Washington: As part of its efforts to attract and retain highly skilled immigrants from countries like India, the US on Tuesday announced two proposals, including a rule to extend employment authorisation to spouses of certain H-1B workers.
Together these actions will help attract new businesses and new investment to the US and ensure that the US has the most skilled workforce in the world, the Department of Homeland Security said after the publication of the regulation.
"The proposals announced today will encourage highly skilled, specially trained individuals to remain in the United States and continue to support US businesses and the growth of the US economy," said Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
"A concurrent goal is for the US to maintain competitiveness with other countries that attract skilled foreign workers and offer employment authorisation for spouses of skilled workers. American businesses continue to need skilled non-immigrant and immigrant workers," Mayorkas said.
"These two proposed rule changes are an integral part of the Administration's efforts to strengthen entrepreneurship and innovation, and to help the US attract and retain highly skilled immigrants," said US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker.
"The fact is, we must do more to retain and attract world-class talent to the US and these regulations put us on a path to doing that. These actions promise to unleash more of the extraordinary contributions that immigrants have always made to America's innovation economy," she added.
Under existing regulations, the US does not provide employment authorisation to dependents (also known as H-4 non-immigrants) of H-1B non-immigrant workers.
The change proposed, would allow H-4 dependent spouses of certain H-1B non-immigrant workers to request employment authorisation, as long as the H-1B worker has already started the process of seeking lawful permanent residence through employment.
The H-1B work visas for highly skilled professionals have been most beneficial from IT sector professionals from India.
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