The Senate Judiciary Committee decided that American spouses are not equal to spouses from India; the latter group is to have rights that will be denied to Americans.
Spouses of U.S. temporary workers in India, for instance, cannot work in the Indian economy, but their opposite numbers (Indians married to H-1B workers from that country employed here) would be allowed to work here legally according to language adopted by the committee this week.
As background: Spouses of H-1B (mostly high-tech) workers are not allowed to work in the United States under current law. There are about 750,000 such workers in the United States at any given time, many of them married.
Under the Gang of Eight's original omnibus immigration bill, that would have been changed, but — understandably — only for spouses from nations who let similarly situated American spouses work in the home county. India is a country that does not allow such employment by spouses of U.S. workers with temporary visas, a point made in a recent blog by a Seattle immigration lawyer.
The text of the Gang of Eight's original bill had this clause in it:
(ii) In the case of an alien spouse admitted under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), who is accompanying or following to join a principal alien admitted under such section, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall —
(I) authorize the alien spouse to engage in employment in the United States only if such spouse is a national of a foreign country that permits reciprocal employment; and
(II) provide such a spouse with an "employment authorized" endorsement or other appropriate work permit, if appropriate.
Had that clause remained in place, and were the bill to be passed, that would put pressure on the Indian government to open their labor markets to the spouses of Americans working in India on temporary visas, presumably a small population. They would be under pressure from their own citizens, the H-1Bs working in this country.
The government of India, however, would prefer that its people overseas have the right to work legally, but it does not want to let some Americans have the same rights.
So who rides to the rescue? The Senate Judiciary Committee!
And who do they rescue? The government in New Delhi!
Presumably, the interests of big American employers who use the routinely underpaid H-1B workers were a more significant lobby than the government in New Delhi. The Intels, Googles, etc. want the wives of the H-1Bs to work so that their own H-1B families will have more money without costing the IT giants a penny, and the senators are most receptive to these huge, prosperous firms.
So, in a maneuver described in an earlier blog of mine, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and several members of the Gang of Eight agreed on a 19-page package of amendments to the original bill, designed to make Big Business even happier with S.744 than they were before. It passed the committee and is now part of the bill before the whole Senate.
One of those amendments stripped the reciprocity provision from the earlier bill.
For the text of that package, introduced at the very last minute on Tuesday, see here.
There are, of course, two American populations who will be hurt by this bill: 1) a relatively small number of expatriate spouses in India; and 2) a much larger group of Americans in this country who will not get jobs because they are filled by H-1B spouses. Many in the second set will never know that they were hurt by this provision.
Will we be hearing that the Gang of Eight has taken an anti-American position in this matter?
Will they be charged with anti-citizen discrimination? Let's hope so.