March 29, 2023 (Washington, DC) — Immigration Voice, a national non-profit organization with over 130,000 members that advocates for the alleviation of restrictions on employment, travel, and working conditions faced by legal high-skilled immigrants in the United States working as doctors, researchers, scientists, and engineers at many of America’s Fortune 500 companies announces that it has successfully litigated in Court to preserve the right of spouses of H-1B holders in the discriminatory green card backlog to work in the United States.
In the case of Save Jobs USA v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 15-cv-00615, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington)—a nativist, anti-immigrant, group called Save Jobs USA sued to eliminate work authorizations for approximately 130,000 new H-4 visa holders claiming that this work authorization was illegal. The Court ruled in favor of Immigration Voice and dismissed this lawsuit, stating that “decades of executive-branch practice, and both explicit and implicit congressional ratification of that practice” support the H-4 EAD.
In 2017, before any other group had intervened in any other litigation during the Trump Administration—Immigration Voice moved to intervene in this lawsuit to prevent the Trump Administration from settling the case with Save Jobs USA and making H-4 employment authorizations illegal forever. Immigration Voice had been told by tech company lawyers that intervention would be impossible, but it ignored their incorrect advice and successfully intervened in the case anyway.
It was only because of Immigration Voice’s intervention in this case that H-4 employment authorizations were saved for 130,000 backlogged families. After doing this, these same tech company lawyers who told Immigration Voice they could not intervene then copied Immigration Voice’s strategy and moved to intervene in many other cases.
Aman Kapoor, the Co-Founder and President of Immigration Voice stated that:
“We are thrilled that the Court agreed with our view that the law allows spouses of people here in the United States suffering in decades-long green card backlogs caused by National-Origin based discrimination to at least have the right to work in the United States while they wait in these discriminatory backlogs. This case shows why Immigration Voice is necessary, as no one else was willing to step up to help this backlogged community suffering from discrimination, and Immigration Voice was the only organization willing and able to take the risk of acting to help the families in the green card backlog.”
