US govt H1B visa move may be pulled back

The US government is likely to withdraw its move ending granting extensions to H-1B visa-holders who were waiting for permanent residency — the Green Card — which could have led to the deportation of at least 500,000 Indians.

An announcement is expected shortly from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which runs the programme, according to Immigration Voice, an advocacy group that has been campaigning for a better deal for H-1B visa-holders from India, who have to wait the longest for their Green Card because of the system of annual country-cap.

“We are ECSTATIC to share this Breaking News,” Immigration Voice said in a post on its Facebook page Monday evening that it had succeeded “in protecting its members and getting USCIS to change its policy regarding H-1B renewal.”

It added: “USCIS has announced to us that it is retracting its policy to deny all H-1B visa through (beyond) year 6 based on section 104. This is a GREAT development. And we thank USCIS to make the right decision.”

A request sent by Hindustan Times to USCIS for confirmation, or denial, of this development was awaited, as was one sent to the White House, as sources had said discussions on the proposal had gone right up to the president for resolution.

The proposal, in the form of an internal memo that had gone around the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees USCIS, had set out to end the provision of granting extensions to H-1B visa holders whose applications for permanent residency (Green Card) had been accepted.

An estimated 500,000 to 750,000 Indian H-1B visa holders could have been deported if the administration decided to go ahead with the proposal, which was in line with President Donald Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” vision to boost manufacturing and protect local jobs for American.

“If implemented this could lead to large scale deportations, mostly of Indians, throwing hundreds and thousands of families into crisis,” an official of Immigration Voice official had told Hindustan Times at the time of the earlier report.

The move had sent a wave of panic coursing through the community of H-1B workers here from India, a large number of whom were employed with some of America’s top IT companies such as Microsoft, Facebook and Google and other sectors — Green Card sponsorship comes mostly, only actually, from US companies.