Sources have said that the Trump administration is planning to end the Obama-era rule that allowed spouses of H-1B foreign workers to receive a work permit. Under this new rule 41,526 people received work permits from Oct. 2015-Sept. 2016.
In 2015 Pres. Obama created a work permit for certain H-4 visa holders, even though under this visa they were not allowed to hold a job or be issued a Social Security number.
After this new rule was issued a group of technology workers called Save Jobs USA filed a lawsuit against DHS challenging giving work permits to H-4 visa holders. The group argued that the government does not have the ability to grant immigrants work permits without congressional approval.
John Miano, an attorney for Save Jobs USA and co-author of Sold Out, said the president should not have such power over foreign work permits.
“We would hope that (the regulation) would have some acknowledgment that the original employment authorization was unlawful,” he said.
The lawsuit is still pending with a court deadline of January 2.
“The court deadline for the H-4 litigation is fast approaching,” Lynden Melmed, former chief counsel of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in an email. “That means the government is far along in finalizing a regulation, and at every stage they have signaled a desire to rescind the work authorization for all H-4 spouses.”
Read more on this story at the San Francisco Chronicle.
