A Bloomberg report by Olivia Carville and Shelly Banjo published by theprint.in says that about 375,000 temporary visa-holders & Green Card applicants are banned from entering the US until next year. A significant number of those are now stuck in India.
The report cited the plight of Natasha Bhat, a techie from the silicon valley as an example. When her father-in-law died in late February, Bhat and her four-year-old son rushed to India from San Fransisco. Little did she anticipate being stuck indefinitely. She has an H1B visa, but her documents were due for renewal and she presumed then that she could do it at the US consulate in Kolkata when she was in India. Her mid-March appointment at the U.S. consulate in Kolkata was canceled due to the lockdown and COVID 19 concerns. Then POTUS Trump signed an executive order last week barring many people on several types of visas, including H-1Bs, from entering the country until early 2021.
Immigration policy is tightening not only in the US, but around the world. Of that, there is no doubt. Trump wants to protect US employment and this is an election year. The report quotes Greg Siskind, an immigration lawyer in Memphis, “use the pandemic as an excuse to achieve anti-immigration goals the administration has wanted to do for years.” India too has altered or diluted its Labour laws using the same excuse. No difference there.
Visa requirements often entail leaving the country for a minimum period before return – typically visa conversions and the like. Then there is other stuff to take care of them back home and/or vacations. Around 3/4th of the H1B visa holders from India are techies and they are used to this. But this time their trips took a different turn, literally, when they couldn’t fly back to their Pre-COVID19 lives because of changes in US Immigration Policy.
The number in this limbo, the report says is in the range of 375,000. These include temporary visa holders and green card applicants and a significant number are stuck in India says Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group.
Silicon Valley companies and trade groups have already condemned the Executive action. Some Indian IT companies, the report says, are considering alternatives to placing people on-site with U.S. clients, such as creating clusters of workers in countries like Mexico or Canada.
How complex can the situation get?
Natasha’s husband, the report says flew back in March. He is an engineer at a bank, and now they have been separated by thousands of miles over the last four months of the lockdown and are staring at a forced separation of another 6 months! Natasha is working from India – the hours she has to keep because of the time difference are the opposite of what she used to. And she also has to convince and teach her child to love Indian food. So there are multiple issues that people holding these visas and stuck outside the US have to contend with. They also have to contend with their mortgage and car loans in the US. Some have U.S.-born children who are American citizens enrolled in U.S. schools.
Leading Immigration lawyer Greg Siskind and author of several books on immigration law is among ABC News Top 20 people to follow for immigration news according to his twitter handle @gsiskind. He tweeted often on the subject and he warned workers on non-immigrant visas not to leave the U.S. He urged those abroad to come back as soon as possible. He set up an online forum for people to connect and share their stories and he received more than 500 responses in no time many of them tragic stories.
The report quotes the case of Narendra Singh, an Indian-born software architect. “He had lived in Dallas for nine years, took his family back to Kolkata, India, in February. Their return was delayed when the consulates closed and they were advised to wait out the worst of the pandemic. Now Singh is working remotely. His wife, a software engineer, lost her job in April. Their daughter, a U.S. citizen, was slated to start preschool in the fall, but they’ve been preparing her for the possibility that won’t happen. Singh, 36, said he knew there was always a chance of his visa not being extended, but assumed he was secure until his current visa was set to expire in 2022. “We took specialized jobs, we followed the rules, we got the visas,” he said. “I just feel betrayed.”“
Right now, it is painful for so many. But the question is will that pain go away? The November Presidential election might provide the answer
