Daijiworld Media Network - Washington (SD)
Washington, Apr 29: H-1B visa holders in the US are at risk of losing their status due to the pandemic causing layoffs which also adversely impacts the business sector.
Around 2.5 lac Indians in the US are awaiting to obtain a green card while two lac of them on H-1B visas are likely to lose their legal status of stay toward the end of June as per reports from Bloomberg by Jeremy Neufeld, an immigration policy analyst with the Washington DC-based think tank Nikasen Centre.
Neufeld added that many more individuals not seeking residential status might be compelled to leave the country.
The report showed that nearly three-fourths of the H-1B visa holders were from the technology sector.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, millions of Americans have been laid off during the past two months. But, employees under visas are more prone to hardships. This is because the H-1B visas are linked to location and the employer who has agreed to pay the basic required salary. Pay cuts and work from home violate the visa regulations and the employees fired at work have options of only 60 days to find a new job, change the visa type or return to their home country. An additional challenge for those having their job at hand despite pandemic poses the difficulty of renewing their visas.
Experts state that the visa crisis is throwing a serious problem on the workers already troubled due to the ongoing pandemic.
Co-founder Boundless Immigration Inc, an enterprise that assists people in the immigration system, Doug Rand told Bloomberg that the crisis was creating a catastrophe at a human level and the economic level.
Adding to the woes of H-1B visa holders, they have their family members dependent on them for consent from officials to receive the stay order.
Rand said that the situation seemed to be at a mess, however, efforts are made to reduce the confusion caused due to the unpredicted phenomena.
Bloomberg reported that a lobbying group with members from tech giants like Apple, Amazon Facebook, Google and Microsoft namely 'TechNet' joined a series of trade groups to assist the employees from other nations. On April 17, they had written a letter to the state and homeland security department requesting a postponement in work authorization expiration until September 10.
Administration under Trump is yet to respond to the letter. The administration had repeatedly adopted measures that would make it even harder for immigration or foreign workers in the recent past. In 2019, the number of non-immigrant workers sharply fell to 8.7 million from 10.9 million in 2015 for the fourth consecutive year, a report from the state department data stated.