tech sector. During the process, US District Judge Tanya Chutkan dismissed a lawsuit filed by Save Jobs USA, which had asked the court to overturn an Obama-era regulation that granted employment authorization cards to certain categories of H-1B visa holders’ spouses. Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft were among the companies that fought the lawsuit. So far, the US has issued nearly 900,000 work permits to spouses of H-1B workers, a significant number of whom are Indians.

The primary contention of Save Jobs USA, according to Judge Chutkan, is that Congress has never granted the Department of Homeland Security authority to allow foreign nationals, such as H-4 visa holders, to work while in the United States. But, she wrote, that argument runs headlong into the text of the Immigration and Nationality Act, decades of executive-branch practise, and both explicit and implicit congressional ratification of that practise. According to the judge, Congress has expressly and knowingly authorised the US Government to authorise employment as a permissible condition of an H-4 spouse’s stay in the US.