​There have been speculations going around that Trump Administration has plans to stop granting work permits to spouses of H-1B visa holders, overturning a 2015 H-4 EAD Rule, which allowed work permits for eligible H-4 visa holders.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is already facing a lawsuit from Save Jobs USA to this effect. As per recent development, court granted the DHS’s motion to hold the proceedings in abeyance pending further order of the court and denied the motion to reschedule briefing and oral argument. Parties were directed to file motions to govern further proceedings by January 2, 2018.

DHS sought time to review the H-4 EAD rule to ensure that it meets the newly announced priorities and to decide whether to undertake a new rulemaking concerning the H-4 Rule and comply with the President’s Order “Buy American and Hire American”.

Finally, there is no official notification from DHS other than above. The rule is still under review by authorities and it is likely that a decision may come out at any time in coming months. 

I’m humbled to see the overwhelming response the posts have received so far and wanted to share my reflections on them. Before I go further, I want to share with you the genesis of why I started these posts. Generally, when a client asks their attorney or law firm about the current situation in the industry, most of the time the client receives a localized view of the trends based on the information their attorney/lawfirm has seen internally. Unfortunately, this doesn’t reflect the global view of the trends and sometimes misses the trends. I thought business owners and beneficiaries deserve better information and should have access to global view of the trends.

So I have analyzed the data and started sharing the findings on social media channels. You will continue to seem them over the next 2-3 weeks. The social measures like impressions and views are very impressive so far and have blown away my expectations. Big thanks to you. If you like the posts, please share with your friends or Like them.

The images I have shared are optimized for mobile devices. Because of the limited mobile device screen sizes, I have limited the number of data points in each image to around 6. But there are more data points for each trend like the one below and you can get access to them at http://www.kamalalaw.com/h1b-trends. Several people have got access to them already. I’m sure, you will like them too and don’t miss out.

The post on Occupational Titles triggered several messages from the community, requesting to include trends on wage levels for Occupational Titles like Computer Programmers. Also, there are requests to include trends on RFEs. I initially thought of providing around 15 h1b trends, but now I plan to extend the trends to cover the information the community is requesting.

If you have any questions/comments/feedback, please drop a line at [email protected] and I will get back to you. Have a great weekend.