Big Tech is wading into a legal fight over visas to save the jobs of spouses of its foreign employees working in the U.S.
Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Google, Microsoft Corp. and more than 20 other companies and organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, on Friday urged a federal court in Washington to reject a lawsuit seeking to eliminate work authorization for more than 90,000 H-4 visa holders.
Eliminating H-4 visas “would not only siphon off U.S. gross domestic product, but gift that productivity – and the innovation that comes with it – to other nations, harming America’s global economic competitiveness into the future,” the companies and organizations said in a brief the court can consider in weighing the case.
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Tech companies are campaigning to protect an Obama-era program that allows spouses of H-1B workers to also work in the US.
Google and other tech companies hire tens of thousands of overseas workers on H-1B visas each year. If the program is lost, the practical effect is that we welcome a person to the U.S. to work but we make it harder for their spouse to work, Google s VP of litigation wrote.
Google is leading a cohort of tech companies campaigning to protect the spouses and dependents of H-1B visa workers.
6 Apr 2021
American professionals who were replaced by H-1B foreign visa workers are asking a federal court to strike down an Obama-era regulation that allows companies to outsource United States jobs to the spouses of H-1B foreign visa workers.
Save Jobs USA, made up of American professionals who were fired and forced to train their H-1B foreign visa replacements in 2015 by Southern California Edison, is asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for summary judgment to prevent an Obama-era regulation governing H-4 visa holders, the spouses of H-1B visa holders, which allows them to take U.S. jobs.
AFP
Listening to
Behind the Numbers, a digital media and marketing podcast was one of Swara’s (name changed) favourite routines on her way to work. Swara is a senior marketing professional in San Francisco with a masters degree from a US university. In July 2020, she was offered a new job with good pay and benefits.
A couple of days into her new position, she had to stop working as her work permit renewal was not adjudicated in time by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. She filed for her renewal in May 2020 and has not received a decision as of February 2021. Swara is on an H-4 visa as the spouse of an H-1B visa holder.
A US court has asked for a joint status report on the prospects of work authorisation for H4 visas issued to immediate family members (spouse and children under 21 years of age) of the H-1B visa holders.