The Department of Homeland Security announced on Tuesday that it would change two immigration-related policies pertaining to holders of H-1B visas, which are granted to workers with advanced expertise in high-demand areas like science, technology and engineering. While the green-card applications of H-1B visa holders are being considered by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the DHS agency which handles green card requests, workers’ spouses will now be given authorization to work in the United States -- a benefit not currently afforded them.
The other change, according to Reuters, will extend the list of ways prospective employers of an immigrant researcher or professor can prove that the candidate is among the best in their field. Both changes would go into effect only after a public-consult period of 60 days. Soeme 85,000 H-1B visas are granted per year; Fox reports that it took only a week for those granted for 2015 to be snatched up. Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who announced the changes along with Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, told Reuters the changes could affect up to 97,000 people in the first year after they go into effect and about 30,000 per year after that.
Last month, as pressure built from Latino and immigrant-advocacy groups to put a halt to deportations of undocumented immigrants, President Obama called on Department of Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson to conduct a review of the agency’s immigration law-enforcement practices to see how it could make them more “humane.” This might not be exactly what those groups -- or the Congressional Democrats who took up their cause in a memo recommending possible courses of action on deportations -- had in mind. But it could be the first in what advocates describe as a two-step series of actions, according to what the administration has communicated to them.
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