H4 ead aunty avedana

[desiboys]

H-1B spouses at risk of losing their work permits

By Ileana Najarro

June 21, 2018

 

• 

Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Chronicle / Houston Chronicle

 

Manasa Kokonda, 28, is one of the estimated 100,000 spouses of specialized visa holders whose work authorization, known as H-4EAD, will likely be revoked this year as federal agencies act on President Donald Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” executive order.

 

For the last three years, the H-4EAD program has allowed, predominantly, Indian families to make major financial decisions based on having a second income while they wait for their green cards to be processed. It has granted thousands of highly educated Indian women a chance to pursue careers in engineering, medicinal research, entrepreneurship and, in Houston, the energy sector.

Now, it may all come undone.

Back in India, Kokonda obtained a master’s degree and worked as a software analyst at a pharmaceutical company. She eyed a promotion. She had a career mapped out.

Then in 2014, an arranged marriage brought her to Houston. Her husband works as a mechanical engineer through the H-1B visa program for people with particular skills.

Since the H-4EAD did not exist at the time, Kokonda spent her first months in the U.S. doing chores and watching (and re-watching) movies at home. Legally, she was unable to work.

Depressed and fed up, she pursued a second master’s degree, at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Thanks to the change in immigration law, she now works as a software analyst for a local energy services company.

She likes what she does for a living. She feels like she can build a future for herself and her family.

“I cannot imagine my life again sitting at home,” she said.

So Kokonda’s morning routine now includes scanning news headlines shared on social media for any word on the H-4EAD’s future.

Last year, Trump called for ending the work permit. Legal experts consider the move in line with other recent efforts to curtail legal immigration such as the end of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and Temporary Protected Status, or TPS.

U.S. Customs and Immigration Services is expected to reach a decision on H-4EAD this year.

“USCIS is focused on ensuring the integrity of the immigration system and protecting the interests of U.S. workers,” a spokeswoman said in a statement, “and is committed to reforming employment-based immigration programs so they benefit the American people to the greatest extent possible.”

Kokonda and others are left with few options. After graduating from UH Clear Lake, she could have worked under the Optional Practical Training program, or OPT. That would be temporary, and she’d be limited as to where she could work.

She could also still apply for an H-1B visa. But there’s a yearly cap on applications and a lottery system determines who gets the limited number of available visas. It’s a costly, time-consuming and ultimately unappealing process for many as Dibya Singh, 32, has found.

Singh lives in Dallas and works, under H-4EAD, as a systems analyst for an IT company. She previously looked into the H-1B option with little success.

“Not every employer is willing to apply for an H-1B,” Singh said.

She’s lived in Dallas for six years and has had the H-4EAD for the last three.

Last year, she and her husband bought a four-bedroom, 3,500-square-foot house — a long-desired upgrade from their two-bedroom apartment. It seemed to be a sign that Singh’s American dreams were coming true, that this really is the land of opportunity she hoped it would be.

But the walls of the house are bare. No curtains hang on the windows. Furniture can be counted on two hands. Two bedrooms hold nothing in them.

Should the H-4EAD program cease to exist, the family won’t be able to keep the house, let alone furnish it.

“It’s my house. I want to decorate it,” Singh said. “But I’m not able to due to this instability.”

Singh, Kokonda and thousands of women across the country are now thinking about leaving the U.S. to return to their home countries or move to nations like Canada they consider to be more immigrant-friendly. Without H-4EAD, they would have to wait until they got their green cards to be able to work again in the U.S.

The U.S. limits green cards to just 7 percent of applicants from each foreign country. With an overwhelming number of Indian applicants, there’s a backlog in the system. Indian nationals who applied for their green cards in 2008 are only now getting their paperwork processed.

The Obama administration instituted the H-4EAD option in 2015 as a means to address this backlog by allowing H-1B spouses waiting on green cards to work in the interim. It was also created to incentivize H-1B workers to stay in the U.S., filling highly skilled jobs.

An exodus of H-1B visa holders and their families would hit major technology industries that rely on these specialized workers, including the global IT company Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., whose U.S. headquarters is in College Station.

Between 2010 and 2016, a recent Pew Research Center study found, College Station reported an average of 32 H-1B visa approvals per 100 workers. That was the highest number of approvals in the nation, and the majority of the visas went to Cognizant.

Cognizant did not respond to requests for comment.

Hoping to save their futures, H-4EAD workers are taking to social media, sharing their personal stories with the #SaveH4EAD hashtag, coordinating phone banks to call members of congress, urging them to step in and help them keep their work permits.

Women like Surabhi Sinha of Irving feel they need to remain employed to properly carve out a life for themselves and their families.

“We don’t want anything served on a platter,” Sinha said. “We want the chance to build something.”

Kokonda never thought she would take up political advocacy on social media. She also never thought she would end up in the U.S. Before her marriage, she knew little about American culture. What she knew, she learned from movies like the 1998 Indian romantic comedy “Jeans.”

The film features a sunny Los Angeles and characters making their dreams come true.

After four years of living in Houston, Kokonda started to believe her own dreams could come true here as well. But as she continues to monitor newsfeeds for any word on the H-4EAD, she’s accepted her reality. Her future will not be as bright as that of the “Jeans” protagonists.

“It’s just a movie,” she said.

[email protected]

twitter.com/IleanaNajarro

[tacobell fan]

[chedugudu_chidambaram]

22 minutes ago, tacobell fan said:

comedy cheyyamaku vayya... real time experience unnollaki chethulu kattukuno intlo kurchovadam kastame. They need to regulate the act .

[kevinUsa]

52 minutes ago, desiboys said:

Women like Surabhi Sinha of Irving feel they need to remain employed to properly carve out a life for themselves and their families.

irving ata anta dhoola unte 

indian ku velllandi 

usa enduku   ikkada rules ikkada ante kada 

 

[tacobell fan]

11 minutes ago, chedugudu_chidambaram said:

comedy cheyyamaku vayya... real time experience unnollaki chethulu kattukuno intlo kurchovadam kastame. They need to regulate the act .

Apply H1. I am not arguing, but real talent will always find ways to satisfy their appetite oorike ila articles publish chesthe emi vastadhi na matta ani @ARYA tweeted. 

[pahelwan]

Tishi 10gandi vay ee h4 ead at least h1b jobs anna safe untai. H1b approvals tight kavadaniki main reason ee h4 ead. Eppudina chusinama h1b denials ee pace lo so h1b deny ultimately h4 ead kuda 10gutundi. Better live happy with h1b lekunte rendu pikutai

[xano917]

15 minutes ago, kevinUsa said:

irving ata anta dhoola unte 

indian ku velllandi 

usa enduku   ikkada rules ikkada ante kada 

 

True , she also has rights to express her opinions no 

[AndhraneedSCS]

3 minutes ago, pahelwan said:

Tishi 10gandi vay ee h4 ead at least h1b jobs anna safe untai. H1b approvals tight kavadaniki main reason ee h4 ead. Eppudina chusinama h1b denials ee pace lo so h1b deny ultimately h4 ead kuda 10gutundi. Better live happy with h1b lekunte rendu pikutai

Not sure how many H4-EADs are directly competing with H-1Bs. 

 

I have 2 H4-EADs in my office. 

 

1) Male

2) Female

 

both are on H4-EAD because their H-1B was not picked 

[Staysafebro]

53 minutes ago, chedugudu_chidambaram said:

comedy cheyyamaku vayya... real time experience unnollaki chethulu kattukuno intlo kurchovadam kastame. They need to regulate the act .

They need to stop marrying girls who want to work. 

[TrumpCare]

inko face vadavalsindhi ..

[TechAdvice]

1 hour ago, desiboys said:

 

janallu ardam chesukovalli... ehhhNalugu is not end of the world. Verey vedallu vunnavi pani cheyyadaniki... ppl need to understand

[Aakupaccha_caradu]

[kevinUsa]

1 hour ago, xano917 said:

True , she also has rights to express her opinions no 

ok fine bro no issue 

anta dhool unte usa ravaddu ms chesi job shesukomanu 

us lo unte valla rules follow avvali 

manam chepina ruels kadu 

 

[master blaster]

9 minutes ago, kevinUsa said:

ok fine bro no issue 

anta dhool unte usa ravaddu ms chesi job shesukomanu 

us lo unte valla rules follow avvali 

manam chepina ruels kadu 

 

They did MS and they are following the rules.

[kevinUsa]

1 minute ago, master blaster said:

They did MS and they are following the rules.

mari h4 enduku?>