The Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced the end of a policy imposed in the previous administration, which did not allow dependent persons of authorized nonimmigrant to obtain employment authorization.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) announced that the spouses of people with H-1B visas for highly qualified foreigners and E and L-1 visas for entrepreneurs, will be able to access employment authorizations. In this way, the USCIS, resolved a legal dispute of an order issued in 2018 by the previous administration, which denied that spouses of this type of visas could obtain an employment permit, a situation that affected more than 100,000 people.
“It is gratifying that the administration saw that resolving the nonimmigrant spouse litigation was something that needed to be done quickly,” explained Jesse Bless, AILA Director of Federal Litigation.
US Immigration Law allows employers to temporarily hire foreign professionals in a specialized field requiring high skill, for example, cooperative research with the Department of Defense, high fashion modeling, or advertising. For this they are granted the H-1B visa.
On the other hand, E visas (E-1, E-2 and E-3) are given to temporary workers who come to the United States as merchants or investors from countries with which there are trade and navigation treaties.
Likewise, L-1 visas are given to foreign workers who are transferred within their work to one of their offices in the United States, regardless of the origin of the employing company, or abroad.
The spouses of people with these types of visas, could access certain benefits such as the automatic extension of the employment authorization.
