Washington: The Trump administration has failed to meet its deadline for the second time this year to issue a notification on its decision to terminate the work authorisation of H-4 visa holders, mostly Indians who are spouses of professionals having H-1B visas.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had informed a US court in March that it was working to issue a Notice of Proposed Rule Making in June this year. At the end of June, the DHS did not give any explanation for not issuing the notice of proposed rulemaking (NP-RM), which would have formally kicked off the process to terminate the Obama-era decision to provide work authorisation to spouses of H-1B visa holders.
“I have no updates to provide at this time,” a DHS official said, noting that he cannot speculate when a decision will be made. Multiple times this year, as late as early June, the DHS had insisted that there was no change in its plans to rescind the Obama-era rule of providing authorisation to certain categories of H-4 visas holders. The DHS had also missed a similar deadline in February when it told a federal court that it anticipated submitting to the Office of Management and Budget for review and clearance the proposed rule in time for publication in June 2018.
Indian-Americans were a major beneficiary of this provision. Over 1 lakh H-4 visa holders benefited.
