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H4 Visa EAD 2023 News – Lawsuit Dismissed by Court, H4 EAD is here to stay!

We have divided topics and summarised the latest updates on the top for easy review. If you need to additional details, check history, background, predictions and detail updates, scroll down and review timeline for all updates, opinions, FAQs.

Latest H4 EAD News Updates, Summary :

Below are the most recent H4 EAD News on various fronts. 

Impact of Biden’s Win on H4 EAD program 

The original H4 EAD was created under Obama-Biden administration. So, Biden win is a positive thing for H4 EAD program. What we do not know is the Court situation.  On Jan 25th, 2021, OMB has withdrawn the H4 EAD Removal rule.  DHS has to defend their action now in court, in the past they said they plan to cancel it and had regulatory agenda item as well.   It will now boil down to the court arguments and how the facts are presented. We need to wait and see, how this whole thing works in court. 

H4 EAD Rule Removal – Rule-making Process  :

  • Jul 2023 : As of July 2023, no new update since the withdrawn status.  H4 EAD Continues to stay.
  • May 4th, 2021 : No new update since the withdrawn status. 
  • Jan 26th, 2021 :  Finally, on Reginfo.gov we have an update on the H4 EAD Rule removal. It status says withdrawn and the OIRA concluded the OMB Review ( EO 12866 Regulatory review ) on Jan 25th, 2021.
    • The withdraw status means that DHS does not plan to pursue the H4 EAD rule removal anymore. It is a big positive thing for H4 EAD holders. 
    • There are no additional details given regarding the rationale of OIRA to withdraw the rule. See below screenshots and check official  Reginfo.gov website H4 EAD Status 
  • Jan 2nd, 2021 : No new update on the rule making in the last few months since July 2020 until Jan 2, 2021.  It is still on hold with OMB for further review.
  • June 30th, 2020 :  Spring 2020 Regulatory agenda was announced with H4 EAD removal in that list.  This is not the first time that is happening, it has been there since Spring 2018 agenda, until this agenda. The dates has been moving. Now in this agenda, they have moved the date for publishing the rule for public comments to September 2020. See below screenshot  Nothing changed, still the status is with OMB and no changes on the same. We continue to wait. See
    • If any news article states, DHS Plans to remove by Sep 2020, that is wrong, it is only the NPRM ( Notice for Proposed Rulemaking ) date for public to give comments. 
    • You can check H4 EAD Predictions Timeline with projected dates, based on if they publish it by September 2020, when we can expect the rule to be removed.   
    • Read More at Spring 2020 Regulatory Agenda H4 EAD 
      H4 EAD Spring Regulatory Agenda
  • June 29th, 2020 :  No new update on the H4 EAD removal rule making yet. It is still stuck with OMB.  Trump Signed Proclamation banning Entry of H1B, H4 other visa holders without valid visa on day of proclamation. There is no direct mention of H4 EAD in the proclamation, but it is speculated that they banned H4 entry due the H4 EAD option for few and they can impact the job market.  It is instructed to DOL, DHS to look into work visa programs, so we need to see how this will impact H4 EAD.
  • Jun 14th 2020:  There are rumours that H4 EAD removal could be part of Trump Executive Order, so far we have no update on the Executive order.  There is no official new update in June yet on the rule removal of H4 EAD.  Nothing changed in May and April with the H4 EAD Rule removal.
    • USCIS updated in their court brief on May 4th saying that they plan to publish the H4 EAD revoke rule in Spring 2020 agenda and publish the rule for NPRM soon. As of now, it is still in same pending state. USCIS is really busy handling cases with various visa situations tied to COVID-19 related B2, H4 extensions, updates
  • March 30th, 2020 : Nothing happend in March with Rule making. to remove H4 EAD. There was nothing in Feb and Jan 2020.  It has been stuck with OMB. The original planned NPRM date for H4 EAD rule removal was in March 2020, but with the coronavirus situation, nothing moved. 
  • November 21st, 2019 :  H4 EAD rule removal continues to be part of the Fall 2019 Regulatory Agenda.  It is mentioned with a NPRM date of March 2020, which is in-line with the DHS info given as part of the lawsuit.  No changes are done to the H4 EAD rule yet. Being part of the regulatory agenda just means that it is still a priority for DHS, nothing more than that. Indian media and other media create hype and write lot of misleading information confusing everyone and creating panic, do not fall for that. Nothing has been done.  This rule has been on every regulatory agenda since Spring 2018, so nothing to panic…still long way to go.  You can check out the full details at : Fall 2019 Regulatory Agenda – H4 EAD, H1B, F1, USCIS changes  . Below is the date of march 2020 Fall 2019 Agenda item for H4 EAD rule removal
  • November 13th, 2019 : The Reginfo.gov website has a new update on the rule revoke, where Infosys has scheduled a meeting with OMB. This is part of the standard process to hear from stakeholders on the rule changes. See below and check Reginfo.gov H4 EAD rule revoke - meeting with Infosys - Nov-13-2019
  • November 8th, 2019 : No new update in H4 EAD rule removal yet in October, it is still in the same state as before, pending with USCIS. There was nothing in September as well.
    •  Previous update, include a document tied to the May 1st meeting was posted on the OMB meetings page for the rule.  All it tells is that H4 removal will impact many and should not be removed. It is by few advocacy groups. See below.  They have the H4 rule in pending state for a very long time, they only cleared H1B Registration Fee rule few weeks back 
  • H4 EAD Rule Removal Status – OMB : On June 20th, H4 EAD rule removal hit 90 + 30 days, which is general timeline, but nothing came out. One key thing is that, if the head of the rulemaking agency wants, the review period can be extended indefinitely and there is no timeline. See below screenshot. Check EO 12866 FAQs.   Check below timeline for more history. EO 12866 OMB Rule Review - How long can they take
  • ( Unofficial – June  20,2019 ) There was a tweet by one of the attorney’s attending AILA Annual conference saying that the economic analysis was wrong and Govt is trying to fix that and there is no estimated time on the same. You can check tweet 

H4 EAD Lawsuit in Court:

  • March 28, 2023 : After many back-and-forth motions, eventually on March 28th, 2023, the court dismissed the lawsuit and granted judgment in favor of DHS. Basically, it means that DHS had the authority to create H4 EAD and it is here to stay. Check full court ruling at Lawsuit Judgment Document
H4 EAD Court Lawsuit by Save Jobs USA - Summary Judgement 2023
H4 EAD Court Lawsuit by Save Jobs USA – Summary Judgement 2023
  • May 4th, 2021 : The reports as per the schedule from March 5th, continue to be filed by both the parties. Will be updated after we review the documents.  
  • March 5th, 2021 : A Joint status report was filed by DHS with the below dates for the future.  We will keep you posted with the updates. 
  • Feb 14th, 2021 : No new update in the lawsuit since October 2020 until February 14th, 2021. The case status is as it looks October 2020. There is no update on the status.
    • There were two updates in February 2021 related to attorney appearances in the case. They are just administrative processes related to representation in court. But, no real update on the case judgment or progress on the same. 
    • As DHS has withdrawn the H4 EAD rule removal from the rule making process in Jan 2021, they need to justify their action in action. In the past their stance was different. We need to wait and see how the court reacts to this.
    • We may some action now that DHS was withdrawn the rule making process to revoke H4 EAD. We may see Save Jobs USA file some motion on this.  February 2021 H4 EAD Lawsuit update
  • October 5th, 2020 :   There was a joint status report that was filed in the court indicating the status of the case. The status document tells the state of affairs with the case. No decision in it. As per the report, Save Jobs USA wants decision on this soon.  But, the intervenors want the case to delayed as the president election is upcoming. DHS says they are OIRA does not have time to work on H4 EAD case due to priorities with COVID-19 situation.
  • September 30th , 2020 : No real update in the court case. There are some minor changes in attorney’s representing the case. That details are updated to the court. You can see below. But, in terms of the lawsuit status, nothing has changed. There is no response on the injunction order. See below screenshot on the updates timeline in September. H4 EAD updates September 2020
  • September 15th, 2020 : No relevant update from the court in September in terms of the case, except minor change in attorney details. We continue to wait. Below are more details. 
    • There was one minor change in attorney details submitted to the court for the intervenors. See below history of the case. H4 EAD September update change in attorney
    • It is stuck in same status as before. No response on the injunction order to stop H4 EAD by district court. If it is not a priority, court will not process Injunction order. Based on it being on hold for so much times, it seems like not a priority for court for injunction order to stop H4 EAD. 
  • August 30, 2020 :  There was no update in August and July on the lawsuit. 
  • June 29th, 2020 : Below are the updates on the court case
    • Immigration Voice/ Intervenors filed Supreme Court’s DACA Judgment Document on June 23rd, 2020 to be considered by the court for their future decisions as they believe it is an important decision to consider. 
    • The reason they filed the document is that Save Jobs USA argued that DHS exceeded their authority and issued H4 EAD and they referenced DACA case in the past. Now, Immigration voice want to make it clear that from DACA decision from Supreme Court that they did not evaluate the work authorization granting authority of DHS in the decision of DACA. 
    • This is to not a positive or a negative factor in the case, but a neutral point and DHS authority is not evaluated by other court.  See below screenshots.  
    • So far, the court has not acted on the Injunction request to Block H4 EAD that was filed by SAVE Jobs, we continue to wait on that. H4 EAD June Update - Court Document Immigration Voice DACA
  • June 14th, 2020 : No new update yet from Court in June Yet. We are waiting since May 8th  on the response from court. See below screenshot.  We are waiting for Court to respond on the Injunction order request by Save Jobs. Latest h4 update case - May 2020 Court Docket
  • May 11th, 2020 : Save Jobs has filed response arguing against DHS and Immigration Voice, intervenors asking for injunction order to stop H4 EAD. Read Save Jobs USA response to DHS, Intervenors for Injunction Order 
  • May 7th, 2020:  DHS and Immigration Voice submitted their response to Save Jobs USA request for Preliminary injunction to stop new H4 EADs and Extensions, if the case is stayed ( activities are suspended ) by court. There is a lot of misleading information published by Media outlets telling DHS stance has changed and they have told that they will not revoke H4 EAD, this is not true. DHS Stance has not changed. They plan to revoke H4 EAD as per their plan and currently plan to publish the H4 EAD rule revoke item in their Spring 2020 Agenda item as per plan.  The context of DHS stating that H4 EAD does not cause irreparable damage was only for injunction consideration…Without context the meaning changes and many have twisted the truth.  Read Complete Summary of H4 EAD for March to May 2020 – DHS Response for full clarification
  • April 20th, 2020: There were a lot of updates on the court case side in the last 30 days. Unfortunately, we all were tied up with current pandemic situation and missed to post updates. Currently, court has given dates for all the parties to submit motions and case details. The deadlines are for Immigration Voice, it is April 20th, Response by Save Jobs due by May 4th. We will post full updates on this soon. Stay tuned. For now, below are the case action summary for your review directly from court. H4 EAD Court Updates April 2020
  • March 16th, 2020 : No new update in March yet. Either of the parties are yet to file the documents. Only the appointment of the new trial lawyer is done by DHS so far.  
  • Feb 24th, 2020 : The district court received the judgement order from the appeals court and also court informed that DHS appointed Trial lawyer Joshua S. Press as the new Counsel for Defendant. Neither parties have filed any documents yet.  See below screenshots of the latest update details from Feb last week. H4 EAD Case Update March 2020 Update on H4 EAD Lawsuit from Feb 2020
  • Feb 11th, 2020 : The appeals court on February 7th issued a formal mandate on the previous judgment given in November 2019. Basically, a mandate is nothing but a formal order from appeals court telling that their process is over and the judgment is final from their side and it has to be taken up by the lower court. The Mandate document is filed after the re-hearing requests deadline is passed. As you know re-hearing requests were filed by DHS and Immigration voice, but they were denied by court. Hence, Appeals court ultimately issued the formal mandate/order to the District court to take the case further.  Now, the next steps will be from District court where the merits of the case would be looked at…. It is going to be a long process as well…We need to wait and see… Below is the screenshot of the formal mandate from the appeals court. H4 EAD Court Case February - Formal Mandate by Appeals Court mandate issued in case - history of H4 ead
  • January 27th, 2020:  Court responded to the rehearing request by Immigration Voice on Friday, Jan 24th, 2020. It was denied by Judges and panels. There were two court orders that were released denying the re-hearing petition by Immigration voice & intervenors. See below.  Next step is for the case to go back to district court as the re-hearing request is denied.  Jan 2020 - H4 EAD Case Court Order Rehearing Denied Jan 2020 - H4 EAD Case Court Order Rehearing Denied - Second Order Jan 2020 Court Case H4 EAD - Updates Info
  • December 30th, 2019 :  We had updates on the lawsuit, where motion was filed by DHS for extension of date for rehearing, which was denied by court. Also, Immigration Voice also filed for rehearing challenging the judgment by appeals court.  Check out the complete details at  H4 EAD Lawsuit – Rehearing Requests, Court Order Summary .  Below are the various timeline of events filed with court. H4 EAD Lawsuit updates Summary - Dec 2019
  • November 8th, 2019 : Court gave Judgment today in favor or Save Jobs USA. The H4 EAD Case will be sent back to District court for next steps.  This win for Save Jobs does not mean that they got the case in their favor, all they got is a win in Appeals court for them to go back to District Court and contest the case again.  District court will review the case again in detail. So, it will be dragged further. See below and  Read H4 EAD Lawsuit – Court Judgement Summary  H4 EAD Lawsuit Court Judgment by Appeals Court
  • November 4th, 2019 :  No new update last week. The most recent update on the case that transcript of Oral Argument was entered on Oct 22nd. It does not really mean anything in terms of the decision. Just a process thing for the court.  See below. We are waiting for the Court opinion/ Judgment.  There is no SLA as such, we need to wait, can be few weeks or couple of months.  You can see below screenshot taken on Oct 28th, 2019, which says the update is from Oct 22nd, 2019. H4 EAD Update October 2019 - Transcript updated Court
  • September 27th, 2019 :  Court had oral argument on time. It lasted about 45 min or so. We have compiled the entire key points of the argument. Read H4 EAD Lawsuit – Oral Argument Summary, Next steps. 
  • September 25th, 2019 :  Court has given the final schedule and timing for each of the parties int he Oral argument. Each of the parties get 15 minutes. DHS 15 min and Save Jobs 15 minutes to present their argument. This will be the first oral argument of the day. They changed the order, if you see previous update, it was the second one. See below from court website. Court Argument Time and Date - Save Jobs USA - DHS
  • September 20th, 2019 :  DHS and Save Jobs submitted two documents.
    • Initially, DHS Submitted a document that references a case called “Humane Society II”, where the current Appeals court rejected the case as lacking standing. DHS basically looked at previous cases and picked up something that the current Appeals court dismissed and referenced the same so that the oral argument would be in their favor.  See below screenshot. DHS Argument Sep 20 - Court Update - Standing Document
    • Save Jobs submitted response to the DHS claim indicating they did share clearly the injury details in the past and does not find any relation with the Humane Society case, also DHS did not mention about this case details in the past and are inventing these now…See below screenshot.
    • We need to see how the court will consider the new case details that DHS is comparing to and how Save Jobs has responded to the same. Save Jobs Sep 2019 Document - Standing Info
  • September 18th, 2019 : Court issued an order in the evening  that the oral argument would go on as planned before on Sep 27th, 2019. No changes to the plan. They say that the argument will be limited to issue of standing. Basically, what they are trying to say is that they will look at Save Jobs USA’s key argument point, why they came to US appeals court, as district court said Save Jobs lacks standing,  rather than current H4 EAD rule revocation in progress.  You can read the actual Save Jobs Argument brief summary submitted in Jan 2019. See below the Standing Point from Summary Judgement of District Court from 2016 and current court order :Save Jobs - Case Standing Info for Oral Argument on Sep 27 H4 EAD Oral Argument to be conducted Sep 27-2019 Court order
  • September 16th, 2019 : DHS, Save Jobs USA and Immigration Voice submitted documents to court for the recent order issued by Court on Sep 11th.  Below is the summary
    • DHS says, it is still working on the rule and going through the regulatory process. Their earliest planned date to publish is Spring 2020 and they say the oral argument should be removed.  See below. DHS Response to Court Order in Sep 2019
    • Immigration Voice says, the oral argument must be removed as well as it will be waste of court time and resources as the case is not ripe for oral argument and also that Save Jobs could not demonstrate potential harm due to the H4 holders working, so no point in oral argument now.  See below. Intervenor - ImmigrationVoice Response to Court Order in September - 2019
    • Save Jobs USA says, The oral argument should proceed as planned as DHS gave multiple assurances that H4 Rule would be removed, but nothing really happend. They wasted 2 years of time, they were granted multiple chances to remove the rule, but no concrete action was taken. There has been years of delay and taking this off the oral argument will hurt the American workers. Also, they are questioning the DHS authority, if they could issue the rule or not, so should proceed. Save Jobs also believes that even if they proceed with H4 EAD rule removal, there are many, trying to challenge that in lawsuit, so it has a difficult path, so oral argument should be held now.  See below. Save Jobs Response to Court Order - Sept 2019
    • You can check the actual court documents on our H4 EAD Lawsuit Court Documents Page 
  • Updates Before Sep 16th, 2019 : You can scroll down below for previous updates in order by dates before. 

General H4 EAD News   :

  • May 4th, 2021 : No new general news on H4 EAD in last  year or in current year in last few months. Now with COVID situation, the biometrics appointments are delayed and ASCs are slowly opening. 
  • Dec 30th, 2019 : No general H4 EAD news in December yet. Nothing in November, October and September.  Below are some general updates from previous months.
    • H4 EAD Processing time Delays Lawsuits : Since June 2019, Immigration Law firms like RN Law firm in Houston, TX have been filing H4 EAD delays lawsuits every couple of weeks…there were multiple H4 EAD delays lawsuits filed by many individuals stating that H4 EAD adjudication delays with New H4 Biometrics Process is causing hardships for them due to the USCIS delays. You can check Summary of H4 EAD Processing Delays Lawsuit.
  • H4 EAD Protection act Bill re-introduced : Rep Eshoo re-introduced H4 EAD protection act bill in House in May, and it is in sub-committee for review as of June 2019. All details at H4 EAD Employee Protection act Reintroduced 2019

Check full detailed updates in below timeline.  Scroll down bottom for latest H4 EAD news update. Join Telegram, Facebook and Community Forum to discuss, ask, share.

This article covers below aspects:

  • Background to H4 EAD Rule
  • What’s H4 EAD Lawsuit filed in court ?
  • H4 EAD and Trump Administration actions history timeline by date from 2017 to today, Latest News, Lawsuit updates
  • H4 EAD Revocation common FAQs – validity, can you apply, future applications, etc.
  • H4 EAD Rule Revocation Impact Analysis and current state Summary
  • User Comments – Heated discussions

You may check out our short video on  Entire H4 EAD History from 2015 to 2018.

Background of H4 visa EAD Rule :

For many years, since the H4 visa program inception, H-4 holders have not been provided with any work authorization. This changed on May 26, 2015 when USCIS passed the Employment Authorization for Certain H-4 Dependent Spouses rule. The H4 visa dependent spouses were eligible for work authorization EAD provided the H-1B spouse satisfies one of the below two:

  • Have an approved I-140, which is the immigration petition for foreign citizens to get Green Card or Permanent Residency in USA.
  • Have H1B visa status extended beyond 6 years under AC21 Act, which allows H1B holders seeking Green Card to work and stay in USA beyond 6 years, if their Green Card or Permanent Residency Application is Pending.

Soon after the H4 Visa EAD Rule was enacted, two things happened:
1. Thousands of H-4 spouses applied for H4 visa EAD  ( Employment Authorization Document) and got their first chance to work in US after many years of staying at home.
2. A lawsuit was filed against the H4 EAD rule to stop it from going into motion. More details on H4 EAD Lawsuit.

What’s the H4 EAD Lawsuit ?

‘Save Jobs USA’ (an organization comprised of IT workers who claim they lost their jobs to H-1B workers) filed its lawsuit against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on April 23, 2015 before the rule was about to go live. The lawsuit was initially dismissed by a Federal district court in September 2016 (check references below ) as “Save Jobs USA” could not defend their lawsuit that H4 EAD holders will impact them. The plaintiffs, who is ‘Save Jobs USA’, filed an appeal to the United States Court of Appeal for the DC Circuit. The plaintiffs, claim two things:
1. The new rule has no protections for US workers and increases the pool of workers looking for jobs
2. DHS never had the authority to grant EADs to H-4 visa holders.

H4 EAD & Trump Administration Timeline, Latest News :  

Since President Trump’s administration took office, there has been lot of speculation and rumors about what will happen to H-4 visa EAD rule. Below is the timeline of what has happened since President Trump took oath:

  • February 2, 2017 : The Trump administration requested ( filed a motion) a 60 day abeyance  (state of temporary inactivity ) to consider the issue and submit their brief ( response to consider the case).
  •  April 3, 2017 : The administration asked ( filed a new motion) for additional 180 day abeyance(state of temporary inactivity ) before they can provide their opinion. The Trump administration will update court every 60 days on the issue and update court before elapse of 180 days.
  • June 23, 2017 : The appeals court granted a stay on Jun 23rd, 2017 and asked both the parties, SAVE Jobs USA and DHS to file further motions on how they would like to proceed with the case by Sep 27, 2017.
  • September 20, 2017 :  SAVE Jobs USA has filed its motion stating that DHS has not taken any action and no publication of rule has been done in Federal register related to the H4 EAD rule and they requested for oral argument to conclude the case. They continue to tell that the delay would hurt american workers and new litigation would begin again.
  • September 27, 2017 :  DHS ( Trump administration)  filed a motion and requested the appeals court to hold the current H4 EAD case again in abeyance( which basically means hold on temporarily in suspension ), until December 31,2017.  The whole reason DHS have asked for this extension is to ensure that DHS and administration align their entire approach to implement Trump Executive Order 13788 on Buy American Hire American  and consider how to handle the H4 EAD rule as part of  overall view. For source, you will need PACER Login to view the entire document on court’s website.  Below is a screenshot of the actual info. H4-EAD-Lawsuit--Update-Extended-till-Dec-31-2017
  • November  17, 2017 :  There was a new request to extend the deadline, but court has denied the extension and has asked to continue and proceed and file their motions by January 2nd, 2018.  See belowH4 EAD News Update - 2017 November for January 2-2018
  • November 21st, 2017 (Unofficial – News) : A News article on Breitbart news says that there is a regulation drafted by DHS and is on the table to end the H4 visa EAD program.  Until we see this published, it is still a rumor. You can read the News on Breitbart.com  . There are so many speculations all over the place, please take every news with a pinch of salt.
  • December 14th, 2017 ( Official ) : DHS has published an agenda item “Removing H-4 Dependent Spouses from the Class of Aliens Eligible for Employment Authorization” today in the Fall 2017 Regulatory agenda. Basically all it says is that they intend to amend the original rule published for H4 EAD Rule in 2015  and potentially remove it as per the Buy American, Hire American EO by Trump Administration . It states that the DHS Secretary has authority to do as per INA regulations. Not many details published except that it is part of the agenda and they plan to remove it. We have no details on what happens to current H4 EAD holder working.  As of today, basically nothing changes as it is in proposed rule state.  We can expect progress or update on this in February 2018.   Below is a screenshot on what you see on regulations.gov  You can check the actual official info at Reginfo.govH4 EAD Work Rule Amendment 2017 Fall Agenda
  • December 22nd, 2017 ( Official ) : Both DHS and SAVE Jobs have filed respective motions, one to hold the case in abeyance (hold), other fo oral argument and not hold the case in abeyance. Below is quick summary.  
    • DHS Motion Summary : DHS has filed a motion to hold the lawsuit in abeyance ( basically on hold/suspension ) as they are in regulatory process of implementing the “Removal of  the H4 EAD” and they plan for Notice for proposed rule making ( NPRM) in February 2018. They say that having an oral argument now is of no use, when the H4 EAD rule is going to removed with regulation. As they are in process of removing, they are asking more time and will inform court in July, 2018 on the progress. You can check the document link in Official Documents section below.
    • SAVE Jobs Motion Summary : SAVE Jobs argues that in the first place DHS never had the authority to implement the H4 EAD rule without an act in Congress. They say that the regulatory process will take years, as the previous H4 EAD rule making took over 2 years from publication in regulatory agenda, and it will impact many of the Americans. Also, this process will lead to more lawsuits around the DHS rule to remove H4 EAD. The best path is to have oral argument and have a judgment.You can check the document link in Official Documents section below.
    • Current Status : Court is yet to review and give a decision on the motions filed by both. We will keep you posted.
    • Official Documents : You can read both the documents at H4 Visa EAD – Official Court Documents DHS, SAVE Jobs.
  • January 5th, 2018 ( Official ) : Many are waiting still for the update as we are past Jan 2nd, 2018 ,which was when we are supposed to hear something from the Court. As of now, there is no update on the case. We have checked court case updates, nothing has been published. Just to give you a perspective, the court has responded at least over 1.5 month after the motions were filed. As you can see below the actual court updates from the case on Court’s website, I have highlighted the one in RED, where court responded to the Motion filed. Now, if the same trend continues from court, we may not hear back anything end of January or February. Of course, just guessing here based on history. We will keep you posted, once there is an update. As nothing has happened, it can be assumed that Court has given DHS until July 2018 to hear the update. Again, we need official court response, will let you all know, once updated by court.
  • February 21st, 2018 ( Official ) : After a very long wait, finally today there is an update on the case by court.  They have ordered the case to be held in Abeyance ( basically hold) and denied the plea of oral argument by SAVE Jobs. As you can see below, they mention that, the reason for their decision is that they see the plan of rule-making  by DHS to propose rule to remove H4 EAD in February 2018.  DHS is asked is report status on the H4 EAD rule within 90 days from the order day, which is today Feb 21st, 2018 and also every 90 days after that.  Basically, DHS has to file an update with Court by May 22, 2018 on the H4 EAD rule-making.  Now, as far as the rule-making from DHS, nothing has been sent to OMB yet for review. So, we need to still wait.
    • Official Documents : Read Official Docs at H4 Visa EAD – Official Court Documents DHS, SAVE Jobs.
    • Next Steps : DHS to update Court regarding H4 EAD rule making by May 22, 2018.
    • H4 EAD Removal Rule Making Status : No rule is sent to OMB for review yet. Need to wait.
      H4 EAD Update February 2018 - Case to be Held in Abeyance
    • February 28th, 2018 ( Official ): DHS filed a status report with the DC Circuit Court stating that upon review by USCIS, they believe that draft of the regulation need to be revised further and they need some more time until June 2018.hey anticipate that it will be June 2018, when they can submit the proposed regulation to Office of Management and Budget for review and clearance  in time for publication.  The court document says that the decision to remove H4 EAD using regulation does not change, but they need more time. See below the document with sections highlighted.
      • Official Documents :Read Official Docs at H4 Visa EAD – Official Court Documents DHS, SAVE Jobs.
      • Next Steps : DHS to update court regarding H4 EAD removal regulation rule making process  in next 90 Days, maybe end of May 2018.
      • H4 EAD Removal Rule Making Status : Regulation will be revised further and send to OMB by June 2018. Need to wait.H4 EAD Update Lawsuit March 2018 News
    • March 26th, 2018 ( Official ): Few of the Members of Congress wrote to USCIS Secretary requesting to reconsider and not revoke the H4 EAD rule.  But, USCIS responded saying just that, they are working towards the president’s goal of Buy American and Hire American and everyone will get a chance to submit comments during the rule comments period to submit feedback.  See below. You can check the actual Request Letter and Respond from USCIS H4 EAD USCIS Updated Secretary April 2018
    • April 4th, 2018 ( Official ): USCIS Director wrote to Senate outlining various H1B and H4 changes in a letter and plans of USCIS. It also talks about their intention to remove H4 EAD and the regulation in planning. Below is the screenshot of the exact info. It clearly tells that they plan to remove it with regulation and public will get a chance to provide feedback during comment and notice period. Check original document of USCIS Letter sent to Senate Judiciary committee H4 EAD April 2018 News Update
    • May 10th, 2018 ( Official ) : H4 EAD Rule removal is now part of Spring 2018 agenda and the timeline has been updated to June 2018 for rule proposal and comment period. The current rule published in RegInfo.gov does not have much changes, except there is no need justification in the current rule proposal. See below the comparison. The green highlighted one is not there is Spring 2018 rule info. Check the actual rule info at Reginfo.gov Spring 2018 H4 Removal RuleSpring 2018 Regulatory Agenda H4 Visa EAD Rule Removal
  • May 16th, 2018 : A group of 130 members of congress lead by Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Rep. Mia Love,  signed a letter to the DHS asking Trump administration to reconsider its plans to remove H4 EAD rule  for certain spouses of H1B. You can read actual : Singed Letter H4 EAD 
  • May 23rd, 2018 ( Official ) :  Despite all the letters, etc. nothing has changed from DHS/ USCIS in their stance towards the rule removal. Yesterday,   DHS filed an update with the court indicating their stance and the progress with H4 EAD removal rule. It is a simple update and tells that the H4 EAD rule removal is in final clearance and will be sent to OMB for review and their plans remain unchanged for publication of NPRM for H4 EAD Removal   Below is  the most important piece of info clipped from the court document. You can check full  Official H4 EAD Court Documents H4 EAD Rule News Update May 2018 Latest Court Update
  • August 20th,  2018 ( Official ) :  USCIS updated court on their latest status indicating that final DHS Clearance review is ongoing  and its intention/ stance on the issue remains unchanged. See below screenshot from the exact ruling. In general, the OMB review process takes anywhere from a month or more, so we may expect the ruling around in late September 2018.  You can check the full document at   Official H4 EAD Court Documents USCIS H4 EAD update court - August 2018
  • September 11th,  2018 ( Official ): SAVE Jobs USA has filed a motion in court asking the court to conduct briefing and oral argument very soon. It is pretty lengthy 11 page document submitted by SAVE Jobs USA that highlights the delays and says nothing has moved in the last year and half and if it goes at this pace, it will take years for this case to be closed and they say “Justice Delayed is Justice Denied”.   Also, they say that there could be another litigation as well, if the H4 EAD is removed, so they are asking for oral hearing to clarify one simple question if DHS had the authority to give H4 EAD without Congress approval.  The key info is highlighted below in screenshots.  If you are interested in reading the actual filed Motion Document, you can check it out at  Official H4 EAD Court Documents H4 EAD News Update September 2018 - Save Jobs USA Motion to reopen case Conclusion of the H4 EAD Litigation September 2018 Update Court
  • September 21st,  2018 ( Official ): In response to SAVE Jobs motion filed earlier this month, DHS submitted in court their response requesting to hold the case as it is as they are making swift progress. DHS’s senior leadership has reviewed and proposed some changes and they plan to submit the rule to OMB within 3 months. DHS argues in the response document to all the concerns raised by SAVE Jobs USA in their motion regarding more jobs lost, future litigation, etc. The overall message DHS says is that, it is in best interest of everyone to hold the case hearing on hold until the process is completed as it would waste court’s and everyone’s time as their intent has not changed and they are making swift progress.     The key info is highlighted below in screenshots.  You also read the actual response document at by DHS at Official H4 EAD Court Documents H4 EAD News Update September 22 filed by DHS supporting the NPRM
  • October 16th,  2018 ( Official ): Senators Harris and Gillibrand wrote a letter to USCIS on Sept 26th,2018 regarding H4 EAD removal to reconsider as it will create extreme hardship for many families.  USCIS responded officially to their letter stating that their priorities are to implement President Trump’s Buy American Hire American policies and safeguard US workers, stating that there will be comment period for everyone to provide feedback. You can check Official  Letter from USCIS for Senator Harris 
  • October 17th,  2018 ( Official ): Fall 2018 Regulatory agenda was published and it included H4 EAD rule removal as one of the agenda item. DHS is looking to propose NPRM for H4 EAD rule removal in November 2018 as per the update. We are just waiting for the rule to be published. Check more details of Fall 2018 Regulatory Agenda – H1B, H4 Impact Summary 
  • November 16th,  2018 (Official) :  A new bill called “H4 Employment Protection Act” was introduced in House by Reps. Eshoo and Lofgren. The whole idea of the bill is to stop Trump Administration from Revoking / Removing the H4 EAD Bill. It talks about hardships and benefits. Still very early stages, not much to predict. You can read Summary of the H4 Employment Protection Act, Status, Impact 
  • November 16th,  2018 (Official) :  Also, semiannual regulatory agenda with H4 EAD rule removal info was published today in Federal Register. It is under sequence number 299. The NPRM is not yet published. 
  • Nov 17th to Dec 16th,  2018 ( Unofficial)  :  No updates from Nov 16th to Dec 16th. There was a status report due to Court on Nov 19th, but nothing was sent to court. We are expecting that DHS would very likely publish the rule for OMB review by December 21st, 2018. The reason is that they have mentioned that to the court on September 21st that they would file it to OMB within 3 months and that day would be Dec 21st. Check DHS court documents  and above updated from September 21st screenshot of official court. 
  • Dec 17th, 2018( Official) :  US Court of appeals issued  two Per Curiam Orders ( basically issued by court and not a specific judge)  stating few things : 
    • To remove the court case of H4 EAD Lawsuit from abeyance ( basically on hold or dormant status)
    • Denied the motion filed to expedite the case ( take decision quicker)
    • Granted a motion for leave to intervene ( meaning a third party other than the two parties fighting in the case to join the case past deadline ) for ImmigrationVoice team to join the case and let them put in their argument in oral hearing. Check out ImmigrationVoice FB Page
    • Ordered all the parties to file a new opening briefs( a written argument on what went wrong with case and facts) and also the new party joined the case to file the same. See dates in below screenshot.
    • Below is the screenshot. Also, we have dates now setup for the replacement brief. You can check out full court documents from today at H4 EAD Lawsuit Court Documents History 
    • It is going to be interesting as we have lot of things going on in parallel with DHS and court case in progress.
    • Next Action Steps in the H4 EAD Lawsuit : By Jan 16, 2019 Save Jobs USA has to file a new Replacement Opening Brief ( written documentation supporting their lawsuit ) and after that by Feb 16th, 2019 DHS has to file their Brief (supporting documentation for the lawsuit defence ). Immigration Voice will need to file their Brief ( supporting information and facts) regarding the lawsuit by Feb 22nd, 2019. Based on all of these Brief’s submitted, SAVE Jobs USA has to reply by March 15, 2019.
    • You may watch our short 3 min H4 EAD Court Order YouTube Video explaining what the court orders mean.
  • Jan 15th,  2019(UnOfficial ) :  No new updates on H4 EAD until today in this new Year 2019.  Tomorrow is when court should get the replacement brief from SAVE Jobs USA.  Also, Trump did a random tweet without any details saying that H1B will be given path to citizenship. With partial Government shutdown, there will be delays for the H4 EAD removal process… Also, We still continue to wait for the proposed rule to be sent to OMB to be reviewed for NPRM. We were expecting it to be published around last week of December 2018, but now with the new court orders and US Govt Shutdown, things have changed and we have to wait and see what happens .  
  • Jan 16th,  2019( Official ) : SAVE Jobs USA Filed its replacement Opening brief today. It is a pretty lengthly 77 page document with an appendix of 116 pages. The replacement brief filed by Save Jobs USA emphasises on the previous points such as DHS lacking authority to give H4 EADs in first place and how H4 EADs are hurting the SAV Jobs USA members. Check out Summary of H4 EAD Lawsuit Replacement Brief with Argument Points, Facts 
  • Jan 18th,  2019( Official ) : DHS filed a motion today to put a stay on the deadlines as there is no funding due to Govt. Shutdown and they request to put the case in abeyance and put hold on the deadlines to submit response.  Court reviewed it and denied the motion to hold the case in Abeyance or put stay on the deadlines. See below.  You can check all court documents at H4 EAD Lawsuit Court Documents History 
  • Jan 23rd, 2019 ( Official ) : DHS filed another consent motion requesting to enlarge the deadlines by 30 days, they have raised Govt Shutdown issues and the situation that many cannot work even on voluntary basis. After further review, Court has given consent for the same. Below is the screenshot. TO read actual documents, check out H4 EAD Lawsuit Court Documents History H4 EAD Court Decision to Move Deadlines to March 2019 Update
  • Feb 20th,  2019( Official ) : DHS Submitted the H4 EAD Rule removal to OMB ( Office of Management and Budget) for review today ( see below). It is marked as economically significant. If you look at the general 9 Step Federal Rule Making Process, we are in step number four.  OMB Office can take anywhere from few days to 90 days. Now, with all the lawsuit and this going on, it is not very positive news for H4 EAD holders.  Based on today’s update of OMB, we have revised the H4 EAD removal Predictions, check out H4 EAD Rule Removal Predictions for updated timelines.   The actual H4 EAD removal rule is not published yet and still in proposed rule stage. Still all eligible H4 holders can apply for EAD.  Watch the short video below as well. Check the official OMB Pending Review of Rule on Reginfo.govH4 EAD Rule Sent to for OMB to Review - February 2019
  • March 12th, 2019(Official ) : On the lawsuit side, DHS has requested Court to extend their date by 14 days due to pre-planned court hearing travels, leave. They have asked the new date to be April 1st. Court is yet to respond to the request. See below for the official info on the documents submitted.  On the rule making side, nothing has changed and the rule info is submitted to OMB ( Office of Management and Budget) and they are reviewing the same.  If court approves, we may not hear anything until April. We need to wait and see, if court will give the extension…Stay tuned for updates.DHS request court to enlarge deadlines by 15 days from March to April 1-2019 Info
  • March 14th, 2019(Official ) : Court reviewed DHS request and approved it with an order to extend the date to submit brief to April 1st, see below the revised dates. This order gives DHS more time for OMB  review of the initial proposed rule.You can check H4 EAD Lawsuit Court Documents History  for actual documents.  No new update on the rule-making side, we are still waiting for OMB update on the rule review…DHS is just buying more time to have the rule review complete from OMB, so that they can have a strong brief in the court on their intent to revoke the H4 EAD rule..Stay tuned for updates.   H4 EAD DHS Brief Due on April 1st 2019 Info
  • April 1st, 2019(Unofficial ) : No new updates today as of 8:30 PM EST. Today was the deadline for brief from DHS,  but nothing came out today as of 8:30 PM EST.…Usually the updates happen in the business hours, we have not seen anything today. Maybe we see something tomorrow. Also, we are still waiting for review and updated from OMB, we were expecting something there, nothing moved there as well. On the other hand, H1B 2020 Season Starts Today and USCIS Launched H1B Employer Data Hub today.  Also, if you are on H4, recently USCIS introduced New Form I-539, with Biometrics that will impact H4 EAD processing times.  You can check out our short video in summary for March 2019 updates, you can watch it below. It is a 2 min video. Also, if you are filing 
  • April 2nd, 2019(Official ) : Late last night ( see below) DHS filed their brief with the court, where they argue that Save Jobs could not establish their argument that it will harm SAVE Jobs Members. It is a 49 page document, we have summarized it. Check out Summary of DHS Argument and Appellee’s brief submitted with court. We have put up a short video on Youtube, you can check it below. Court Brief Submitted by DHS in April 2019
  • Also, there is another update on Skilled Immigrants America Facebook group stating the background work done by a group of H4 holders advocating to fight against the removal of H4 EAD rule and lawsuit. They have met with OMB and submitted lot of data and report on the current situation of H4 holders . The group believes that it helped shape up DHS brief to indicate that Save Jobs does not have standing in the case. Check it at : Skilled Immigrants America Facebook group 
  • April 8th, 2019(Official ) :  We had two Intervenor briefs submitted yesterday. One by Immigration voice only and Second one by Immigration voice and other non-profit trade organizations.  Both of them support H4 EAD and support all the actions of DHS.
    • First Brief by Immigration Voice and Non-Profit Trade Orgs : The first brief is 38 page document and talks about the merits of H4 EAD program to US businesses and highlight the impact and how it will affect families, etc. and support H4 EAD. Key points include 
      • Contributions to US Economy, Taxes, etc
      • Damage done to irrevocable life decisions of H4 Holders
      • How EAD will not impact american jobs
      • DHS had power to create H4 EAD rule based on 1324a.
      • Congress did not prevent H4 EAD as they did not had any intent on the same.
      • Send it back to district court, if has different stand on the case.
      • For Full details read Summary of Intervenor’s Brief by Immigration Voice and Team.
      • You can check out the video summary of this brief below.
    • Second Brief by Immigration Voice Only : The second brief is 54 pages and talks about the case supporting DHS brief and the overall case addressing the Save Jobs points raised in their brief.. Key Points include 
      • DHS argued it correctly in their brief
      • Immigration voice has standing as Intervenor due to court order and the potential injury to H4 Holders
      • 50 years History of how INA has given authority for DHS to create rules like H4 EAD.
      • If different stand, send it back to the district court.
      • For full details read Summary of Immigration Voice Only – Intervenor Brief 
      • You can check out the video summary of this brief below.
    •  From Rule-making side,  no update from OMB on the H4 EAD rule removal yet, it still pending review.  
  • April 25th, 2019(Official ) :  We have a scheduled date now for the OMB review meetings ( EO 12866 Meetings ) for the H4 EAD removal rule.  It is scheduled for May 1st, 2019 for 3 pm.  It is updated on the Reginfo.gov website. See below.  On the lawsuit side from the court, no new updates, it is same state since April 8th.   We are expecting something to be filed by Save Jobs USA on April 29th, 2019.  
    OMB Review Meetings H4 EAD
  • April 29th, 2019(Official ) :  Save Jobs USA filed their Appellant’s reply brief earlier today. It is a 37 page document. In short below is the summary from the reply brief
    • Save Jobs USA argues on their fundamental points that H4 EAD hurts their members. They put in counter arguments for DHS and intervenor’s arguments on DHS authority, post complaint date evidence.
    • Save Jobs USA says that there is no point in sending this back to old court, as the key points were discussed.
    • Also, they say that fundamental rule of H4 EAD was to help H1B holders and it is in the H4 Rule creation charter, now DHS is contradicting its own points, etc. Some of these arguments are logical
    • Save Jobs make many references to the cases, only court can validate all such proofs.
    • For full details read the article Summary of the Appellant’s Brief filed by Save Jobs USA 
    • You can watch the video summary as well below
  •   On the rule removal side, the next meeting is scheduled for 1st of May.  Stay tuned for updates. Appellant Reply Brief April 29-2019 Info

  • May 4th, 2019(UnOfficial ) :  No new update today. One of the fellow (who represents Save Jobs USA in the H4 EAD Court Case) from Center for Immigration studies published that OMB may not directly approve H4 EAD rule removal as it is in current state based on his analysis of parallel with DACA as it could end up in legal battle. So, it can take time and DHS will take a deep dive and he believes that Court would ultimately decide such things. Check article .  No update on the OMB review meeting.  The purpose of the OMB Review meeting, also called as EO 12866 review meeting, is to review the current rule proposed by DHS to assess the holistic purpose, costs, benefits. The exact statement : “Executive Order 12866 requires an analysis of the costs and benefits of rules and, to the extent permitted by law, action only on the basis of a reasoned determination that the benefits justify the costs.”
  • May 8th, 2019(Official ) : OMB Meetings list page is fully updated with data from previous meetings that were conducted in March. They were attended by many groups. See below screenshots. There were few meetings held on 3/26/2019.  The meeting at 1:30 was attended by IRLI, which is a American Employees Rights Organization, unlike at 1:00 PM the meeting was attended by many Indians and USCIS officials.  Most of these meetings are OMB review meetings to assess the impact of the rule as part of due diligence.  These meetings can be requested to work with OMB to convey the feedback. Overall, one weird thing is that one of them says Final Rule Stage, it is very confusing as the rule is still in proposed rule stage and you cannot be in final rule stage…I am guessing it could be a typo…Because, as you can see all rules have to go through 9 Rule Making Steps and H4 EAD Removal rule is not there yet…We are still few days away from reaching the 90 days mark for OMB deadline.  
  • Also, the overall status of the rule on Federal Register has not changed and it still says Pending Review. Only new info added is the meetings data. You can check all of this at Reginfo.gov H4 EAD rule
  • If you know anyone who attended or you are one of them who attended meeting, may you can share details with the community in comments or in WhatsApp groups listed below or Facebook. 
  • No New update on the Lawsuit side, it is same as before..
    H4 EAD Rule Removal OMB Review Meetigns Info May 2019 IRLI OMB Meetings - H4 EAD Remvoal Self Meetings OMB H4 EAD Removal
  • May 20th, 2019(Official & Unofficial ) : OMB Meetings list page had typos of the final rule, now it is updated to reflect “Proposed Rule Stage”, but one typo still exists for the May 1st meeting. it still says Scheduled. Also, we hit the 90 day mark today for OMB review, technically, we should have heard something today, but they can extend by another 30 days until June 20th, need to wait and see. No update from the court side on the Lawsuit, we are waiting for court’s next steps.H4 EAD OMB Review Meetings updated to Proposed Rule - May 20th
  • May 22nd, 2019(Official ) : The H4 EAD rule removal is part of the Spring 2019 Regulatory Agenda. It was part of Spring 2018 Agenda as well.  Technically NO new status update or new development.  Appearing on the regulatory agenda means that, it is still a priority for the current administration and nothing else. See below screenshot and at Reginfo.gov. There are rumors by few websites telling that the rule will be published soon by Govt., which is pure speculation and NOT true.   There is no update from the Court Side on the lawsuit.H4 EAD Rule Removal in Spring 2019 Agenda - May Update
  • May 27th,  2019(Un-Official ) : There is a lot of wrong information/ Fake News reported by many mainstream Indian News Papers online saying that US Govt begins removing H4 EAD… This is false information, nothing new….It is unfortunately trending on Google News as well and many users would see all of these articles in their Google Suggest in browser (see below screenshot). The only thing that happened in the last few days is that H4 EAD rule removal was part of the Spring 2019 Regulatory Agenda, that’s about it.  There is one section in that, where it says NPRM Date as May 2019, which is just an approximate date that USCIS gives when they publish a regulatory agenda item. It used to be June 2018, when they published in Spring 2018 agena. Just scroll up to see May 10th, 2018 update…Again, it is pure speculation and that date does not mean anything… Anyways, please do not panic and be mislead.  Also, on the lawsuit side, there is no new update from court today as well as of now.  Fake News H4 EAD Removal May 2019
  • May 29th,  2019(Un-Official ) : No new updates as of today morning both from the court side regarding lawsuit or on the H4 EAD rule removal side. There is again continuation of the false news spread by many news agencies based on the mainstream media wrong info from previous days, it is trending on Google, do not worry, it is all the same info on Unified agenda of Spring 2019, nothing new other than that. See below the trending info on Google news Fals H4 EAD news by media in may 2019
  • May 30th,  2019(Official ) :  Rep Eshoo re-introduced H4 EAD protection act bill yesterday in House. It has a long way to go…We have covered all details at H4 EAD Employee Protection act Reintroduced 2019.  Besides that there is nothing new. No updates from the court or on the OMB side from the H4 Rule removal.
  • June 6th,  2019(official ) :  We have a new lawsuit for H4 EAD delays in processing
    • H4 EAD Processing time Delays Lawsuit : A lawsuit was filed on June 6th, 2019 by few individuals stating that H4 EAD adjudication delays with New H4 Biometrics Process is causing hardships for them due to the USCIS delays. You can Read  Lawsuit document here .
    • On the other hand, for general US visa application, US state department is asking Social Media accounts info on DS-160, DS-260 forms now.
  • June 20th,  2019( Unofficial ) :   There was a tweet by one of the attorney’s attending AILA Annual conference saying that the economic analysis was wrong and Govt is trying to fix that and there is no estimated time on the same. You can check tweet , see below. Nothing on the lawsuit side. If you are waiting on H4 Approvals, we have couple of users, who reported H4 Extensions Approvals after Biometrics. H4EAD Update OMB June
  • June 21th,  2019( Official ) :  We had an update from the court on the on the lawsuit. They published an order with date for the oral argument set to be September 27, 2019 at 9:30 AM.  It also says that the argument panel will be revealed 30 days before the date of the argument.  It also, says the court order does not change.  See below.
    • What happens during Oral Argument : On the day of the Oral argument, each of the parties present to the judge with the time allocated to them. Unlike in trial court, during oral argument in appellate level, judges can be active participants and ask questions to the parties. The panel would have read the briefs and free to ask.  You can read Wiki Page of Oral Argument in US.
    • You can check official court documents H4 EAD for actual court order document. 
      Oral argument h4 EAD removal lawsuit update
      Oral Argument Scheduled H4 EAD Court Case 2019
  • June 24th,  2019( Unofficial ) :  Many asked, if OMB can extend the review deadline past the 120 days as they hit the deadline on June 20th.  The reality is that, if the agency head wants to extend it, they can do it for as long as they want. That’s the guidance, see below screenshot. For official info check EO 12866 FAQs on Reginfo.gov.EO 12866 OMB Rule Review - How long can they take
  • July 1st,  2019( Official ) : Save Jobs USA re-filed their Opening and Reply Briefs with concerns raised by the court on the abbreviations. There were three documents that they filed ( see below). One is the letter, second and third are the actual documents. There are no major changes done, we have verified the documents, they are primarily abbreviations and referral info for some of the documentation for proofs.  You can check out the actual court documents filed today at page  H4 EAD Lawsuit Official Court DocumentsNew Corrected Court Brief by Save Jobs USA - July 2018 Update
  • July 5th,  2019( Official ) :  Immigration Voice re-filed their Intervenor Brief with court today to fix the acronym related issues in the brief. They filed only two documents, one that says that they are submitting a letter and second one is the corrected Intervenor Brief document. The document length has not changed we have verified all 53 pages and they look more or less the same, they fixed acronyms such as DHS, AC 21, etc with actual words, and some references info.  There were no argument points changed in the document.  You can check out the latest court documents filed at page  H4 EAD Lawsuit Official Court Documents. No update on the H4 EAD rule removal, it is still stuck with OMB. See below. 
    Immigration Voice Corrected Intervenor Brief Filed - July 5-2019
  • August 30th,  2019( UnOfficial ) :  There were no updates in August yet, both court case and the H4 EAD Rule removal with OMB were in same state as in previous month. Also, since June until end of August, many H4 EAD Processing Delays Lawsuits were filed by many individuals using RN Law-group and they claim that it is working and they are getting faster adjudications. 
  • September 3rd, 2019 : The court website has confirmed the judges names, location and time for the oral argument for H4 EAD Lawsuit. See below.  No updates on the H4 EAD rule removal yet.Oral Argument Date September 27 - H4 EAD Case Judges Info
  • September 5th, 2019 : The court issued an order to USCIS/ DHS to give an update by 4 pm on September 10th, 2019 to them on the H4 EAD Rule removal status as it was mentioned in court documents previously that NPRM would be done for H4 EAD rule removal.  See below the court document screenshot. H4 EAD Rule Removal - September 2019 Update - Court Order Also, there was a document tied to the May 1st meeting with OMB was posted on the OMB meetings page for the rule.  All it tells is that H4 removal will impact many and should not be removed. It is by few advocacy groups. See below. 
  • September 10th, 2019 : DHS Updated Court today that H4 EAD rule removal is submitted to OMB / OIRA for review as per executive order 12866 and it is pending with them. They mentioned that they attended meetings along with OMB and got feedback on the impact and things to consider. See below the actual document screenshot and highlighted text. Nothing is new here. We need to wait and see how the court will react to this. The reality is that DHS has their defence that they are following due process and trying their best to revoke the H4 EAD Rule. Court Update on H4 EAD Rule Removal September 2019
  • September 11th, 2019 : The Court after reviewing the respond submitted by DHS has second thoughts and would like to confirm, why the oral argument has to happen now on Sep 27th, 2019. The reason is that they can see that DHS is doing its regulatory process for H4 EAD Rule Removal and there is no good outcome out of the oral argument except DHS saying that they are trying to get through the regulatory process and has to follow process. The Court believes that their time would be wasted, unless there is strong justification to have the oral argument on on Sep 27th, 2019. They have given deadline till  Sep 16th, 4 PM to submit response by both the parties in the case. 
    H4 Court Oral Argument Date Postpone Order Info Sep 2019
  • September 16th, 2019 : All the three parties posted their court response today. We have summarized the details on top of the page. Please review details there.
  • September 18th, 2019 : Court issued an order in the evening  that the oral argument would go on as planned before on Sep 27th, 2019. Read the details and screenshot in beginning of the article for summary and screenshot. 
  • September 20th, 2019 :  DHS and Save Jobs submitted two documents, see above in the beginning of page for details on the update. 
  • September 25th, 2019 :  Court gave the order of cases and timing for the oral argument on their calendar, see above in the beginning of page for details on the update. 
  • September 27th, 2019 :  Court had oral argument on time. It lasted about 45 min or so. We have compiled the entire key points of the argument. Read H4 EAD Lawsuit – Oral Argument Summary, Next steps. 
  • November 4th, 2019 :  No update from the court on the judgement until today. As there is no SLA, it can take few weeks to few months…No new update on the rulemaking as well for H4 EAD rule removal. 
  • November 8th, 2019 : Court gave Judgment today in favor or Save Jobs USA. The H4 EAD Case will be sent back to District court for next steps. See below and  Read H4 EAD Lawsuit – Court Judgement Summary 
  • November 10th, 2019 : There is a minor update on the Reginfo.gov website that indicates that there is a stakeholder meeting scheduled with Infosys on the H4 EAD Rule revoke. Details are at Reginfo.gov
  • November 21st, 2019 : H4 EAD rule removal continues to be part of the Fall 2019 Regulatory Agenda,   read beginning of article for summary info.
  • December 30th, 2019 :  There were motions filed for rehearing in the case and court denied request by DHS. They are yet to respond to Immigration Voice’s request for retrial. See above in the beginning of article for more info.  We continue to wait on the rule making side.
  • January 27th, 2020:  There were two court orders that were released denying the re-hearing petition by Immigration voice & intervenors.  You can see above in the beginning of article for the screenshots of orders. Next step is for the case to go back to district court as the re-hearing request is denied. 
  • Feb 7th, 2020: On the court side, we had mandate / order issued by the appeals court on February 7th, directing that the judgement from last year November holds and the district court need to take up the case. See the beginning of article for screenshot and update. 
  • Feb 24th, 2020:  There was an update in the district court that they received the case from appeals court and DHS appointed new trial lawyer, see above for details.
  • Mar 17th, 2020: No update in March on the H4 EAD removal rulemaking side, we were waiting for  OMB for update. The court had some updates on the case, see above article. 
  • April 20th, 2020: We had many updates in April and March end in Court case, but nothing moved in rule removal. Check above page first for summary. 
  • May 7th, 2020: We had an update from court on Lawsuit and many documents were submitted by DHS, Immigration voice and Save Jobs. Check beginning of article for update and summary.  
  • June 29th, 2020: Immigration Voice filed DACA judgment document last week as a supporting document. Also, we wait for the court to respond on the injunction order request and the H4 EAD rule stands as it is in pending state. Check beginning of article for update and summary.  
  • September 23rd, 2020: No new updates in September yet. 
  • Jan 2021 : Check beginning of article for latest update. 
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Every proposed rule has to go through Standard 9 Rule Making Steps in US to become law, in our context H4 EAD removal also has to go through the same steps. We have outlined the entire rule making process and mapped it to current H4 EAD rule removal progress. Also, based on data and varying speed, we have done predictions on when we can estimate the rule to be removed. Read article H4 EAD Rule Removal Estimated timeline Predictions for all details. In short, looking at all current situations, we predict that, it may take an estimated amount of 10 months or more for H4 EAD to be removed. With current political climate and new H4 Employee (EAD) Protection Act Bill in House, things can change anytime and slow down quite a bit, stay tuned

Common H4 EAD Rule Removal FAQs 

Can you still apply for H4 EAD ? Can you work on H4 EAD, when this revoke rule process is going on ?

Yes, you can continue to apply for H4 EAD and work on H4 EAD. Still the rule is in very early stages and until the rule completes comments, review and it becomes final, you can apply for H4 EAD and work on the same. Read Step by Step guide to Apply for H4 EAD , Biometrics needed ?

Can I apply for H4 EAD in 2023 ?

Absolutely Yes, the lawsuit was dismissed and Biden administration withdrew the removal regulation from their list. You can also check out Step by Step guide to Apply for H4 EAD , Biometrics needed?

Can I apply for H4 EAD with the Rule Removal in Process ?

Yes, you can. H4 EAD removal rule was withdrawn by DHS on Jan 26th, 2021. Court dismissed the case too. As of today, you can continue to file H4 EAD.

When was H4 EAD Removal Rule withdrawn by OMB ?

On Jan 25th, 2021, H4 EAD Removal Rule was withdrawn after Biden Administration took office. 

Is H4 EAD Rule still valid with the H4 EAD rule revoke in Process ?

Yes, it H4 EAD rule is still valid. The H4 EAD rule revoke process was withdrawn on Jan 26th, 2021, after Biden administration took office.

Will my H4 EAD be cancelled immediately after H4 EAD rule is revoked ?

No, very unlikely. The H4 EAD rule revoke was withdrawn on Jan 26th, 2021, after Biden administration took office.

Summary :  H4 EAD Rule Revoke Status ? Court ?

It all started with a lawsuit by ‘Save Jobs USA’, that questioned the authority of DHS to grant EADs for H4. After Trump administration took office, they took charge of the lawsuit, took time, delayed the process and finally aligned to remove H4 EAD rule in line with Executive Order of Trump Buy American, Hire American. They made an item “Removing H-4 Dependent Spouses from the Class of Aliens Eligible for Employment Authorization” , as part of Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019 and Fall Regulatory Agendas  indicating their intent to remove the rule and communicated the same to Court in the lawsuit hearings.

Many attempts were made in the meantime by Members of Congress, Many other groups including CEOs of companies, writing letters to USCIS to re-consider and not remove H4 EAD and the hardships it will create to many, but all of them were politely replied saying their intent is to align with Trump’s Executive order priorities and public will get chance to put in their comments during rule removal process.  USCIS has been delaying this as they know they have to be very thorough to submit to OMB and then to public.

The H4 EAD rule removal item was sent to OMB for review on Feb 20, 2019 and many meetings were held after that as well. Eventually, after a very long wait after Biden administration took office, the H4 EAD rule removal was withdrawn by them on Jan 25th, 2021.

On the lawsuit front, the judgment was given in March 2023 that DHS had the authority to grant H4 EAD and the case was dismissed.

As it stands today, you can apply for H4 EAD and work on the same and everything is settled.

What are your thoughts ? What do you think of the court decision?

   

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2,978 Comments

  1. I think so many times it seems like what scope we are talking about .. on this blog it’s about one work visa issue in IT , then what will happen to IT itself given the speed of automation and AI etc > then what will happen to American economy > Then what will happen to global economy and of course small or big nuclear buttons waiting to be pressed 😉

    I think the circle will go on .. reminds of few lines from the book ” the worldly philosophers”

    “Since he came down from the trees, man has faced the problem of survival, not as an individual but as
    a member of a social group. His continued existence is testimony to the fact that he has succeeded in
    solving the problem; but the continued existence of want and misery, even in the richest of nations, is
    evidence that his solution has been, at best, a partial one” 😉

    -raj

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  2. Does anyone know about today court update? I don’t see any update in the site. So please post your comments or update the site if you know anything about it.

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  3. Anybody know the latest update of this court case as of today (Jan /2 /2018) ?
    Is there any other place to check the case status for this case number 16-5287 ?

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  4. Everyone here has a story, pain and hope. For h4 ead folks, stories of their livelyhood and their career ambitions… for American citizens, stories of hope of better paying jobs. No matter what side you are on, please be compassionate. Winning an argument with a random stranger on the internet never made any problem go away!!

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    • Hi Universe, you are correct. dependent spouse have universal basic human right to work. Government needs to take that into account while framing the bigger immigration policies. Nobody should be locked inside four walls in twenty first century. Now, how to attain that, we all need to think about. It is not an H1B or H4EAD issue. It is basic human right issue. If spouses can not work then H1B should never exist at the first place or cut the number of H1B by half so that spouses can work.

      I will let the economist decide whether H1B or H4EAD take way jobs from Americans or not. I just know America is the richest country i the world, it has very low unemployment rate, it is the superpower and it continues to want to be the superpower. Let the government take a call as how they want to be continue to be the superpower but they should not curtail basic human right.

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      • I am just curious who is locking whom here in 4 walls. Its a big joke to compare not having H4 EAD is somehow equal to slavery and abuse. H4’s might not be eligible for a salaried job but who is stopping them not to take up a voluntary positions or hone skills by joining college or get involved in social activities. Many GC spouses and Citizens don’t work either, does that mean they are all voluntarily locking themselves .

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        • Folks don’t worry. Nobody would be locked in the 4 walls. Freedom is near for us with new proposals of H1s not getting extended beyond 6 years. At least that solves the problems for H4 spouses here, they will be able to go to homeland and do whatever they like,

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    • Reading thru some of the comments reiterates my belief that not a lot of folks have any empathy towards their fellow beings. End of the day, countries are just boundaries and sooner or later that idea has to make way for a much bigger and better society which doesn’t rely on individuals who seem to call themselves the geniuses and the nationalists with so much insecurity, shallowness in their hearts and bestial in their pursuit for power over the under privileged. These individuals choose to side with politicians of all people rather than raise legitimate concerns over wars, funding to some movements that oppress basic human rights across the world and deregulation of big banks etc. There soon is going to be a day where that sort of ideology will be annihilated for all the atrocities it had conducted upon the rest of the population…But first, I am glad that the rats are getting out of their holes and showing their true colors. Always helps when a bigot/racist/xenophobe/jingoist tries to express their views or puts things into action as we could now know who they really are.

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      • Dont worry..Humans are inherently racists, sexists and bigots. Racism is there well before us and its going to be there for ever after us. H4 EAD might be legitimate a concern but you cant have a debate when you are not a citizen. Being on non-immigrant H1B visa, there are very limited rights you have here. This country is for its citizens and not for some foreigners. BTW, No one is asking you to stay here though.

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        • Most of the American want people like us here. Only few hate us.. but they not only hate us, they also hate others, others who are US citizens. So it does not matter what you say. I came to US because a lot many US citizens want me to live here and work here.

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          • @AS, Are you living in FANTASY LAND. Yes you are a genius with telepathy powers and you know what Americans think about you and other desis. Get the hell out of here man.

  5. May be we all should take a break and continue the discussions next year 😉 No matter which country u r in, if u r temp or perm , if u r temp worker or a citizen .. I think one right no one can debate* on and we all deserve it, which is to wish a prosperous 2018 to all of us ( including angry birds) .

    * Although i can see people can debate on if it is actually a new year or not too based on thousands of calendars that exist in this world 😉

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  6. People seem to misunderstanding the right to work with qualifications. It does not matter how qualified you are, if you do not have right to work, you cannot work. That’s the difference between you and the citizens. If that’s the case, why have the immigration process and the laws and why not just pick a qualified person from anywhere in the world, I mean a person more qualified then you? Why have laws when you are advocating to break them?

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    • People seem to forget that laws have evolved over time,with and without advocacy.

      Not sure if you have ever heard of Ellis Island, but try taking the guided tour to understand what I am saying. You yourself have benefited from an evolved /amended law,regardless of whether you are a citizen or not.

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      • Yep you are right Divya. The laws did evolve since last administration and now they decided to cancel H4 EAD. Am not opposing you but merely echoing your words.

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          • ohh sorry is it still not a law yet? don’t worry they are going to bring a process to cancel it very soon. All you need is a bit more patience. H4EAD is nothing more than a “PRIVILEGE” given by Obama Administration. Its not a RIGHT and can be taken down anytime.

  7. It is amazing how people coming into a foreign country and trying to advice foreign govt what to do what not to do. H1B visa is fundamentally non-immigrant visa and everyone should know that. It is supposed to be valid for 6 years . US govt is doing a favor by allowing H1B holders to apply for immigrant visa. You should be happy about it. I’m on H1B visa and applied for GC but I know job, visa and everything is uncertain and I’m prepared to pack and leave anytime.

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    • Huh? Advising?
      We are “making a case” so that this rule can be beneficial both to US and us.
      H1B is a dual intent visa. We are respectful of why H4 visa holders are not allowed to work. We are only asking that we too get added to the pool of job seekers as we are on line to get GC.
      Also, we are certain about uncertainty. If the primary applicant loses his status, so do we. We are already happy that our spouse has been selected for legal immigration, however we are asking for a chance to have a symbiotic existence, instead of not being able to contribute both to ourselves and the US government. Even the privileges that you enjoy as an H1B holder is through a program that was by someone advising the govt “what to do and what not to do”. In fact, let’s see who complains if the per country cap is eliminated for eb2 because someone advised the govt “what to do and what not to do”.

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      • Not sure where you are getting the facts that merely by giving H4 EAD is making a US economy better. EAD’s were given only from May 2015 and it amazing to see people pointing that dramatically the 16 trillion economy got better. You guys should come out of your EAD cocoon and stop preaching economics. Any govt knows and will do what is good for citizens. They must have the facts that its depriving their CITIZEN jobs. Why cant you just leave to what ever place you came from and start teaching economics to your government. Stop using words as “Symbiotic existence”, you are sounding like only a working spouse gives the definition of existence. You are inline for GC, but that doesn’t mean you have to work. With the current timelines, you might never get GC.

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        • Thanks for putting words in my mouth!
          Where did I mention “merely” by giving H4 EAD is making “a” US economy better?
          I have not alluded anywhere that only a working spouse gives the definition of existence.
          I was making my case just like you did,oh wait,except I haven’t put forward blatant allegations and directives.

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          • Anyway..these are hard times and few other bigger threats are looming on immigration ..like rescinding 6 year H1b Extensions. Wishing you luck and hope things will get better next year.

        • “They must have the facts that its depriving their CITIZEN jobs”

          The facts that the agency has provided yet are:

          (1) “This final rule is expected to result in as many as 179,600 H-4 dependent spouses being eligible to apply for employment authorization during the first year of implementation. The initial year estimate still represents far less than one percent of the overall U.S. workforce.” [As per the Original Rule]

          (2) The number of EADs issued yet for FY15, FY16, FY17 = 104,750 (far less than 179,600) [As per report published by USCIS]

          Note: 104,750 is total number of EADs issued including renewals. So it seems the total number of “unique” EADs would be far less than what the agency anticipated and thus as per the agency far less than one percent of the overall U.S. workforce.

          However, we can wait for the agency to provide other relevant facts.

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        • USA is itself a land of immigrants. All those so called citizens were erstwhile immigrants or descendants of immigrants. I fail to understand why such immigrants object to new immigrants looking for opportunities based on their merits and not out of compassion to work and participate in the progress of the Country. If jobs are limited obviously the new immigrants are not going to get jobs either. Employers seek persons who can deliver and it is a competitive world. It appears that only those who are not confident about their own abilities to merit jobs are raising all kinds of objections.

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          • Sundar, yes US is land of immigrants that doesn’t mean they want to allow anyone who wants to move here. There are always rules and regulations adding filter to the immigration inflow. Earlier the window was wide open as rules were lot relaxed that made many Indians to move here on H1B , got GC’s and eventually into citizenship. With the rise of nationalism and anti-immigration sentiments sprouting around the western nations, especially in US, that window is closing. Folks who came earlier are lucky with the timing. Also remember, H1B is not a birth right settlement to US, its a non-immigrant visa and you should be able to pack and leave any moment.

        • @S300…..deep within the heart Neha knows that she is standing on the wrong side. But she is making her last and final attempt to vent out all the frustration on this forum. Instead of searching for a job that offers H1B, she is wasting her energy here.

          Unfortunately she is not the only one. There are thousands of Indians who are doing such gimmicks. But don’t worry, even if the revoke for H4 EAD comes into effect, people like Neha are not going to leave the country.

          So you’ll never miss Indians in USA. As per my experience, Indians can do ANYTHING to be in USA.

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          • @Mihir,
            Oh really? Like how you know deep in your heart that you are just exhibiting the classic dog in the manger behaviour because of your sense of insecurity that you try to cover up by blatant allegations?
            Didn’t know you were a mind-reader on top of introducing misnomers.
            I have been trying for an H1B for as long as I have been here,until H4 EAD came through.
            No employer was willing to sponsor me. Maybe I wasn’t qualified enough, or maybe I was too dumb to be sponsored, but the reality is every single employer would tell me that I was qualified for the position ,however ,they do not sponsor.
            And of course, I did not want to fake my resume as I have explained ad nauseum.

            And @S300 , I am not really worried about rescinding H1B extensions because I am asking for a chance to be able to continue my career wherever I am ,as it is mutually beneficial.

            And Mihir, not sure why you are so annoyed by Indians being in the US when you yourself seem to throw stones sitting in the glasshouse.

          • I think this time its going to be tough. No govt cant sustain immigration to a certain extent that can endanger their own citizens. I dont think they are gonna reduce the numbers but will allow only
            based on merit rather than lottery which is a good thing.

            In case of folks like Neha, if they are truly qualified and can score good points on the merit based system, they should be welcomed to stay and contribute.

          • Mihir/Neha~ Don’t worry full freedom is near for everybody to work in whatever field they want to work without any restriction. H1B not to extend after 6 years seems to be on cards on DHS/USCIS. I am also on H1, so would be impacted.

        • Don’t worry, we Indians will find our way .. All the Indians will go out from your country and you will have loads and loads of open position.. And am pretty sure, people from Non-Indian countries are looking for such opportunities like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq etc. and the good news is there is no ban on them and they get the Green Card within 6 months. God Bless America. I anyway have a job in England!

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      • No matter how you spin it, losing jobs is not beneficial to the US. That is why it is being revoked. There are millions of people waiting on various categories waiting for GC who have a better chance of getting a GC than a H1, why should they be not allowed to work? Trump is simply correcting Obama’s mistake.

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        • Those millions of ppl who have not updated their skill set are not going to get a good job. At 4 pct unemployment it is as good as pre 2008. Blaming foreigners for a job crisis resulted from Americans who brought subprtime loans and then American banks causing a financial crisis is just hilarious but expected from xenophobe trump supporters.

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      • Didn’t you know that H4 visa holders couldn’t work when you came to USA ? If you were so desperate to work then you shouldn’t have come to USA at all. What’s stopping you going back to your home country and work ? Trump govt is trying to correct the mistake made by Obama, that’s all. Accept it.

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    • There is nothing wrong in advising in a lawful manner in a democracy and surely it’s up to any countries law and future strategy to take the advice or act otherwise.

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      • This country is so nice to guest workers, they forget that they are temperory guest workers and start advising the government and fight for their “rights”. Imagine a guest in your house doing the very same thing.

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        • I think this country has given allot to immigrants .. no doubt about that, compare to so many other developed countries .. this country opened its arms and welcomed tons of outside people. And given the current strategies and direction from current administration it seems like they want to adjust this which is also fine. All i am expecting is to do this change clearly and in phases so that these immigrants can adjust their lives.

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        • Absolutely.. If this country wasnt nice to the “guests”, there wouldnt be so many white folks complaining that the brown folks are taking away their jobs.. when the reality of the matter is that the forefathers of the white folks took the land and looted the wealth of the actual “red” folks who originally inhabited this land.

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          • Please, clarify how taking the land from native Indians relates to the current situation. Are you suggesting you want to get on a horse and start fighting Americans? FYI, we no longer live in the 16th century. In the present day USA you have to follow laws.

    • Hi vdb,

      You are correct that the title of H-1B visa states that it is a non-immigrant visa. However, this is not its complete definition and it does not entirely highlight certain provisions that it offers to the beneficiary. It has, in its provisions, something called a “dual-intent.” I will let you read through the following at your leisure and understand more about it:

      https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/About%20Us/Electronic%20Reading%20Room/Customer%20Service%20Reference%20Guide/Nonimmigrant_Empl.pdf

      Also, my friend, that’s what makes America, America, in that one has the right to express one’s opinion when word of Law is being followed. And, at this time, H-4 EAD is the law of the land.

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        • People who have no rights?? These people who have “no rights” pay the same tax as the ones who have “rights”, are in queue to be the legal immigrants.. the “no rights” people arent forcibly trying to take away the jobs.. they are legally trying to make a case as to why they should be granted rights to work.

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          • Paying tax is your OBLIGATION. It will not give you any rights to immigration. If you have equal rights as a citizen who pays taxes, you won’t be arguing here. Don’t forget you are a temp worker with very limited rights.

        • Tam,

          The repeal needs to follow “Administrative Procedure Act” which is the law of the land.

          Note: It’s a violation of Administrative Procedure Act if the agency action is found to be “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law”.

          So as long as the agency follows the due process, provides concrete evidence of wide-scale H4 EAD abuse leading to job loss for “Citizens”, and a reasonable analysis of it’s action they can repeal the rule.

          So far even Save Jobs hasn’t provided any concrete evidence of wide-scale H4 EAD abuse and hence the district judge while dismissing the case mentioned “Plantiff’s argument without evidence, is bare speculation, and the injury it contemplates is insufficient to establish standing.”

          Jay,

          The 14th Amendment says

          No state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without DUE PROCESS OF LAW; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the EQUAL PROTECTION of the laws.

          As paying tax and maintaining non-immigrant status is an obligation, it is reasonable to assume that the beneficiaries are within US jurisdiction and so have fundamental rights including freedom of speech, DUE PROCESS of law and equal protection.

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          • No one is appressing anyone. Don’t tell me you don’t have fundamental rights in this country. What’s happening in the court right now is THE due process. You should read 14th management and the constitution bit closely.

            In short – constitution is for the citizens. Nice try.

  8. I understand the anger of citizens who see unqualified people snatching jobs away. In fact, being a citizen of India, I have seen so many Indians going to USA during the 90s through fake resumes. Now most of them are citizens/ GC holders. Blanket visas, body shopping, etc has robbed the opportunities that can be given to actual skilled workers. Sometimes the inexperience of people can be blatantly seen in their interview and they are hired anyway. There are people who let other qualified people attend their telephone interviews, and hence getting hired. I find this pitiful and morally wrong. In the end, a person like me is also subject to the anger of citizens of this country.

    My husband finished his masters here and is working in a STEM based company. I am a Electronics engineer, but after getting married, I came here using the H4 Visa. I couldn’t work.
    I was so ecstatic that H4 EAD was going to be introduced. I really wanted to work as a teacher since I have had the passion for teaching since I was young. I did my teacher certification and am working as a high school mathematics teacher in a public school. My dream was to become a math teacher in a STEM school. If they revoke the H4 EAD program, I guess I will just have to resign. Even if there is such a shortage of teachers in my state, I don’t think a public school can afford to apply a VISA for me. So my future doesn’t seem that bright now. I will definitely miss my kids in school.

    I feel that there are many victims to this whole abuse of the H1B system:

    1. I do believe that firsthand, it affects the citizens. They are of primary importance.

    2. It also affects the skilled workers who deserve to come here.

    3. It affects passionate people like me who are on H4 EAD and not faking their academic skills. If they revoke H4 EAD, I should just resort to volunteering in schools but is that the only solution to all of this?

    4. It also affects harmony of our society. Frustrations, anger and resentment is leading to bullying incidents in schools. Our future generation is becoming victims to all the anger that is slowly building in our hearts. This is what I am worried about. What are we doing?

    Seal all the loopholes and make the immigration system fair for all. But I guess that is a dreamy, ideal scenario that will never happen.

    Reply
  9. Hi,
    I was reading over few comments here and couldn’t stop myself from writing.
    I am H4 EAD beneficiary. I came US on H4 visa found employer and converted to H1. I was on H1 for 4 years before H4 EAD came into the picture and I converted to H4 EAD. Few of my friends did the same. I am really surprised how people are opposing h4 EAD.
    H4 EAD is just a small fish in the big pool of EAD’s. If you are opposing H4 ead , you should oppose all other EAD’s too. This came in picture just because all other visa (F1, L1 etc )dependents have ability to work other then h1. This is just an equal right for similar immigrant type. I understand that there is abuse in the system but its just not the Indians, I have seen/ interviewed people from different countries faking resumes and then getting caught up now or later. So saying that Indians only do that very very wrong. Its just about the person and the employer who make them do that. But for that its really not fair to blame whole community. When there is a Job opportunity every one gets chance to give interview and deserving person gets the job, but looks like here people are trying to end the competition itself. 1 job / person or more which will definitely degrade the quality. Even most reputed employers understand the same and support immigration system.

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    • Radhika, Wont agree with your statement that H4 EAD is a small pool. Its definitely going to be a much bigger pool. Its going to flood atleast a minimum of 50k individuals into the workforce every year. We cant put the F1, L1 under the H4 EAD bucket. Both F1 and L1 are time bound which H4 EAD is not. For instance, F1 or L1’s cant stay for every on their work permits, but H4’s can keep renewing for ever (if I-140 approved) until they get their GC’s. Thanks for agreeing that there is rampant abuse in the system and we have to appreciate govt efforts to revamp it. H4EAD is a good start and they will eventually move into H1B and other categories. There are certainly several genuine H4 candidates who does deserve to work but its a small minority. Being a second income, majority of H4’s are willing to work for less pay, I know many instances H4’s using fake resumes, proxies and falsified experiences. You does seem like a genuine person with skills but unfortunately the systems and regulations are not designed for a genuine few. Being on temporary visa, we dont have much choice and we don’t have any rights. If you think being on H4 is killing your career, no one is forcing you to stay here right.

      Reply
  10. Indians feel that they are entitled to working in USA. I feel Indians should be laid off and these jobs need to go to Americans. I have already told my hr about development.

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    • True …I hope your Government listens to this and blocks H1 and Indians permanently . This will settle things once for all and even give clarity to Indians .

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      • I totally agree, that It would give a lot of clarity. I have been waiting for GC since 8 years and recently converted to H4 from H1 because of challenges in finding job in same state as my husbands workplace. Also note that not all are visa abusers and there tons of genuine people out there.

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    • Yes please.. lay off all the Indians.. tell your HR to drive them away and then lets see how will the tech industry and the googles, microsofts, facebooks survive without them..

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      • Nothing will happen to these companies. Looking at foolishness of your argument, my guess is that you are not working for any one of them.

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  11. It seems Save Jobs has filed a petition to immediately revoke H4 and the administration may not be be able to revoke it using regulation forming process. I just realized I am reading 2 weeks old news on this site.

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  12. I am a H1B worker, it is an amazing american dream that we are chasing of printing $ here and spending converted money at home. I am able to buy house, luxury car, everything. I have no dearth of money. I am really sorry that it seems like I am siphoning off money to my country but without this H1B every one in my family would be poor because we dont have high tech jobs back home. I work very hard here and excel in my domain and as per my manager no one can hold a candle to me in my office. However, recently I have seen influx of H1B workers who demonstrate lack of knowledge usually coming from Asian (usually Indian ) corporate on the pretext of specialized skill labor. They ask lot of basic questions and are clearly not familiar with the work. The only reason they were sent here was thay can speak confidently without really knowing the technical aspect of what they are saying (really good orator). After interviewing these candidates I found out that they are less then 10 years of experience in their domain most are college grads and have begged to their managers to apply for H1B or B1 via their company. Their aim is to earn in dollar in anyway possible that is the only solution for them. I also visited their rental home in new jersey and found the living condition inadequate 5-6 people crammed in 2LDK just to save every dollar they earn. This is clearly a misuse of the H1B visa. government earns a flat 30% tax out of their salary but the rest of the money goes back to their home country. Government can implement a few steps like make sure only people with good amount of experience are given H1B and B1 eg: more than 10 years or so. Separate tourism and B1 visa currently they are same Have mandatory salary levels in home country to be eligible for H1B or B1 so people who earn less or work low paying jobs are not eligible because low paying job in home country means the job does not require specialized skills. It feels like I am betraying the H1B community by writing here because I am also a H1B worker but I am not able to stand the dilution of skill that has started to happen because of H1B misuse

    Reply
    • Looks like you came to US just couple of years back. Sending money to India is just first couple of years. Most of H1s want to apply GC and settle in US. A person in long term will keep money in the country where he will eventually stay. Leave money that went to India initially, if a person ends up staying in US, even the ancestoral property would be sold in India and all money will end up in US. What problem you have with 4 bachelors living in shared accommodation to save more money. That’s the beauty of our india roots. We want to save for future before living a lavish life. I have lived that way in US some 8 years back. Now I am doing house hunting for a million dollar house. For incompetent people in your office, do better interviews. Why do you allow vendors to bring something without interviews. It could be that those people would have same opinion for you. Everyone thinks he is genius and others are idiots.

      Reply
    • If it is so, Then the person with low domain knowledge and less experience is shown doors immediately. No company in US keeps them knowingly.
      we are discussing about people mostly from india with adequate experience and doing a fair job with company satisfaction have to go through this crap.

      Reply
  13. Dear people who “oppose” H4 EAD because it takes away your jobs, I am curious to know why-
    1.You choose a contractor /handyman who gives you the “best quote”(ie, best value for money). Why don’t you choose the more expensive handyman? Aren’t you depriving him of a chance to earn ?
    2.You buy things from big box stores,and get services from retail chains. Why don’t you consider small businesses who charge you more for clothes/furniture ?They don’t get enough money for a livelihood because of these chains.

    P.S- I am a beneficiary of H4 EAD, and got hired after 6 years gap and I was offered more than I asked for, and I was chosen over many other candidates of various backgrounds.

    Reply
    • They are your assumptions, that people do not support their local communities. If they don’t support them, how are they in business even for a single day?

      There is a homeless guy looking for shelter and he wants to live in your house, you don’t even have to give up your master bedroom, he will settle for your guest room. Just give him, some food, in return he will do your chores. Looks like a fair trade. Are you willing to do it? How many homeless people are you willing to accommodate after the first one spread the work on your kind deeds? If you say no, why do you want to deprive his RIGHT to live where he chooses? He is not asking you do any favors, he is willing to work for you while you are away from home. Even better, you get to pick your own homeless guy, there should be no reason to deny his/her right now.

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        • Neha- He is very clear in what he is saying. The people in the house are citizens in any country. Homeless guy are non citizens which is the cheap handyman in your example. The head of the household is government of the country which decides which cheap handyman (aka homeless) enters house in exchange of some work. Handyman has no right for permanent stay in house. If you want to stay in place where you have full rights, please head to motherland. You will have full rights there to scold Bangladesh’s trying to enter your country. In that scenario you will be house member and Bangladesh’s would be handyman. I live in US on work visa and fully understand that I have no rights and can be kicked out any day.

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          • DK,
            Where did I say that the homeless guy/handyman needs the right to stay at the home? The homeowner has a choice to pick a quote. The cheapest handyman is only giving an option for the home owner,just like the most expensive handyman. It’s up to the homeowner to make the decision. (Google Monopoly sometime)

            I don’t think you got the point, maybe you are feigning ignorance.
            If protecting the right of citizens was truly so dear to one’s heart, let’s see a day when consumers decide not to go for cheaper goods from China or Bangladesh. Let’s see a day when people are willing to spend enough on clothes or automobiles that the minimum wage is 25. If this was truly the spirit,then there would be no outsourcing in the first place,right?

          • Head of household is a single person/entity who decides what what is a possible option which is government. Teenager in the house I.e an employer may like a handyman but if head of house doesn’t allow he has no option. So handyman has no say in what happens in house. Gov is allowing cheap products from China and outsourcing services from India as they think it’s fine for now. One day they can ban the import, Chinese factories and Indian IT can’t complain as US gov is not answerable to them. I am personally in favor of H4 EAD as a privilege as It gives me extra peace of mind if something goes wrong with my H1, I will have backup but I am against the thought process that it’s a right and trying to question gov of a country where we are noncitizen. Every gov should be biased in favor of their citizens. There is no need to give fair chance to non citizens. I appreciate.

          • This handyman logic is absurd. And of course we are not talking about legal rights. The key point here is all immigrants who come to this country need to be treated fairly. Having per country cap is an absurd idea. Also its absurd to treat or call all immigrants as cheap labor who steal jobs. Is there abuse of the systems, of course. But conversation should be around improving system for benefit of everyone and not scapegoating parts of the system. It pains to see that immigrants who go through pains to come here and be part of the community are often the ones who want to shut the door of opportunities for other.

          • This is interesting analogy! 🙂

            Note: H4 EAD is given to only those whose spouses have I-140 approved.

            This means the government (head of household!) has approved that the H1/H4 beneficiary (homeless!) can immigrate to the country (enter the house!). However, they will have to stand outside in a line and wait for their number (backlog!). H4 EAD is like food, water, lifeline given by the head of household while the H4 waits in line. The head of household said that while the homeless person (H4) waits outside we wouldn’t want them to become weak and be an additional burden on us when they enter our house. It’s in our best interest to let them acclimatize (issue H4 EAD) and be independent while they wait outside. So once they are allowed to enter our house they might actually pay rent then ask for additional welfare. The head of household (government) also said that if we give some of our food, water to the ones waiting outside we are not going to run out of supplies (Refer the original rule that says this affects less than 1% of the labor market).

            In fact, the government (head of household) has also said that they want merit-based immigration which means most of these beneficiaries (homeless!) wouldn’t even need H4 EAD.

            Certainly, immigrating to the US is not a right but a privilege but when you are in the country it is reasonable to expect to be treated fairly.

            As per ACLU website: “The government has the power to decide who to let into the country and under what circumstances. But once here, even undocumented immigrants have the right to freedom of speech and religion, the right to be treated fairly, the right to privacy, and the other fundamental rights U.S. citizens enjoy.”

          • If accusing me of doing something I haven’t done helps boost your low self esteem, please go ahead.
            Even if I may lose my job, I know that I have done my best instead of trolling with blatant accusations unnecessarily.

        • Christina ~ Are you out of you mind? Who was immigrant and whose forefathers were immigrates is not important. All north Indians in India are considered to be immigrants from central Asia in ancient history. Does it make them immigrates?
          It always at current time. Citizens at any point of time decides who can come. When you attend interview in a company and somebody rejects you. You can’t say that interviewer was also a non-employee at some time as he/she is not the founder.

          Reply
          • Amazing response JK. Wonderfully put. Its absurd that folks bringing up that ..”ohh yeah Europeans stole from Native Americans, so they dont have any rights here”. If these lands are still been ruled by Native Americans, will these idiots want to move here.

      • I would have drawn an better parallel when I was back in grade school. You are doing two things wrong:

        1). Disrespecting homeless people. Don’t bring them into this and insult your own intelligence.

        2). You are assuming that all the people on H4-EAD are putting in fake resumes. And by assuming, you know what you are doing; please don’t make me highlight the old school-yard adage here.

        Let me ask you this very elementary question; perhaps you could even go as far as enlightening me here; no I am really serious. Let us assume a person with a H-4 EAD has a fake resume and using this resume gets a job. Obviously, a person faking a resume, should not be able to write two cents worth of code; I must apologize here as I am assuming that this fake resume person is applying for a computer related occupation; guilty for generalizing. Ok back to the matter at hand. So, this person cannot deliver on a project, right? So, what’s the manager doing? Having tea and biscuits while this person can’t tell the difference between a for-loop and while-loop? If I were the manager, I would fire this fake-resume lad or lass, and hire myself a non-faker. So, tell me, does it not work in this fashion? Sounds pretty garden-variety management style to me. However, please do lecture me on this, will you?

        Reply
    • Neha, you make a good point but still wont support the case. Following your contractor example, why cant any country just open the gates for every contractor who is willing to move from all over the world. Just flood the whole nation with immigrant contractors and one can definitely find the cheapest best contractor. But why no country is doing that, its simple, they want to first protect and serve their citizens and their families. Not sure what gives you right to demand to stay here. If you believe you are the best, why cant you go and serve your mother land.

      Reply
      • Tim, Thanks for your insight. But I do have some questions for you. First of all, these parallel is not convincing. Having homeless man in your house is not the same as having a skilled labor. If the nation had that many skilled labor we would not have needed to open the gates for high skilled labor from outside the world. I could have agreed if (like your parallel), these guys could have worked for any sundry job. But these are highly skilled people and we need them. I as a manager try to avoid contractors and only hire these people for full time positions and they are very efficient.

        Now about H4 EAD, well, if you are asking a person to come in this country and work for you because you need them, how is it fair to either let their spouse suffer and give up their careers or forcing your employee to split their family. I do however believe, that may be govt can restrict them to certain high skilled jobs only. But I do not see any point in not allowing the spouse a right to use their skills. If i were to goto any other country, i would expect my partner to grow in her career while living together. Many countries like Canada, UK, Aus do offer same from first day. After-all, we are not slave drivers but civilized people.

        Ofcourse, who you offer visa in the first place is something that should be checked. Rather than allowing consultancies to bring their own people, they should be highly scrutinized. but once they are here, they have the same right to stay happily with their family as us. Family comes first, above all. Government should make sure that only deserved people get h1s which would solve all this issue.

        Reply
        • A person should not stay in a place where he thinks that he or his family is not being treated fairly. Person should immediately move to place where he is treated fairly. You already named few nice places. Visa and associated work rights are a privilege and not a right.

          Reply
        • Dave, well thats where the problem right. At the moment, its not skill based immigration. How can we get skilled workers when you are picking people based on lottery? The system is totally broken and should and will change to a merit based point based system. If its properly working, how come many citizens got laid off and replaced with cheap labor. Didn’t you see the CBS 60 and NPR programs on unemployed workers displaced by temporary guest workers? I lost all my office colleagues and replaced by IT body shoppers. How do you feel when you are own citizens are replaced by foreigners working for cheap? There are certainly some decent well qualified personnel picked up in the lottery but that’s a very small percentage. The true intent of H1B is totally lost and its time now to revamp.

          H4EAD should and will be revoked. Its an additional income to a family and there are enough citizens not even making a primary income. There are way more families leading a happy life with one income and not working is not equal to pain and suffer. H4’s knew what they are signing up for and did anyone promise work permits? If someone is so seriously concerned about spouse career, they should pack bags and leave our country. No one forced to come here and no one is asking to stay. Every country has the freedom to design rules for their welfare of their citizens and am appalled to see folks coming here on temporary visas and making arguments. H1B is not a birth right its a temporary visa and you are not a citizen. If you think your family is not happy just because your spouse is not able to work, you are welcome to leave.

          Reply
          • Hi Tim,

            I understand your frustration about this matter. Let me state upfront that I am not from the IT field. And from your messages, it seems to me that you are from the IT field. I understand that your frustrations are directed towards the IT workers that replaced all your co-workers and not the HR department that actually hired these workers because they were just following the Law. I agree with you here, as well. One small disagreement, though: You mentioned; I am paraphrasing here, that extracting talent from a lottery system is impossible. That maybe the case if one were to imagine a literal lottery as shown in movies or in books. The H-1B lottery is not similar to a typical lottery. There are several pre-steps that happen before the actual lottery. Ideally, I mean if it were to be done by the book, a company would interview a person; tele-phone, on-site, several rounds are involved here. So, the people that are making the decision on a candidate are not supposed to know the nationality of the candidate–I think I am right on this–this is how I would do it, anyway. Then, the hiring manager tells the HR that, Ok so-and-so is a good fit. Then, the HR makes an offer. When the offer is accepted, then the HR starts putting together an H-1B petition. In the H-1B petition, the company’s HR has to prove truthfully that this person will not be exploited. This H-1B petition, made for a candidate that did well in the interviews and has the potential to succeed at the company, enters the lottery. The way you describe it, is the other-way-round, in that there is a pool of candidates, and the company hiring managers go to the local pool, and pick a bunch of workers. That’s how it works in local plumbing/roofing unions–not the H-1B lottery, I don’t suppose so. However, I could have got a few things wrong. Please message me here, and we can have a positive and constructive discussion.

        • Tim and others who oppose H4 EAD program. Here are a few “facts”.

          1) There are many highly skilled jobs which are not filled by companies due to shortage of labor. US is close to full employment, thanks to some of the policies enacted under Obama and Trump. So only way to fill these positions is via immigrant labor force. Long term it does make sense to have government train american citizens in technology so that they can take some of these jobs. So while its fair to say preference for jobs should be given to american citizens, H1/H4 workforce is really not competing with americans.

          2) H4 EAD is given to people who are in line waiting for their Green cards and not everyone. The idea was to add these immigrants as part of workforce and make them productive members of the society. It had to be done this way is due to an arbitrary per country limits on PERMS. This means that some from UK or Iran gets a GC in 1 year where as from India and china it takes 20-30 years. This is unfair policy as there are severe restrictions in changing jobs and these people are essentially slave laborers for tech and consulting firms.

          3) Does this mean that there is no abuse in the system ? Of course there is, and there are enough stories about indian tech workers displacing americans. But the problem lies with corporations and consulting firms which take advantage of immigration loopholes. The solution here is not to throw these workers under the bus but to penalize the corporations.

          4) Every corporation is expected to keep percentage of immigrants below 15%. But these firms circurvent the rule by hiring consultants from indian consulting firms. This allows them to get cheap labor. Close this loophole and this would remove most of the abuse in the system.

          Reply
          • H4ead ‘s are putting fake resumes and getting the jobs in the same company as their spouse. Please stop cheating Americans

          • That’s true. As soon as H4 EAD came into effect, 3 of my colleagues started circulating their spouses resumes in different teams. The reason was that their spouses are getting bored at home. One of them got a fulltime job on EAD in the same company. The other developer guy is still trying for his wife calling his friends/knowns to see if they can fit her in the team. How do I know that she has a fake resume? Because he is my neighbor also and he told me he is trying so hard and changed the technologies in her resume multiple times. I am not saying everybody is like this but this is happening a lot with H4 ead.

          • But this is not happening just with H4 EAD. Even US citizens are hiring their in-experienced friends… my Manager (white) and Team Lead (African American) brought their Citizen friends into the team as Consultants/Contractors who were not technical at all, had no prior experience and the problem is that we or anybody who knows the application have to bear their work load. Just wanted to put it out there.

          • Komal,
            The “concept” of fake resumes started with Indian body shops and till date, H1Bs have put up more fake resumes than anyone. So this is not just H4EAD issue.
            Better interview & background check process can limit this kind of abuse. Also, I believe strict action should be taken against candidates / companies who are part of this. When the businesses (read body shops) start going down, they will automatically learn their lessons.
            My spouse is beneficiary of H4 EAD; but never did I allow putting in fake experience / skills in the resume.
            Result? – It took time to get job; but atleast my spouse got the job on merit. and btw, no one got fired when she got the job. No citizens lost their jobs.
            I would like to point out one thing. If some system has flaws, we fix it. We don’t go on spree to eliminate everything. Obamacare / AFA are flawed, that doesn’t mean whole medicare should be uprooted. That would be disastrous. Likewise, fixing immigration system should take priority and not banning H1Bs / H4 EADs.
            Current data shows there are millions of job openings and unemployment would drop down to under 1% if those requisitions are filled

          • Komal~ Not sure if you guys are dong manual testing or just filling excel sheets. Somebody just clam an experience and you have no way to validate. Don’t you work on a skill that can be validated in interview? Make interview even tougher for people whom you feel have fishy background. This advice is if you are involved in interview process. If not, just don’t guide the on the hiring process where you don’t have a say.

          • JK – Cant some interviews be just a formality and not real interview if manager knows the candidate? I was not involved in the interview process in any way but I think the person just got lucky to be hired FTE otherwise I don’t know how with 3-4 years of ETL experience and with Masters degree, you cant even read the data model and have to take help from your colleagues to write simple queries.

          • Hello Nobody, you do agree that there is wide spread abuse right? Here are my points.

            1) H4 EAD are part of the abuse now. Not all H4 EAD’s but majority are definitely. Yes they are inline for green cards and they can happily start working once they get green cards. H4’s not able to work is not a big deal. They knew what they are signing up for when they got married to a H1B. Making someone productive doesn’t come only from a salaried job. Its absurd, when you define the meaning of “being productive in society”. There are thousands of desi families leading a happy comfortable life with single income and their spouses being productive to society by volunteering. If H4’s think, not able to work is making them worthless, they can volunteer too If they still think that they are not getting paid for their skills, who forced them to stay here.

            2) I definitely agree that there is a high skilled shortage, but the current system is picking people under lottery and how does a lottery system picks the best and brightest. We are not against legal immigration, we are just against the process. They should change it to a merit based point based system. The current system is totally favoring filling low skilled jobs.

            3) Someone being on H1b are not in a position to dictate the govt what they should be doing, where the gaps are and how they should act. We are merely here on temporary visas and we should shut the fck up and abide by the rules

            4) A huge portion of H1/H4 workforce are definitely competing with Americans. Definitely a large portion of them are replacing. Why do you think there is some much backlash against H1b’s if its merely filling positions and not replacing? We should be grateful that they even gave us the opportunity to work and lead a healthy secure life here.

            5) The new administration is taking a dual approach, they are changing policies at the individual level and also pushing regulations on the corporations. This is a good approach. Ultimately, we all should hope the abuse is stopped and revamped.

            6) GreenCard limits and country wide quotas is a filter to the immigration system. These filters are set up in the first place not to flood the population pool from one/ two countries. In the current anti-immigration and nationalistic climate, no govt is going to bring policies that helps Indians.

          • Sm,

            First of all for transparency, I am an immigration activist who fights for their rights.

            1) Why do you want to define productive as volunteering only. Bless them who want to volunteer and surely people should spend time on that. But it should also be one’s fundamental right to work independently and earn a living.

            2) Sure, am all for that. Change the system to make it more difficult to abuse it. Check out bill sponsored by Darrell Issa. It essentially takes care of a lot of fraud on h1b system.

            3) Immigrants are not servants that they keep quiet when system is stacked against them. Am not sure which country you come from, we do not do it over here.

            4) Where do you get these facts from. Based on reputable scientific studies, legal immigrations helps the overall economy. Is there abuse and are american workers being displaced ? Of course there is. But overall effect is a net net net net positive.

            5) By policies on individual level you mean throwing families in uncertainty and chaos, then I dont know how anyone can support it.

            6) We agree here. Govt is not going to bring policies which help Indians. Per country limit on legal high skill immigration defeats the purpose of H1B visa. If majority of high skilled immigrants are from India and China (which is the reality) then putting limits does not make any sense. We dont put per country limits on h1b. so why on high skill green card. Now for other forms of legal immigration like family based, this does make sense. To avoid chain immigration and making sure there is a healthy diversity.

      • Well,
        1. I did not demand the right to stay here
        2. Not sure where I mentioned that I believed I am the best,but thanks for inferring that. You are too kind.
        I only mentioned that good hiring practices don’t settle for the cheapest. So, anytime a homeowner gets quotes, a good and responsible homeowner would do a little bit of research and there’s a good chance that he would choose the best value for money, instead of hiring the cheapest or most expensive handyman.
        Side note : I am curious to know what brands of cars are owned by people who are committed to act in the best interest of their own countrymen .
        Also, I don’t think I ever mentioned or insinuated that a county should have its gates wide open to cheap immigrants.
        I am only earnestly asking for a chance to be a part of the employable workforce, so that it is mutually beneficial to me and the economy in a country that respects free speech and has spearheaded major human rights milestones. I am pointing out that I am an H4 holder as my spouse is a highly skilled worker who has not replaced a worker by asking for less. I am not asking for a free pass.

        Reply
        • Neha, you bought a good example. But your point is valid in a fantasy world where people follow good hiring practices. Unfortunately its not happening. Its always cost savings right, today H4 are willing to work for cheap as its second dollar to their spouses primary income. Its hurting and will hurt lot of families both citizens, GC’s and also primary H1Bs. There is very little support for H4 EAD and it will be revoked no matter what and you should be prepared to loose your job. There are going to be many more stringent measures on H1B and its not going to be a cake walk like before. Your only hope is a merit based system and folks like you can definitely benefit from such a system. Meanwhile, you can look for volunteer opportunities where you can still work and hone your skills. If you dont agree with our current system, you are welcome to leave and help your country. Let our govt decide which handyman to allow that doesn’t effect the fabric of our society. Please do understand that you are not a citizen of this country and you have limited rights and you cant argue your way in .

          For your cars example, yes we do get cars from every where but they are bought in only after they are scrutinized and met our standards. We don’t allow ever car that is out there in the world. There is a screening process to select allow which cars to let in and out. Unfortunately that screening process is broken in immigration and every one is allowed based on a lottery process. We want lottery be eliminated and have tough measures to select best and brightest in ways similar to which cars we allow. Hope that helps.

          Reply
          • Tim, Like you I am an American. And I understand your point. I have personally debated this with a lot of my friends. I am with you that we need comprehensive immigration reform. But its unfair to ask someone who has been in this country for a long time and is part of our society to pack their bags and leave just because the government cant figure out right immigration policy. What you said is a case for comprehensive immigration reform. But barring that we should not be repealing policies which are easy to repair. Nor should we be adding them like what Obama did. Its legal, yes but is it moral – No and will it help solve the problem – No.

          • H1B is a blessing to this country and it’s an immortal visa so no one can ask H1Bs to leave this country may be you people should ask your mom and dad to leave as they might not deserve to live here or doesn’t have right to stay as they are not born here.

          • Tim,
            You kidding, right?
            USA have STRICT screening process for cars??? Seriously? We wouldn’t have multiple thousands of recalls per brand if that was true.
            And please stop talking about CHEAP labor. Not sure what bubble you live in; but H1Bs are definitely not cheaper than citizens. Infact, they are more expensive considering the fact that companies file for their H1B and eventually GC. Also companies have to wait a bit longer for an H1B employee to join because of the time it takes for H1B transfer process
            This year, some of the companies stopped hiring software engineers on H1b. Do you know the results? Their positions stay open for 6+ months while trying to hire someone on GC or a citizen and they are settling for someone who is probably not even qualified per their standards.
            It is true that once upon a time, some foreign workers replaced citizens. This should not have happened; but you are talking as if it’s happening on daily basis.
            If you scroll up in the comments, I have give several proofs with data how ignorant you folks are.
            Anyway, I do agree with points based system to get GC and allow highly skilled workers in US to stop H1B abuse(just in case if it still exists). But trust me; if that happens, then most of the H1Bs in the past 8-10 years will get GCs and so will their spouses. Hope you would be okay with that.
            In the end, it’ll be win-win for all- H1Bs and American economy since we pay enormous amount in taxes given the tax bracket we are in.

          • Thanks for the free Gyan .
            Also, I am prepared to “lose” instead of “loosing” my job. I am clearly articulating my concern. There are citizens of this country who are analytical and at least hear me instead of trying to sabotage the discussion .
            Also, if we lose our jobs, at least we can be happy that we were formidable to a bunch of trolls who really do. Good job of pretending to be American

          • Hey SH..

            Are you out of your mind when you say there is no screening for cars. Definitely any screening system will have issues and they keep updating refining as they uncover new issues. You are sounding that there is no screening or metrics before allowing any single car. There are recalls and there will be recalls and the system will get robust in time.

            You need to start looking around for the BIG BUBBLE you are living in, yes its cheap labor, majority of it. We always said that there are real decent highly skilled educated individuals, but that’s not the majority. We want them not low skilled . In my bubble, we support only a merit based system. We are not asking to reduce the H1b number, infact they should increase or make it flexible to meet market demands. But the visa should be given based on merit and hiring should be on merit. Yes replacing citizens is happening on a daily basis and hopefully the administration will shut idiot ignorants like you. You come to the country as a guest and you start preaching us. If you dont like our rules get the hell out of here.

            We are totally ok with many and their spouses getting GC’s on merit. That’s not at all a bad thing.

        • Neha I can feel your pain as we are on the same boat. This website is just a waste of time it will further disappoint you.
          Stay away from these negative comments wait for 2 of January and talk to attorney if you have any questions. People who are pretending to be us citizens here are one of us like F1 , H1 or some thing else and simply arguing with you for the their entertainment. Real Americans don’t even know what is redbus2us.com is.

          Reply
        • Hahahahaha…..i feel like laughing for lifetime on reading Neha’s arguments. All I can see is only Indians are getting their ass pumped up for protesting against H4 EAD revoke. It was their concious decision to marry a gold digger who can take them to see outside world. The preparation for searching a gold digger must have started right from the point when marriage was on cards. If you are so worried about the economy of the country and your valuable skills, then please come to India along with your beloved H1B spouse. India needs you. I can guarantee a job for both of you. But I dont think you or your H1B have balls to come back to India.

          I can understand that right now grapes are sour.

          Reply
          • I think at human level , one plan for future based on certain assumptions. Like if it was always clear that a particular visa can stay for no more then X years , i think it would have been much better. People can plan accordingly and i think less sufferings.

            Almost feel like Accounting and Law are two areas which are necessary evils 😉 and grey enough to be mold them in so many directions that leave people think what is right and what is wrong 😉

          • Mihir,
            Actually your comment is by far the most hilarious one I have read ever since I have been on the internet.
            “It was their concious decision to marry a gold digger who can take them to see outside world. The preparation for searching a gold digger must have started right from the point when marriage was on cards”
            This was ultimate! This should be on reddit!
            A gold digger is – a woman who associates with or marries a man chiefly for material gain.
            Now go back and read what you wrote. Rotfl!
            My partner happens to be a man here. And I am a woman. So not sure how this gold-digger hypothesis took form.
            By the way,you are right. I do not happen to have balls. My partner does, and he does intend to use it in case the whole H1b program gets shut down. Fortunately, we happen to have great parents who taught us excellent values so that we don’t have to grovel to a misogynist and sexist who cannot have a rational debate. BTW, I am not at all worried about the economy. However, I know who should be worried about “taking a conscious decision” to have a bigot in their lives.

      • I am a US citizen and a medical assistant. I work at a doctor’s office, who I recently discovered could only open her own clinic because of the h4ead work permit. In my conversations with her I was surprised and saddened to learn we ban immigrants, with approved greencard petitions, waiting in greencard queues to receive it, to start business and create jobs here. Shocking! Only on the h4ead do we allow immigrants like my employer to create jobs. I stand in solidarity with this program. It allows hard working, skilled immigrants to create jobs.

        Reply
  14. I am writing here since I was victim of H1b abuse. I am not from India though. I graduated from one of the big university in US in 2012. I got hired into one of the Fortune 500 companies. It was not so called “IT job”. I was hired as an OPT. I applied into the H1b lottery but didn’t get picked up for 2 years. My friends, civil engineer and mechanical engineer got picked up and they were doing IT job through 6 weeks of some consultancy training in New Jersey. I was so mad with my own friends. My OPT was about to get expired. I had only 5 months left. My company tried to send me to their other plant in foreign country because they don’t want to lose me. Fortunately, the plant was in my home country. I went there and worked for a year. After one year, I came back to US as L1 visa. My company has already sponsored my GC and I got it within one year of coming to US.

    The mental torture that I got during all these processes was overwhelming. Still, I didn’t lose my hope. It is not that I want to stay in US forever and won’t get job in my home country. I studied in one of the big universities in US with full scholarship. I wanted to give back to this country.

    The immigration system in this country is broken. I don’t want to be ridiculous but those consultancies who give 6 weeks training need to be closed. Also, those consultancies in India, who send freaking no. of H1bs need to be closed too. If there is shortage of IT workers, US need to educate the citizens for those jobs. Those who argue here about IT jobs being replaced need to force government to improve the education system. US needs high skilled immigration. My university where I studied had 10 students in grad school, 1 of them was US citizen. He dropped after first year due to extensive workload of grad school. I taught as teaching assistant in Undergrad, 70% were foreign students. Being a keyboard warrior won’t help. Instead of spitting out nonsense to H4 ead holders in this group, better is to voice concern on education issues that are existing in this country.

    Arguing about H1b and H4ead won’t lead to anything. The US govt need to close the loopholes first. Need to focus on education. Good reforms are necessary in every fields. Whoever are here in H4 ead, go and study in university if it gets revoked. Till your spouse get GC, do Masters/Phd and work as research scholar. Don’t waste your time in kitchen. Best of luck.

    Reply
    • I think only one part of your whole write up is untrue.
      You are from India(your sentence structure and the story about being sent to your home land for a year because of not getting picked up in the lottery gave it away 😀 )

      Reply
      • Don’t foreign students with US Masters Degree get have a separate H1B quota?

        H1B Visas are reserved for foreign professions with skills in specialty occupations. Based on the quota determined by USCIS, the regular H1B cap limit allows for 65,000 petitions to be selected in the lottery process. An additional 20,000 are allotted for specialty workers who possess U.S. Master’s degrees (or a higher level of education) from an eligible and accredited institution.

        Reply
    • Amen. I agree with what you said. I know people who had similar scares. The easiest way to get rid of these indian consulting firms is to pass a law limiting number of consultants corporations can take in. Similar to how number of immigrants that corporations can directly hire. Right now too many firms hire consultants from indian consulting companies which are essentially body shops. Doing this they can get away from some of the immigration rules.

      Reply
    • OPT lottery is not impacted by the 65K lottery. The only people in OPT lottery are people like you who have done their Masters in US. Ideally they should do the below
      1. Increase the OPT lottery quota to 40000
      2. Drop the regular lottery quota to 30000
      3. Abolish Tier 1 salary jobs from H1B
      4. Mandate Graduate Degree + 8 years or Master’s Degree + 5 years as minimum experience for H1B regular quota
      5. Abolish country specific quota in GC
      Do the above 5 and you will drop unskilled H1B numbers to negligible levels

      Reply
  15. Someone said “Half knowledge is dangerous” and we need to look at the bigger picture.
    I am tired of hearing all the huffs n Puffs and crying about immigrants took my job away.
    When did we Americans started putting our fates in some one else’s hand. It is our country and how hard is it to get a job in our own country. I have changed Jobs 5 times over 7years. Not because they let me go rather I wanted more challenging work. We are Citizens of Great Nation, where Businessman becomes President in his 70’s. That’s a big carrier move.. If he can, then why we can’t beat Robots or any skilled immigrants. Spend more time on sharpening your ax before cutting the tree… rather than complaining about the immigrants, cheap labor etc. Let’s remember we have home field advantage.., if we loose job we can relax and wait for another opportunity but H1B gets only 2months.

    Let’s all just cut a little bit of slack for skilled immigrants and their spouses. It is nothing less than adventure coming to a different country and trying to coexist with so many challenges. I had lived outside of US as an immigrant and struggled to raise kids in new environments and I understand the challenges. Why these people feels so strong about living in US is they have fallen in love with our great country. They are the most law abiding, tax paying citizens. If you check the records H1b families have lowest criminal records.
    Coming back to H4 EAD. Most of the H4 EAD immigrants are women. We the leading nation with equal pay, now we are scared of immigrant women taking our jobs.. Imagine having a highly competitive spouse with STEM background, wasting their time in cleaning n cooking, instead utilizing to give it back to community in some or other form. All just because they made one wrong decision of marrying a guy with H1B or later unlucky husband got H1B. You know where they will put their time and energy, on their kids Spelling bee or Mathletan program ?? Our kids will be screwed ?? as we Americans cannot go back to community college or skill portal to sharpen our skills. So how can we sharpen our kids skills. All we can do is ask our government to take actions on H4 immigrants to divert their energy somewhere else(not wth their own kids??)

    I agree we need to fix our broken immigration. If we all think there are already enough skilled immigrants then Government should completely stop legal immigration in 2018(all we can do is only for legal immigrants because we know those aliens exists, No one can touch the non existing illegal immigrants as they are not the aliens who entered legally)
    Low wages issues can be solved if Government increases the Salary for both H1 and H4EAD as 100k and above again based on standard of living of that state.
    Corporations should be held accountable for massive layoffs and outsourcing. H4Dreamers kids who have studied in US for more than 12+ years should have a chance to utilize their skills in US, rather than giving a way to brain drain, (in the lines similar to DACA).

    If we think of short term election winning propositions, then it will lead to trickle down job market. Corporations will start outsourcing the complete projects, leading to very limited jobs. We will not have any immigrants to blame then.. just ourselves for our limited knowledge of immigration and for not having bigger picture about future of our job market.

    Reply
    • Fraiser,
      I can easily say that you just earned respect of all the skilled immigrants in this great nation. Unfortunately, you’ll attract criticism from your own countrymen. And I really feel sorry for that.
      Whatever points you put forward, are the exact things that I am trying to suggest to haters such as TAM. I have made every attempt to support my arguments with proven data obtained from research.
      Being on H1B, I am not against having only 60 days to find job if I lose current one. Neither I am against having less privileges compared to GC holders or citizens.
      Employers who abuse H1B program should be punished and shouldn’t even be allowed to hire H1Bs.
      There are more than enough jobs available for those who have skills (folks like you, Fraiser). H1Bs are NOT replacing citizens with CHEAP labor. My company in the past, have let go different types of people- citizens, GC holders, H1B employees, purely because of performance reasons, irrespective of their legal status in this country

      Reply
    • Fraiser, you are an Indian pretending to be American. It is quite obvious by your grammatical errors common to Indians.

      You don’t notice your tell tale pattern, because it is common in your community, but it is very obvious to any American.

      If you start out by lying about your perspective on the issue, you have discredited everything you have said.

      Reply
    • Ofcourse Fraiser you are Indian, easily recognizable. If you guys are so great why cant you get out and sever your own country. Dont try to preach us

      Reply
      • Tom,
        Please visit www.ancestry.com and try to find if your forefathers were immigrants or not. I am sure you are not a native American.

        Can you guess my country of origin from my sentence structure?

        Reply
        • Christina ~ Are you out of you mind? Who was immigrant and whose forefathers were immigrates is not important. All north Indians in India are considered to be immigrants from central Asia in ancient history. Does it make them immigrates?
          It always at current time. Citizens at any point of time decides who can come. When you attend interview in a company and somebody rejects you. You can’t say that interviewer was also a non-employee at some time as he/she is not the founder.

          Reply
        • Christina ~ Also dare to tell this bullshit “that you were also an immigrant” to the person sitting on Visa consulate to grant you visa and port of entry officer when they try to check your documents. I am a non-citizen in US and know my limits. You also learn yours.

          Reply
    • If they give H-4 EAD while waiting for green card, then all the adult sibling relatives abroad waiting for years will also demand fairness EAD while they wait for fourth and fifth category to become current. Why should adult siblings have to wait years patiently outside the U.S. when they should get an EAD to come to the U.S. and take a job today and not have to wait for their number to become current.

      If it’s good for the H-4 wife, it should be good for everyone in the world who is also waiting.

      Reply
      • True. H4 EAD was never deserved, it was just to compensate the never ending wait of Indians and Chinese. Per country cap is extremely harsh currently. There should be some change around it if not completely removed. I seriously feel if someone has spent a decade in USA on work Visa, he/she should be given GC. By then the person would have accumulated lot of money and rich experience, all that will go out of USA with him/her. Even the person would get social security pension/ benefits even after going out. It’s a total loss for US economy if so much go out of system.

        Reply
        • The per country cap is much worse than h-4 EAD for family based chain migration in the fourth and fifth preference in every country. At least the H-4 wife gets to wait in the U.S.

          A brother or sister from Barbadoes has to wait 20 years OUTSIDE the U.S. for a visa number to be available, even though his or her green card petition was approved.

          The fair thing would be to disallow the H-1B from staying in the U.S. after 6 years and let him and his wife wait together outside the U.S. for the number to become current.

          Reply
          • Seems like you have no idea on how tech is working is USA. It’s not feasible to send H1s out of US without causing big damage to tech industry. Google, Microsoft, Sandisk, PepsiCo ceos are are H1 beyond 6 years. You can’t even compare a H1 with family based green card. H1 is needed for US economy and family based GC for siblings should be immediately stopped. Trump has that in agenda. But his agenda never had stop H1. It is always making strict/ scrutinize, he never said to stop or send back after 6 years. H1 going out after 6 years would be big blow to innovation in this great country.

        • “I seriously feel if someone has spent a decade in USA on work Visa, he/she should be given GC.” — what kind of a dumb stupid argument is that. Did anyone promise that H1B is a path to GC? Its a damn temporary guest worker program. You are a guest and be a guest. This is the problem here, you come as a guest and start making demands. Any country puts their citizen’s first and wont bend the rules for folks under visa temporary programs. If you have gained superior rich skills, please head back and serve your country. Your other statement, “Total loss of US economy” , where are you getting your numbers? Does a 16 trillion economy suffers of not giving GC for few H1B’s.

          Reply
          • Everything matters. 30% tech jobs in Canada are just moved ones from US to Canada because of visa issues and GC delays . Those jobs are now paying taxes to Canada gov. Also a person who has spent a decade in US, would just go to Canada or Australia easily. The money they take out of economy can be a million dollars in case both spouse were were working for decade. What’s the benefit of that money going out. Also, these people (both spouse) will get pensions from social security system wherever they live in world as they already have 40 points on SSN. Is it worth so much going outside US?

          • Its the other way around. Since the GC is not coming on time, hence H1B is needed for people to continue being productive to the company. Most of the people on 6+ year H1B are those who have done their higher education in the country.
            Also, implementing a country specific quota on an employment based immigration application is stupid, archaic and somewhat racist, IMHO
            A Canada-style skills based immigration system is the need of the hour, should solve all current and future problems.

  16. People are complaining so viciously, just because they lost their temporary right to work. They were never supposed to work in the first place.

    Now, think about the American workers your souses replaced on H1. How loudly should they be complaining – not only about losing their job, but also to train your spouse on the way out. Most of them are middle-aged people and it’s very hard to find a job for them. Also, there is a general miscomsumption, that the citizens do not have skills, in reality the H1s in most cases are maintaining the code the citizens wrote.

    Maybe less than 10% of 85K really deserves an H1 -like doctors, scientists, ect. Had that been the case, there will not be any GC backlog. IT folks should never get a H1, its just not hard to learn or teach. Most Indian people got their skills in 5 weekend classes – 6th week they are experts with 8 years experience.

    Reply
      • Your comment would have merit, except for the below points about the GC application system
        1. It has a strenuous check on Education background w.r.t EDGE and Prevalent wages, so very low chance of fraudsters and wage suppression
        2. If the application is approved and placed in criteria of Advanced Degree or higher, then there is a very very low possibility of any problems you have stated.
        3. Most of people in this criteria are people who did their higher education in US, so again no chance of the 5 week training
        4. All of these people are on EB-2 GC queue, which currently has a 9 year wait list. Why? Because there is also a stupid country based quota on employment based applications
        It makes more sense to me that their spouses work, pay taxes and be productive members of the economy. There can be a filter to provide this for skilled spouses.
        Or
        Remove the country based quota from employment based GC applications and the problem will take care of itself

        Reply
        • Visas for India should be frozen for atleast 3 years to give others a fair chance. Quotas are put in place to allow diversity, it’s not a discrimination policy. If GCs for India are raised to 1 million today, 10 million more people will apply and find a way to complain that 1 million is not enough. Not sure why you get to decide how many Indians should be granted GCs.

          Reply
    • I am a H4 EAD beneficiary myself, and I totally understand your opinion. In fact, our family is stuck in backlog due to the violent visa abuse(I think most of us know the origin of most of these IT bodyshops).
      However, it is unfair for honest people like us to be part of the collateral damage. My spouse has 3 degrees from the US, and is also a key member of his team in one of the companies that are out to change the world and create more jobs.
      I was very adamant to get hired only through fair practices. My employer hired me in spite of the gap in my career with out compromising on salary .
      Hence it is shattering to see this news.
      I don’t know why clients do not vet the contractors experience to weed out such dredges of the society. It is still not too late.
      I wish that rule came by,instead of this.

      Reply
      • Hi Pooja, Partially agree with your view and you should live with the fact that H4 is pretty will be revoked. Though H4 helps few but it hurts many. Any country first looks into the welfare of their Citizens and doesn’t act in behalf of the guest workers. I do support revoking H4 EAD, adding tough measures for H1B recruitment and transforming the whole legal immigration into a point based + merit based system. Many undeserving folks were able to gain GC purely exploiting the inefficiencies in the system which shouldn’t be tolerated anymore. Also did your husband try through EB1A, which usually shouldn’t be tough with the qualifications you mentioned as I got mine through the same.

        Reply
        • EB1A is not about qualification or capabilities. It all about working for a company in 2 countries with few reportees. Still waiting to meet a person with good technical experience who got a EB1A category. I have heard that you can get EB1 if you have some 5-6 patents. One of my friend is exploring that option. I feel like laughing when having 5 patents is treated equally to 2-3 crap reportees in 2 countries for EB1.

          Reply
          • Hi JK, Having patents is one of 10 metrics to meet for EB1A. In fact, I do not have a single patent but have publications, references, citations, public speaking and few other to get qualified. I think you have to meet a minimum of 5 different metrics to get qualified for EB1A . I do agree EB1 International Managers is the other most abused category.

        • Anil,
          He does not qualify for EB1A.He has only one patent, and is not a member of any significant organization.
          I still don’t get how H4 EAD hurts many.
          I am not sure if you are conveniently forgetting that we are on the path to becoming citizens. In fact, H4 EAD is a good way to ensure that future citizens can pay into the system and contribute to the economy,instead of taking a backseat in their careers and hence being limited in their ability to spend.,when they become citizens.
          I had to apply for 300 jobs(I am not kidding) before even getting an interview call. I did not have any,(I repeat,any) advantage over the citizens. I was finally hired by an organization who did not worry about my gap.I did not fudge my resume (unlike you-know-which-state(s)),I did not have a ghosted phone interview, neither did I have anyone work on my behalf by sharing VPN info. I was the result of a good organization and a good manager who did their hiring homework correctly,and I was offered more than I asked for.

          Reply
          • Pooja. Don’t be so discouraged. You can do a masters course which will just take 1 year to complete and you will have 29 months of OPT and H1B masters cap. I assume your husband is earning well, he can efford it. Kids can go to day care. I understand it would be difficult, but nobody wants you to be topper in college, just complete course. Anyways you already have good skills.

          • Hi Pooja, Well there is a long wait to become citizens right ? There is no guarantee that anyone waiting will ever get GC/Citizenship (based on your PD) . Heard there is a wait between 10-70 years. But meanwhile, there are almost 50K H4’s flooding the system yearly and that’s a decent number for wage suppression and job loss. H4 EAD’s bring second income to the family right and they wont mind working for less and in many instances, they are preferred over H1B’s. Also there is no scrutiny and screening for H4’s to get a job or switch a job , but in contrary the primary H1B have to face scrutiny and screening from DHS for every job. In paying taxes, H4’s are indirectly contributing through their spouses salary right ? Its not like they are not contributing anything. Many of my desi GC/Citizen friends are still on single income and never heard their spouses complaining of not making second income.

            From what I read, your case seems genuine with skills and technically strong to get a decent job. But a vast majority of H4’s are still faking, using proxies and falsifying their experiences. While signing for H4, no one promised a job permit right, you knew what you are signing up for. The only solution is to completely morph the current legal system to merit based which will help you and many others.

          • Anil,
            I did not ask for a job offer placed on a golden plate just because I happen to be in H4.
            I have always respected the H4 limitation,as we are temporary workers. . In fact , the current rule is very fair. One cannot work for a minimum of 1 or 2 years . This ead is given to those who truly have started to meet the dual intent of the h1b visa.I am just voicing my opinion for a “chance ” to be in the list of “employable” candidates.
            Also,it’s not about the second income, though,boy it would be nice to snatch that CEO job.
            Don’t you talk to your boss during your yearly reviews and try to ask for a raise because you did well ? Or do you not try to articulate how you met your goals because you should be grateful that you have a job in the first place?

            Again to your point of fake H1s and H4s, I think I made it pretty clear that a good organization and employer will know to do it’s homework instead of cutting corners.

          • Anil & Co,

            We all agree that H1B and H4 system can be abused easily and needs to be fixed. But Bro why do you want to support repealing the entire system without a replacement ? I see that you are smart enough to realize that repealing this will hurt people like Pooja who deserve it. There are no facts or reputable studies to support your theory that H4 is actually suppressing wages. And while you wait for these magical changes which will remove all abuse, people like Pooja are going to suffer.

          • People who want to achieve something never suffer. They figure out a way. My wife came US on H4 , we saved every penny and she went to good college on F1 some 5 years back. Within 10 months she was on an internship which was more than my salary. After completing course she landed on a job with 1.5 times my salary and also got H1 in masters cap. Have we not put our effort and money and just keep crying on no work authorization for H4. We would have still been crying.

          • XYZ, Thats great for you and your wife. Congrats on the job and salary!

            But maybe there are a lot of people who do not think doing masters to get an OPT is an option for them and their career based on what they do. Or maybe having a pay which is 1.5 times higher is not such a criterion. H4 EAD gave them an option to do so. Isn’t that called freedom and isn’t that the reason why people like you and me came over here. So why not be happy that this gave a lot of people the option to pursue what they want.

            Let me give you my wife’s example now. She did her masters from an ivy league school and worked in banking for some time. After a period of time the job and money did not make her happy. So she moved to H4 EAD and is now a teacher in community college teaching Math. Obviously it does not fit your definition of successful, but shouldn’t as an immigrant community be happy that there was an option for her to make her own choice.

  17. Every country has rights to make laws that beneficial for its citizen and have no obligation to the citizen to another country. Even visa is not a guarantee to enter any other country. This current immigration system is not against Indian citizen at all it is just misleading information. Let’s discuss this step by step.

    * First is it no about Indian citizen, it is about person born in India. For example if Indian citizen born in Kenya, South Africa etc then they fall under that category not Indian category.

    * It is not specific to any country at all, it is just to avoid monopoly of one country there is a maximum quota for each country. In employment based China is also suffering because lots of people applied from there too. Even worst take a look at F4 category of Philippines As of now it is approximately 23 years backlog there.

    * Only USA and Canada gives the birth right citizenship in first world country, you can’t get this even in UK, Europe and any other first world country, so consider this as a bonus.

    * Giving citizenship is never a right. Every country refuse to give citizenship or make it extremely difficult (take a look at example of middle east countries)

    * The current Indian situation is mostly created by Indian body shop companies (for example TCS, InfoSys, Wipro, Congnizent etc) than anyone else. In most situation they just send tons and tons of person, either with average skills or with good skills but average work (underutilized their skills) to just send cheap labor to USA to make US companies happy and fill their pocket. Dont read me wrong, it is mostly not applicable to big Giant such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Intel, Oracle, Apple etc they have highly skill people, but take a look at number of applications by body shop (TCS, InfoSys, Wipro, Congnizent etc) with these. These body shop created unnecessary long queue for Indians as a result highly skills Indians suffer.

    * Indians (or any other country citizen) has no rights to demand any law change. If don’t like it then don’t complain and don’t come. Just to give an example, All US Citizens get the visa of India on Arrival, but if you are dual Citizen of Pakistan and USA then you can’t even get Indian visa on US passport. India decided to make this rule and if Pakistani US dual citizens don’t like this rule then don’t visit India, they have no rights to complain. Similarly any citizen of any country has no rights to complain the laws about any other country.

    * Don’t keep arguing that immigrants (specially India IT guys) build this country leader of the world. This is only one side of story. Yes this country get benefits a lots from immigrants (including Indians), but at the same times few areas also suffer, for example cheap labor because of H1B body shop companies (take a look at Disney example). There is always two sides of the story and US has right to evaluate cost-benefit analysis to adjust the rules to take maximum out of it.

    * Lots of sides only present only one side of story and completely ignore the other side. If you want to see the Pro immigrant visit http://www.immigration-law.com/XXIV.html
    and if you want to see the Anti immigrant visit https://www.numbersusa.com/ they are doing the same mistake and only present one side of the story. If you get to know both side of the stories then you will get to know that there is excellent use and miss use of the rule. Take a look at this video here even Lawyer is saying how they are using the current labor certification process to no hire US worker. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

    * At individual level some law and regulation may beneficial or harmful to you, but all US department focus on (and should) large scale not on individual level.

    Reply
    • Best summary of the situation. Totally support each and every word. Folks need to understand that H1b is a temporary guest worker program and not a birth right.

      Reply
    • The above analysis is quite elaborate and logical , however H4 EAD is not solely responsible for the broken immigration system . Those who are crying for joblessness should think they have many other competitors (Including GC holders obtained from chained immigration system) and again H4 EAD are given to specific H4 spouses who are knocking the door for GC . when Govt and DHS created the rule they had thought for enough justification behind it . H4 EAD is not impacting others if not done by H1, L1, L2, J1, J2 , F1 , OPT, CPT , GC and so on ..

      Reply
      • Budd @ the problem is H4’s are too many. Hopefully there will be new policies to curtain all categories of immigration. I do support immigration, but it should be purely based on merit not on over flooding the system with cheap labor.

        Reply
  18. Can we challenge H4 EAD rescind in court? I have read this blog (http://www.naco.org/…/trump-administration-has-options…) in the past. As per my understanding, administration should provide strong and legally defensible justification for withdrawing or rescind the rule. I do not think “Buy American & Hire American” executive order has strong defense arguments. Also, in “Save Jobs” petition filed to court, they have mentioned only about competition to American workers but no data or h4 related story to support that. EAD for H4 is small number compare to L1, OPT and DACA EAD’s so why all these are not part of repeal with a clause creating competition to American workers.

    Majority of people I know were on H1B (spouse) and converted to H4 EAD due to more flexibility, commute or wages. It is helping to keep family united. We are future permeant residence/citizen and parents of US citizen and this rule rescind will affects us in a big way. Also, US business will get affected by this rule.

    Don’t we have at least an argument to launch a case against it to slow down the process no matter what will be the rule?

    I appreciate respectful discussion on it without hurting anyone’s opinions here.

    Reply
    • There is going to be lot of cases against revoking H4 EAD . How come only H4 EAD is taking away soeone’s job (Not H1 , nor L1, nor L2, nor J2 and many others) ?

      H4 EAD is merely .1 million people out of 35 millions who got GC in last 35 years (and out of 65% of these are through chain migrations , distant relatives without any merit come and join and get GC) who are only taking all jobs .
      Shame on such a discriminatory rule making and not correcting a messed up immigration system .

      H4 EAD is only given to people who are actually waiting for their GC and should have received their GC if not been stuck in the per country quota limit (Hope the day comes when HR392 gets implemented and demolish the unfairness) .

      Reply
      • 2 reasons why H4 EAD should be revoked:

        1. The only qualification of H4 EAD is that they are the SPOUSES of H1B and this is no reason for somebody to qualify for a job. Weather they are skilled or not skilled, weather they work in IT or in Dollar Store…doesn’t matter. you are taking jobs just being a spouse of H1b people.

        2. What about those H1B holders who are not married?

        Reply
        • These Americans are really pathetic. You lose your job because you are lazy, you don’t spend same quantity of time on polishing your skills. It’s not a surprise that nobody wants to hire you. Stop complaining, ok? I’m holding H1B, I’m paying a ton of tax. Guess what, those money I made by hard working is taken by governments to pay welfare to those unemployed citizens. Don’t you lazy citizens feel ashamed? Not working at all but take away other’s hard working fruits. By the way, how did you come to this land? isn’t it by immigration?

          Reply
          • Instead of crying here, why don’t you go back to your lovely country and show your hard work there if it is so bad here, did anyone force you to live here?

          • Windy~ People like you should be immediately deported. Don’t have any respect for the country where you are currently living and making money. How you can use such a language of native people. You are not doing any charity by giving taxes. Taxation is gov right. Thats the money that keeps you safe, road shining, infa in place that you use. If you have so much problem immediately leave. I hope you are not an Indian. As people with your views being Indian will make me feel ashamed.

    • Tam
      In Walmart robots are replacing cashier workers. Is this job stealing too.

      Beside Indian citizen everyone get Green card in less than 2 to 4 years.
      Please check details on H.R. 392
      Also check real reason DHS not providing EAD to all I 140 approved holders.
      Vedio link
      https://youtu.be/EU03jv4DXSk

      TY

      Reply
      • Isn’t losing jobs to robots enough? We have to lose more jobs to people who are not eligible to work too? You should look at how many people from those countries apply for green cards and how many get it, each year. One way to speed up the GC process for Indian is, for some people to drop off the line. The more people that drop, the faster rest of them will get a green card. The law has a predefined number of GCs for India. The wait was not this long in the 90s. Then the Indians flooded the system. Whose fault is it?

        Reply
        • I support H4 EAD. Why it is difficult for some folks to understand that IT is not the only arena where all US citizen jobs are taken away. Look around, hospitality, retails, airports, restaurant where Americans were working 10-15 years ago is now filled with people from all other countries (legal + illegal). Drive in a Uber in Maryland, Washington DC you can those from African countries who are working plus studying to get into IT and other jobs as consultants. Indians or H1-Bs are targeted for no reason and by they way they do not do these kind of jobs. Look in the malls you will find of folks from countries and how do they work?Are you giving any special Visas, Many have GC as well and may be citizens without paying taxes. h1bs are far better they pay taxes…Open your closed eyes..

          Reply
        • Tam
          You are very naive.
          DHS have consulate all over the world to issue work visa like H1 B.
          Green card on other hand is sponsored by the employer .
          This means we are valuable to the company and they intend to keep us in United States.

          My husband works in oil industry wrote standards for drilling which is recognized all over the world. This is valuable employee the company do not want to lose.
          And DHS put us in line for Green card which is been halted for decades.

          H4 EAD is a patch work.
          DHS need to remove country cap and put first come first served for Green card and many more changes required.

          TY

          Reply
          • If you think your husband is so valuable to the company and country, he always can try his luck through EB1 extraordinary capability category. If he is not qualified for EB1, no way you can say that he is the best in the business. You are here on a temporary guest worker program and you should honor that . Why keep demanding to change rules which by the way you dont have any right to do so. The per country quota limits were added in the first place not to restrict immigration from one country. A better suggestion is to go back to your home country and serve there. Its not your birth right to demand to stay here. We have enough skilled people without jobs.

          • Somehow your husband is entitled to a job and an American citizen is not? Don’t forget he gets to do that kind of work ONLY because he is in the US. If you don’t want to wait for your turn, feel free to use his talents in India. All H1 visas are approved in the US, even though they are issues at the consulates. You will have to explain to me, how I am being naive.

          • Ms Tam

            Please refer Farham comment on this topic.

            FYI after being on EB2 green card wait line for 7 years my husband got ported to Eb1 because of his excellence in mechanical field.

            Also H1b visa is issued by Consulate due to fact that they could not find USA citizen for same position.

            Microsoft closed bunch of it’s office in New York and opened it’s branch in India hired 50,000 thousand software engineer.
            This is an example where job follows talent not winning.

            All the best Tam and good luck to all H4 &H1bs

            I am writing her for last time.
            TY

  19. This is totally unfair, undoing everything the previous presidency did has been the primary focus for this administration. H4 EADs must be allowed to work with maybe certain conditions such as relevant job skills, work experience and probably a masters degree in the US making them equally qualified as other candidates. Revoking, and repealing is not the solution to every problem. Hope they put some effort to make lives easy for all hardworking people. It’s already taken a huge toll on every families finances and health to get to where we are and when you finally think you’ve everything planned, this happens!!!

    Reply
  20. I don’t understand. Pay Canada government $200k in fees and get permanent residency or invest $500k in USA and get the GC or invest $800k in Canada for 5 years interest free. Your working spouse and non-dependence on a H1B employer will help you recoup the money in no time. What is the point in waiting for 10 plus years for GC.

    I knew a guy in India who got adopted by his maid, got admission on SC, came to USA, made money and now angling to get long term disability so he can retire comfortably. Nothing about that is ethical, but America is not build on ethics, one does not get rich that way.

    Reply
    • Pay Canada 200 K in fees ?

      You only pay 1000 CAD per primary person while applying for express entry fee. And for 2000-2500 CAD, your full family’s PR gets processed with free medical benefits and other benefits.

      Where are you getting your information ?

      Reply
  21. Looks like there is a link opened for posting public comments to save H4 EAD. Wish there should be a set of rules for H4 EAD holders to apply for skilled jobs which needs approval from DHS rather than completely revoking H4 EAD. There are many talented people on H4 EAD and they all should have given the opportunity to work, but at the same time it’s not good to see people faking just for the matter of getting job.

    Reply
      • The H4 can file an application for H1 in April. If the application gets selected in lottery and is approved then the effective date for H1 is October which means the beneficiary cannot work for the company from April to October. A company cannot wait for 6 months for the employee to join. What method do you suggest in this scenario?

        Reply
  22. Firstly, the petitioner does not seem to have a clear understanding regarding the allotment of H4 EAD. The EAD authorization has only been granted to spouses of H1B holders who have been approved for green cards (the US wants to retain these talented individuals so as to remain the #1 country in STEM, other fields) but have not received them due to the broken immigration system (country-wise cap, number of foreign students being admitted every year with no regard to the limited H1B visas or the 8-15year green card queues). This is what the elected representatives need to fix

    Reply
    • U.S. would have to give EAD to everyone who has a green card petition in motion. That includes all the siblings currently waiting patiently abroad for decades.

      This would make the annual influx of workers into the U.S. astronomical immediately.

      Reply
      • The siblings currently waiting patiently abroad for decades go through “Consular Processing” and not “Adjustment of Status”. Even if you give them EAD they are not eligible to enter the country unless they have a valid visa. An EAD issued to an H-4 dependent spouse under 8 CFR 274a.12(c)(26) is not an entry document.

        What you are referring is also called “Chain Migration” which the President is against. H4 EAD will not be required if Congress passes Merit Based Immigration which the President supports.

        Reply
  23. Hi All,

    I am currently working for an IT company and have H4 EAD till 09/10/19. I also have an offer for another company with 70% hike but the new company would not file my H1B if H4EAD is revoked.

    My current employer might raise H1B if H4EAD is revoked.

    What are my options? Should I take the new offer and might go to a consultancy when H4EAD is removed or stay back with my current employer?

    Are there any chances, H4EAD still stays back or the existing H4EADs will be allowed to renew.

    Regards,
    Abhi

    Reply
    • if you are planning to work in a specialized field of study then H1b is the option provided the employer can pay prevailing wages.. If your work is related to any other field which does not need specialized qualification then current option of H4/EAD will work.. However it could be revoked sooner or later..

      Reply
    • Tam
      YouTube Vedio is absolutely true. Mostly IT company H1b’s are on lower wages by consultant company. This part need to be addressed.

      On other hand h1b waiting for Green card for decades is real.

      Check out Vedio on DHS is being asked why they are not issuing EAD for I140 meaning waiting on Green card non immigrants.

      https://youtu.be/EU03jv4DXSk

      TY

      Reply
      • I can understand the frustration, but the law prohibits H4s to work, it is as simple as that. H4 allows families to stay together. Allowing H4s take jobs away from citizens. 1 job is too many to lose, and 50K or 100K jobs? There are people waiting for a family-based visa for decades, why should be prohibited from getting an EAD while they wait?

        Reply
        • Tam – My question is, there are currently over a million job opportunities in the USA, which american citizens aren’t able to fill. So, how are 50000 H4 EADs a cause for concern? I understand that H4’s were never meant to work, but they got an opportunity to work now. Why repeal it without any solid evidence? And as far as this, “H1B replacing American workers” part is concerned, for a long time now, the only example that I see is this Disney controversy. There has been no other examples of such things happening. I feel like, Americans just don’t want to compete with immigrants for jobs as they fear that they will fail miserably, which is precisely why they want this revoked. Revoking this wouldn’t change a thing. Unqualified Americans will continue to be without jobs.

          Reply
          • If you have 100k in savings will you give away 25k, whoever asks for it? Whats the pr oble m you d till have 75k. The simple reason is, the other person has NO right to your money, even if they put ur money to a good use. So it’s not about qualifications or degrees, it’s the right to work, the h4 eads do not have.

  24. Instead of all these.. 78% Indians leading their life depending on Agriculture . Let us go back do cultivation as per WHO many countries are going to struggle for food who has more population like India. in coming 20 years many people will struggle for food. lets go to INDIA and start ORGANIC cultivation it is like 1990 IT era now :). every body in INDIA started focusing on ORAGNIC food. Only INDIANS are ruling and damaging IT market in USA. we are creating problems our elves and to US govt as well. because of Major consulting IT firms H1B applicants and who ever pursued MS over here spending lot of money struggling like anything. stop pointing fingures to each other. who ever has more than 20 years of experience please contribute your efforts in INDIA and MAKE INDIA GREAT… enjoy your time in USA still u have your VISA… waste of time for all these discusssions…… you guyz need to think of one golden statement ” CASE VARIES PERSON TO PERSON” 🙂 so stop all blamings …. letz enjoy USA ..if not MERA BHARAT MAHAAN…. chalo INDIA .. I LOVE INDIA… I LOVE HYDERABAD 🙂

    Reply
  25. I have seen 2 H4 EADs being hired by the employers because they agreed to work for less pay than USC and GC candidates. This happened in WellsFargo and Bank Of America in CHARLOTTE,NC. I reported the managers email IDs soon to USCIS Fraud department.

    Reply
    • I am on H1 and I experienced 2 situations where H4 EAD person was more preferred than me, because they agreed to work for less and also they need no sponsorship.I lost 2 interviews till date for this reason. I am on H1 and I think H4 EAD should be gone. I am the only breadwinner in the family and my job is being taken by H4EAD. I am sure that H4 EAD candidate will be the second job in their household. But, my wife doesn’t work and my H1 Job is the only hope for us..
      I pray to god that H4 EAD is gone so that atleast some H1s like me can benefit from it.
      I live in Charlotte too and was impacted by H4 EAD abuse in WellsFargo and Bank Of America.

      Reply
    • Rinky Sinha

      What was the response of USCIS.
      Did they took action in stopping these cruelty towards H4 EAD ?

      This is very bad we should fight for equal pay this way company’s wont abuse H4 Ead Visa like they were doing with H1b visa holder and US citizens.

      US citizen were replaced by H1b by lower wages.
      Then H1b is replaced by H4 Ead by lower wages.

      Next what H4 EAD will be replaced by Refugees.
      And then refugees will be replaced by robotics…

      At the end big cooperation wins the game like Amazon( firing labor worker and replacing with ? robotics).

      Fight for Green Card backlog. Fight for equal pay for all. This fair and this should pull the company to ground.

      TY

      Reply
    • Rashmi Sinha – You reported the managers email IDs soon to USCIS Fraud department.. Do you even know what is the meaning of ‘Fraud’?? The managers must have hired H4EAD because of company policy.. that doesn’t mean that they did Fraud. I am on H1B and had been in same situation as you where my manager started the process of hiring me Full time but the company policies change and they had to hire a less experienced H4EAD. I was sad of course but I decided to enhance my skills, do Certifications so I have more job options since its getting tougher.
      Leave this mentality.

      Reply
      • It’s not the same situation everywhere, there is a lot of fraud happening.
        please do not preach about the mentality as if you are the purest soul on the earth, someone detected a suspicious activity and reported that to the authorities, what is wrong with that? I think that is an excellent job done.

        Reply
  26. No matter how much you all can fight, but remember these H1B and H4B EAD holders are more talented and suitable for USA to move forward in the IT arena and claim the No1 spot in the world!!!

    Reply
    • you have a misconception, the fact is that a lot of Indians (not all but most of them) on H1B and H4 EADs are cheaper than the local resources.

      Reply
  27. Big news: H-1B workers may work for more than one employer, says US immigration agency
    H4EAD don’t need to be whining, your husband H1b can benefit from this.

    Reply
  28. Mishra : Learn from this :

    https://www.facebook.com/UnitedWeDream/videos/1602592339801915/

    People like u should be kicked out (who came through L1 or some other) and became US citizens. Learn how to stay united from these people. Look at these.. People like you who got GC’s or USC’s just behave as if they are superior.. Such a shameless person!!

    Reply
    • priya m: That’s exactly what H4s should to do to make aware of general American population how they are stealing American jobs. The general public is not aware of H4, a protest will bring awareness.

      Reply
      • Tam : H4 Ead is a patch work done by USCIS to over come the flaw of Green card backlog only for Indian on Eb2 & Eb3.
        We are American too just waiting for the Green Card. It make no sense to stop H4 Ead.

        Do the math Tam if a Pakistani arrive USA in 2008 and applying for Green Card after 6 years on H1 B they get Green Card in 2 years.
        On other hand an Indian with same scenario get Green card after 30 years.
        Do you understand now ?
        We are being abused by DHS/USCIS. We are not stealing jobs from American We are American waiting for Green Card.
        Listen,process and then give output.
        Ty

        Reply
        • We are being abused by DHS/USCIS — Why take “abuse”? You have a choice not to be abused. How pathetic can you be to call the system is abusing you, when you are standing in the line asking for a green card.
          Thai and Pakis have fewer people migrating to US, that why the line is shorter. If you drop off from the GC line, it will make the process faster for the person right behind you. Are you willing to help your fellow Indian? Hope you can comprehend some of these facts!

          This country is so nice to guest workers, they forget they are NOT Americans, don’t misuse it.

          Reply
        • ‘We are American waiting for Green Card.’ ?? you are NOT American until you get citizenship. Get your facts checked and grammar too.

          Reply
          • David H :
            You are correct I should check my fact before putting here.
            My daughter is a citizen of United States. She want to join United States Army to protect her country. And we believe in our heart this is our country as well.

            But totally forgot the piece of paper which stands as a fact.

            TY

          • Stop brining your family, daughter and your husband’s Masters degree into why ead should stay or get revoked. Your daughter being citizen has nothing to do with H4EAD and H1. If believing in your heart is more imp than that piece of paper than why are you fighting in line for that piece of paper?
            enough of your family stories.. I can tell you 100 of family stories and why ead should be revoked. Got it?

          • If piece of paper doesn’t matter then get out of the line to get that piece of paper and go back to your 3rd world country.

        • Rashmi Sodhi: You are being abused by DHS/USICS since you are Indian and people from Pakistan get their GC in no time and so you think its fair to give H4EAD. On the same lines and talking about fairness, what about your fellow Indians who don’t have spouses but are in the line of GC as you are? Are you going to fight for them also?

          Reply
          • David H
            Regardless of h4 Ead stay or get revoked. We will be the citizen of United States.
            DHS/ USCIS are holding Green Card line for 10 plus years only for Indian. We are working legally and paying taxes for 17 years.
            H4 Ead should be revoked only when DHS address the real Green Card backlog issue .
            TY

        • Rashmi~ If you are american, then you don’t need to apply for H1/H4/GC you can directly work in USA.
          For non-Americans here including me, H4 EAD going away is unfortunate. But just unfortunate, whether its wrong or right is up to Americans to decide. I don’t have a say in it. What I can do is (if I want to stay in USA) to adjust myself with current rules. The options we have:
          1) If H1s priority date is before 2010. Its worth waiting 2 years at home for spouse. Keep leaning new things meanwhile.
          2) If family situation permits, go for a MS degree in a decent enough cheaper public school. Finish MS in 1 year. They you are good to to get 29 moths OPT and 3 attempts of H1B Masters CAP after getting employment. This is best option for people who are here to stay and not make money and go back. Spending 35-40K in college fees is peanuts in long term.
          3) If employer is repetitive and supportive and have office in other countries, take a transfer for 1 year and then come back on L1B.
          4) Explore for job opportunists for you and spouse in Canada, Australia and permanently move there.
          5) If you have already made lot of money. apply investor PR in Canada. It just costs 170k USD investment. Get a PR first and then move. In case you are very rich, you can think of 500K Investor GC in USA.
          6) Please note that you would be eligible for social security benefits even if you don’t stay in this country or get GC if you have paid taxes here for 10 years. Time that milestone as well if it is very close.

          We should be thankful to USA for what we have already got and would get in future, and keep adjusting to rules. US stay has already given us so much financial security, it also gave us American Kids for whose future people on the other side of fence are fighting for in a way.

          Reply
        • Hi Rashmi, not to be rude, but its not clear when you say that you are a American too. H1B is a non-immigrant visa and a temporary guest worker program and not at all close to be an American. Getting GC might get you a step closer, but until that moment any H1b is a “GUEST TEMPORARY” worker. Its ridiculous when people making demands to have H4 EAD’s removal and disappearance of country wide quotas. Every country has rules and every country first looks into their citizens and not on guest workers and temporary visas. Not to meant to hurt you, but this is a fact, you are always welcome to make requests to government but you are not in a position to make demands. H4EAD is pretty much gone and a many more stringent measures will happen on H1b .

          Reply
        • David H
          True H4 Ead needs to end .
          We need only Green card or citizen working for United States.
          We should end government branch DHS/ USCIS .
          Stop abuse on Indian and hire American only.
          Please file for petition to end DHS BRANCH of government. This way we Indian won’t get trap in the legal immigration net setup by your government.

          TY

          Reply
          • You are so DUMB.. I cant imagine. you are saying H4EAD should end and therefore DHS and USCIS should be closed too? You think DHS/ USCIS is only for Indians on H4EAD and there is no other purpose of Homeland Security? where did you come from? you really need to do some research before writing here and making fool of yourself.

          • Please file for petition to end DHS BRANCH of government. – Rashmi, your arrogance is mind-blowing. Next thing you will ask for, is to be the president?

  29. What happens now is truly up to people of India in USA . If everyone stand up and question the sanity of Green Card backlog for India Eb2 & Eb3. Government have to make some real rule to stop abuse from DHS on backlog.
    Myself lived on h4 then on h1b and back to h4 ead for past 9 years in United States.
    My spouse started with Masters followed by intern in good company became full time on h1b for 6 years and later on Green card filling in Eb2. It’s been for him 17 years in United States.

    H4 Ead is a patch applied by Obama administration to temporarily give relief to people on Green Card backlog who will be citizen of United States anyways.
    Ending H4 Ead without fixing DHS abuse on Indian immigrant on Green card backlog is cruel.

    Stand up and speak to our Congress men. Speak now do not hold back. This is in every sense big mistake by DHS.

    Reply
    • YOUR Congress men? Did you vote for him/her? Whey should they give you any consideration when you want to take his/her constituents job away? H1B is a temporary work visa, once your six years are done, pack up and leave.

      Reply
      • I’ve been doing that for Support of HR 392. Call your congress men and seek help. Kris likes it or not but they are our congressmen too. Everyone please call your congressmen and ask for help and show the damage it will do t you

        Reply
    • Your arrogance in tanking about you and your husbands achievements is truly appalling. If you were in EB1 category that would have been something. The US needs best and the brightest, not EB2/EB3 folks who have simply done MS/MBA that anybody can do. Upskill, build something productive that puts you in EB1 then talk.

      It’s appalling that being mediocre, as evident by being in EB2, you demand EAD as if it’s birth right. And since when did you start voting as an alien to call it your congressmen? Accepting voter fraud, are you?

      Reply
    • Let’s get something straight here. H1B and H4EAD are non-immigrant visa therefore no specific hardship or reason beyond voluntary. Be grateful you’re being given opportunities and praise USA for allowing you to stay. The problem here is the feeling of entitlement that you don’t deserve. You need to allow population of other countries a chance to work and live in the USA as opposed to flooding the market by Indian workforce.

      Reply
    • lol ..GC backlog for India is a problem of the Indians ,by the Indians …US is not bound to assist or make things easier for anyone else except their own citizens ..visa is always a privilege not a birth right….

      Reply
  30. Folks,
    Let’s ignore the incompetent haters like Mishra for now. We all know those kind of people who want everything and wish nobody else gets their fair share.

    For all those who are in GC backlog, please take some time to go thru recent posts on Immigration Voice FB page
    https://www.facebook.com/ImmigrationVoice/
    Their recent conference call has really useful info and I am optimistic that it’ll benefit all of the folks on H1B and their spouses on H4 EAD.
    Having HR-392 bill passed in congress as DACA amendment is of utmost importance, not only for us but for US economy as well. So please come forward in support of that and take necessary actions.
    Also, spread the word.

    @Admin, I would appreciate if you can add this in the article if possible

    Reply
  31. Agree with Anil. H4 EAD is gone. The Dept may allow existing H4 EAD holders to work for some time period – a year perhaps. All H1b and their H4 spouses have to accept this fact and move on. At least H1b is still intact. So what if there is tighter scrutiny, there should a rigorous review of every application, so that the ones who dont fake resumes get in and ones who do dont.

    Reply
  32. No matter what, H4 EAD is pretty much gone. Not to discourage the efforts for keeping it alive, but its pretty much a done deal. There are rumors that they might even cancel the 6 year extension for H1B . The system is broken and should be fixed and the only way fixing is through moving towards a merit based system. The current H1B system is not merit based, its a “Luck” based system. What kind of a system is this, if a MIT/Stanford foreign graduate is given equal weight to someone with a bachelors degree with a fake resume from a street university in India. The original intent of H1B is “Merit and High skilled based” and should be bought back.

    Reply
  33. I cant comprehend why are you guys saying that since there was no H4 EAD in 2008 so it should be OK to not have EAD now. That does not make any sense. By that logic it should be ok to take away women’s right to vote.. they didn’t have any 50 years ago. And it should be ok to deny people of color entry to public places.. it was legal 50 years ago.

    Length of validity period of a rule has no relation to its validity and its impact on people’s lives or its importance or correctness.

    Reply
    • On the same note, just because Obama allowed H4s to take American jobs, doesn’t mean Trump has to continue to allow people. Someone has to stop it, right?

      Reply
    • Doing away completely with H4 EAD may not be a good idea instead if there is a process change to evaluate if H4 have right skills and experience like how it is for H1B (may not be ideal) then it will make sense that right people are getting jobs instead of treating it like all H4 with some criteria is eligible to work

      Reply
      • Ge it through your thick skull….it is not about skills or degrees, it is about right to work, which H4 is not intended for. There is no shortage of people or skills in America.

        Reply
      • I agree 100%.. current H4 EAD can work in any field, rather it should be streamlined to say they should be eligible to work in the specialized field of study. Lot of other countries do the same. The idea is to retain brighter talents of H1 so that the country can progress…

        Reply
          • TAM,
            People are now tired of proving you wrong. I understand your frustration. Probably you lost your job to a foreign worker. But your numbers are way off limits. You are saying millions of jobs were stolen? Millions??? Plural??? Really??
            You have been asking people to check facts when you don’t do that yourself.
            http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/06/news/economy/us-job-openings-6-million/index.html
            These are current numbers. There is no reason why people with skills, education can’t find jobs.
            And I have already proven wrong with your CHEAP labor argument here
            https://www.glassdoor.com/research/h1b-workers/

            Talking about H1B abuse, American companies / employers were equally guilty who let that happen. So a little introspection here would help you.
            Also please don’t throw 20 year old stale (even those were exaggerated numbers) data at people.
            Good luck with the job hunt!

          • SH: Between H1 and L1 and their dependents, you don’t think millions of jobs are lost?

            1) Let’s take the glassdoor’s number on the face value – H1s make more than US nationals in 4 categories in 10 large cities. That is all this data says. Now the truth – I have worked in half of these cities, I can assure H1 salaries is nowhere near US citizen’s salaries.

            2) 6.2million openings as of August – I could not find any stats by industry. Most of these jobs are not in tech, where H1s are employed. I believe tech has less than 1% unemployment rate.

            I have seen hundreds of people get laid off when cheap companies take over. Yes, US companies are to blame for letting this happen. Companies like FB, Google, MSFT should be spending billions (yes billions) training US workforce, instead of lobbying for more visas. But all they do is import cheap labor. I cannot imagine why would these companies want you to get a GC, when they know you will demand more money once you get a GC. They just want you to wait in perpetuity.

          • TAM,
            Your last comment is proving that you don’t really know what you’re talking about and your biased view is purely based on hatred for everyone coming in from outside. Thanks for making that clear.
            Let’s take a look at job boards. Top 5-6 tech companies alone have approx 15k job openings in tech on any given day (and I am being really conservative). Given how many employees leave company on their own to move to another company, they hire lot more than that in a year. btw, I am not even talking about companies like Cisco, Broadcom, Qualcomm etc along with rest of the fortune 500 companies who have HUGE workforce of engineers across US.
            Do you really think that people will believe you when you say “I worked in half of those cities and saw hundreds of people getting replaced by cheap labor” as opposed to well conducted research by Glassdoor? If you do, feel free to spread the word.
            Please please please take a look at the openings these companies have.
            When you interview at any of these companies, your visa status is asked at the very end and they DO NOT differentiate based on that even though they have to spend more for H1B transfers / GC processing etc. In fact, they end up spending more for those candidates.
            Also since you are sharing experiences, let me tell you mine.
            I hired lots of engineers for my team and at that time, recruiters (who are US citizens btw) were sending me resumes of candidates, more than 90% of whom needed H1B sponsorship. And that wasn’t their fault. They were selecting top quality candidates and were doing fantastic job (given the fact that rarely anyone would fail initial phone screen tech interview). So in last 3-4 years, we could hire only 2 software engineers who were US citizens. Hiring was purely based on merit and company I work for was doing extremely well; thus we were never gonna reject anyone because he/she was demanding more money.
            Companies like FB, Google, MicroSoft, Amazon have no shortage of money and I can’t speak for contractors, but atleast their direct full time employees are paid extremely well

  34. Speak up, folks! Here’s a Facebook group about who to contact. Tell your story and secure your rights. Don’t wait to be killed!!

    Reply
      • I used to hear “skilled workers”, and I am not sure whether they exactly mean what it says. Each job has it’s own requirements, skills and qualifications to be fulfilled to hire a person. Every company needs the best out of every candidate who appears for an interview. Some are fake, some are honest. The interviewers are trained to know the fake and true one. I have appeared for four interviews in the recent past for a job which was asking for 3-4 years of experience for which I had just one year to show in my resume! But, I have been chosen by them for all the four positions since my backgrounds and skills overcome my deficient experience! I mean, I was competing with highly experienced candidates, but they chose me, and one interviewer has even told me on face that “we liked your honesty”! My resume was reflecting the actual me, but nothing fake in it. Now I am in question about the EAD status!! As per my understanding America was forced to hire skilled workers from other countries because of two reasons – one, they can’t find enough educated candidates, and two, they can’t find hard working employees. Indians work beyond their scheduled hours, what matters for them is the completion of tasks, but I have seen others clocking out when it exactly turns 8 hours, doesn’t matter whether the work is pending. When they see me working beyond my hours, they used to tell me “there is always tomorrow”!! Of course, there are exceptions – dedicated hard workers, I do agree. America is always great for us, I do not think it needs to be made great anymore! The only thing need to be changed here is to give importance for education, bring up well educated and sensible youth, compete with the skilled workers from other countries and get the job and then tell them to “get out of my country, we are skilled enough to do this job”!! Rather than that, if you do not possess enough skilled personals to compete with the ones from other countries and try to take them out from their current positions by bringing in rules and regulations, then it will impact in a negative way with the current economy of this nation. The skilled workers from other countries, a major part being from India, including H4 EAD holders, contribute a great deal to the economy of US. We need to think and can make this change gradually rather than abruptly stopping thousands of workers from their job.

        Reply
        • Millions (80000x20yrs) of American workers lost jobs because of H1B and now you think the economy will tank because 50K H4s cannot work? What are these skills you possess that American worker does not? Please enlighten us.

          Reply
          • I understand the frustration but they must be possessing some better skills that American employers are hiring millions of H1B workers from last 20 years!!!

          • Let’s stop guessing if H1B visa workers are cheaper or as expensive as US citizens / GC holders.
            Here is the report from REAL study with REAL data
            https://www.glassdoor.com/research/h1b-workers/

          • Tam: That’s not totally true. They may be cheap but they do have skills and probably are more efficient also. You know so many companies like FB, AT&T, Google etc. are hiring them as their Full Time Employees even though the companies have to pay for their sponsorship and then file GC instead of hiring a US Citizen or someone who doesn’t need sponsorship? This way the H1 consultants are more expensive to the companies than US citizens. So don’t use this old stale irrelevant excuse that H1s are cheap. Companies wont compromise the quality of their product by hiring H1 people from so many years if the only reason was that they are cheap.

          • I feel if they end H1 visa and ten companies will start outsourcing these jobs which is again not good for US citizens.

        • Elizabeth, not sure why they are so many lay offs happening if they are just filling the positions with high skilled labor. The true intent of H1b has lost its meaning and currently its not “FILLING”, but “REPLACING” . There are certainly some positions being filled that do require sound technical skills but the vast majority are just replacing. H4 EAD is a lost case and it shouldn’t have been authorized in the first place. Let them change the whole system to a merit point based system and you would be a beneficiary too if it works. You need to know well that you are not a CITIZEN and a GUEST. If you don’t agree with the system, you are welcome to pack your bags and leave. As a country we know what works best for us and let us decide .

          Reply
          • Tim if we leave who will works and support the country economically.
            You guys are unskilled unqualified and just a peace of trash.

  35. I am on H1B and I-140 approved. H4 EAD never made any sense to me. If Obama wants to help H1Bs then why not give EAD directly to H1B Consultants who are skilled workers, have relevant experience and are already working in the field… rather than giving EAD to their spouses who may or may not have any skills, don’t have any work experience. I don’t understand.
    With H4 EAD, both the H1 consultants are losing jobs (because H4 EADs don’t require sponsorship regardless they have skills or not…) as well as those US citizens who used to work on $10 per hr jobs at Costco, Macys counters.
    Give EAD to H1B who are skilled and waiting for their GC from 5-6 yrs. Instead of giving to the spouses who cant even speak proper English and just came from their Village.

    Reply
    • That itself shows how immature you are.. This is the problem with the lottery system! Talented people from Stanford etc are being kicked out while people like you who think H4 EAD can;t speak English are being selected. Once H1B lottery is based on merit in the future, we can no longer see fools like you. Giving EAD to 1.5 million stuck in backlog. That will never get cleared even in your wildest dreams. So they gave temporary relief for those that are struck. Just having H1 & 140 doesn’t make you a high class citizen of US. Any one on immigrant visa in legal status is a 3rd grade person is US. So get your head down and support fellow members in getting HR 392 done. You are living in a fools paradise..

      Reply
      • Priya m: First of all..mind your language. Calling somebody fool doesn’t make you a ‘high class’ US citizen. OK? Second of all…I dont think H4 EAD can;t speak English but I personally know people on H4 EAD in my friends circle who cant speak English and don’t have any work experience.

        Reply
        • I oppose it. I employed atleast 20 in last 5 yrs and not even single person can speak English Properly. That doesn’t mean they can’t work . All u need is technical skill set and it doesn’t have anything to do with communication skill. Don;t weigh in technical skill set with communication. All Indians more or less have the different technical skillset with similar English proficiency skills. I was happy with most of H1’s and H4’s. What kind of world are u in? Looks like u have 1900’s mindset…

          Reply
          • Reply_to_Raj – If they cant speak proper English and no technical skills then whats the difference them and other illegal immigrants who cross the border and cant speak English and no skills and taking the low paid jobs of US Citizens? You will know when you lose your job to one of these who is less qualified than you and is cheap resource. you all are morons.

          • Are you one of those body shop consulting companies who hire unqualified people, give them minimum training in some skill and then send them on site where they take help from other people finishing their tasks and don’t know how to talk in English and communicate with other teams? Looks like it.

    • Somoone: Everyone is getting their EAD, and the job. EAD doesn’t guarantee a job as we all know. If someone is not capable or not even speak proper English, how can they get hired?

      Does it make sense at all? Not all h4 ead’s are techie’s. There are many other businesses as well. Do you think that the organizations are ready to pay even 20k or 30k for free if they are not skilled or not talented and just because they are coming for cheap? That’s highly a misconception.

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      • AZ: I agree with you that EAD does not guarantee a job and I am not totally against H4 EAD. All I was saying was that why not give EAD to I140 approved instead.. it was just a thought. I am not here to fight or argue with buttheads like Priya M who have the audacity to tell other people what they should do as in ‘get your head down and do blah blah blah..’

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    • Your comments are well taken. Why did Obama approve this in the first place. Giving a perk to someone and then having it taken away it hurts a lot. There are so many H1b amendment bills, I am now wondering if any bill will pass on H1b. May be Trump admin is just happy to live with the current H1b and tighten to the extent possible.

      Reply
  36. Nationalism is rising around the World. The anti immigration stance is here to stay for a while. All entry and ability to work in America is going to get severely curtailed.
    Trump is planning to make America exclusive like his condos, the price of admission will be steep.
    Comments, lawsuits, pleading will make little difference. One should plan accordingly.

    Reply
    • Qwerr: Your ancestors slaughtered the natives and took this country against their will. You should be the last person to talk about ancestral pride.

      Reply
    • It’s quite upsetting when the Indians who knew the real struggles of the fellow Indians don’t support them. I can’t deny the fact that the GC holders now also faced lot of struggles in the past. But, the thing GC holders has to remember is your quality of life was far better than the people who are moving to US now.

      You were paid really good those days and now you have settled in your lives. Why can’t you take it, when other people were suffering and struggling for their kids future?

      Now that you are in a good position, we don’t compete with you. We are not competing with anyone nor taking anyone’s jobs. We are getting what we deserve. If you can, try to help someone to prove unity in diversity rather than bullying someone.

      To all H4Ead’s with a Master’s Degree from US, don’t worry. Don’t let negativity depress you. I don’t think all the h4ead’s would be reverted back. I don’t think the people who are against this can compete with us and win the race. Let’s fight together. How many people here so calling themselves as “Highly Qualified’ just because they are citizens has a Master’s degree with highest GPA?

      People wit GC’S, you don’t belong here and it’s not your country. You started early in the race, and that doesn’t mean you have all the rights.

      It’s evevryone’s right to do what they want, and to get what they deserve.

      Reply
      • Mish- Who the heck are you to decide whether you can take them or not. You are not even a drop in the ocean and you are not here to set the rules. Having a GC doesn’t mean you are god. You are just an ordinary person like us from an other country who have been here ahead of us begging this country to hire you.

        Reply
      • I hope you can tell this story to a citizen who lost his job to a H1 and can no longer put food on the table for this/her family. Don’t they deserve to live too? We are not against an individual on H1, just the whole system is f-ed up. You are screwed and we are screwed along with you. It just that we are on two sides of the coin.

        Reply
  37. hmm, my wife got her H4 EAD and opened a small business and hired two local AMERICAN workers. Guess they would lose their job for sure if Trump ends it.

    Reply
    • Nope! They can find jobs elsewhere. If not your wife as employer, some other employer. Else, who knows they may end up opening a business?

      Reply

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