Trisha Thadani | on August 6, 2018
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/amp/Stuck-in-abusive-relationships-some-H-1B-spouses-13133771.php?__twitter_impression=true
The spouses of H-1B visa holders called the shelters and domestic violence programs because they felt trapped. Stuck in abusive relationships, with a visa status that didn’t allow them to work, they were beholden to their abusers for everything. Money. Food. The right to stay in the country.
One woman’s husband hit her even when she was pregnant. Another was rarely allowed out of the house alone. The women spoke of extreme isolation, threats of deportation, forced sexual encounters. Even when some called the police, they rarely pressed charges: Their H-4 visas depended on their spouses’ H-1Bs. And if their spouse was arrested, where would that leave them?
“How could I press charges?” a woman named Nisha — a pseudonym — said, sitting in her lawyer’s office as the sun poured in on a recent afternoon. “I wasn’t independent. I was new to this country. If I tell you to arrest him, how will I survive here?”
Some of those married to H-1B visa holders gained a glimmer of financial independence when the Obama administration created a work permit program for them in 2015. But now, in the name of protecting American jobs, the Trump administration is working on plans to unravel that program.
About 100,000 H-4 visa holders have applied for a work permit since 2015. Many dread the idea of going back to the days where they couldn’t work. Domestic abuse counselors and immigration lawyers in particular worry about how eliminating this program will reinforce the power that H-1B holders have over their spouses.
Because, for some of their clients, the permit is for more than just work.
It’s for a way out.
When she came to the U.S. five months pregnant, Nisha initially didn’t feel the need to work. Even though she had a master’s degree from India, she had a new baby on the way, a family to create. She assumed her husband’s well-paying job was enough to support both of them.
“I thought my husband would take care of me,” she said.
But when she realized the extent of his anger — he’d kick tables, storm out of rooms, hit her in fits of rage — she was desperate to get away from him. She called the police a few times, she said, but with no money of her own and no Social Security number, she never pressed charges. She felt there was no choice but to keep quiet, tucked away in her quiet East Bay neighborhood, thousands of miles away from her family in India.
The Chronicle is withholding Nisha’s real name because she is going through divorce proceedings and finalizing her immigration status. She declined to give her husband’s name.
Nisha (a psuedonym), who said she left an abusive relationship with her husband, who is an H-1B visa holder, is concerned for other women in abusive relationships and unable to work in the U.S. because of their immigration status.
The work-permit program was introduced shortly after Nisha came to the country in 2015. But she didn’t qualify, because it only applies after a spouse is approved for a green card.
While being able to seek work may not stop the initial abuse, it gives H-4 visa holders — the majority of whom are Indian women — the opportunity to gain some independence and an identity of their own, said immigration lawyer Kalpana Peddibhotla. The work authorization, she said, potentially gives spouses co-workers and friends to confide in.
“When you’re without work or you’re wholly dependent on someone, it becomes extremely limiting,” she said. “You’re not part of this society.”
H-1B visas are often used by Silicon Valley companies to hire high-skilled immigrants. A large portion have long gone to men from India, where the visa was long regarded as a status symbol and a ticket to a better life — though that’s changing amid the U.S. crackdown on foreign workers. For visa-seekers’ spouses, coming to the U.S. on a dependent visa was a chance to keep their families together and perhaps even start their own path to permanent residency.
Several women who previously spoke to The Chronicle said the work authorization helped them regain confidence as they entered the work force. One woman created her own day care, while others said they were interviewing at major tech companies such as Facebook and Salesforce. Though they hadn’t experienced abuse, the women said they still dreaded the idea of not being able to work.
While it’s impossible to quantify how many spouses on dependent visas have experienced abuse, there are a number of domestic violence programs and shelters around the U.S. and in the Bay Area that cater to South Asian women.
Tejeswi Dodda, an employee at one such program in Berkeley, Narika, said the “nature of the visa creates a disincentive to report the violence.” She also spoke of how cultural pressures deter many Indian spouses from leaving their abusers. In some South Asian cultures, the idea of divorce is so taboo that some H-4 visa holders would rather stay in an abusive relationship than endure the social shame, she said.
Dodda, who is on an H-4 visa herself, runs a program at Narika called Self-Empowerment & Economic Development, which is designed to help foreigners particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation with life skills such as financial literacy and career development.
She spoke of women who were highly successful in India, and then came to the U.S. and saw their self-confidence ravaged when they lost the ability to work.
Before moving to the U.S., she said, “They don’t visualize the implications of (the) visa.”
The administration’s plans to do away with H-4 work permits would hit the Bay Area harder than almost anywhere else, since the region has one of the highest concentrations of H-1B visa holders in the U.S. For months, the Department of Homeland Security had said through court filings in a case challenging the permit program that it planned to propose a change to the H-4 work authorization program in June. But June came and went without news, leaving foreign workers and their spouses to anxiously wait.
“The agency is considering a number of policy and regulatory changes to carry out the President’s Buy American, Hire American Executive Order, including a thorough review of employment based visa programs,” Michael Bars, spokesman for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in a statement Wednesday.
The department did not respond directly to questions about the status of the H-4 work authorization.
Critics of the H-4 work authorization say the program is a threat to American jobs, and the administration should not be able to create a work permit program without congressional approval.
Even without the H-4 program, women in Nisha’s situation have other options. But many either don’t know of them, or the solutions feel too out of reach without a lawyer to help them through the convoluted U.S. immigration system.
There’s the U visa, which is set aside for victims of certain crimes who have suffered mental or physical abuse. But in order to qualify, victims need to show they have filed charges, something Nisha, and other women in similar situations, say they’ve been too scared to do because of their dependent immigration status.
A work permit for abused nonimmigrant spouses was implemented last year. In order to qualify, applicants don’t have to show they’ve filed charges, but can instead demonstrate “credible proof of abuse” such as police reports, psychological evaluations, or statements from people aware of the situation, such as a domestic violence shelter worker.
Peddibhotla said some of her clients could have avoided needing such a special permit if the H-4 had allowed them to work in the first place.
“The reason people get stuck for so long is because you don’t even know who to call,” she said.
A woman, who chooses to remain anonymous, shows her passport at her home in Fremont. She came to America on an H-4 visa as the spouse of an H-1B holder in 2015, and as such couldn’t work even though she has a master’s degree from India.
Two years into living with her abusive husband in the U.S., Nisha said she got help only after a doctor noticed her distress during a routine checkup. The doctor recommended a local shelter, and Nisha later met Peddibhotla, who has advised her pro bono and helped her qualify for the domestic violence work permit.
Since getting the work permit, Nisha says things have gotten better.
She moved out of her husband’s house and into a shelter for a few months — a place she said exposed her to many different types of people, and helped improve her English. She then was able to get her own apartment through support received from the shelter. Her son is starting to go to school and interact with other kids. When he’s at school, she attends a work training program. Soon, she’ll start interviewing for jobs.
As she waits for the divorce proceeding, however, the permit only gives her two years to figure out another visa status — such as getting an H-1B of her own.
The thought of going back to India as a divorced woman and single mom, she said, is worse than enduring hardships in the U.S. So she’s slowly picking the pieces of her life back up here.
But if she had been independent from the moment she got here, she said she would have had a way out from the beginning.
Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.comTwitter: @TrishaThadani
A previous version of this story misstated the position of Tejeswi Dodda at Narika. She is an employee. The story has been altered to reflect this change.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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