
Neha Mahajan hosting on TV Asia. Photo courtesy of Neha Mahajan
To stay or to go
In a small, green-walled room in the city of Fremont, children in bright-orange shirts crowd around a table crammed with Legos. Under the guidance of their instructor, Swati Gupta, they piece them together to form small, moving robots.
This class has been Gupta's brainchild for the last three years. After acquiring her work permit in 2015, she decided to avoid the job hunt and created her own business.
"Robotics and Kids emerged out of my own love for engineering and science," said Gupta, a former computer science engineer in India. She teaches classes six days a week to children in elementary and middle schools.
After investing $15,000 to set it up, the business is finally returning a small profit. It will count for little if Gupta loses the right to work soon. Instead of earning a salary through the company, she will have to demote herself to a volunteer to continue operations and hire someone else to take over.
"I was also planning on hiring workers to expand our staff, since it's just me right now," she said. "But with the rescindment so close, I don't think I can afford to."
Gupta and her family have invested too much in their lives here, financially and emotionally, to consider leaving. But of late, it's a conversation they're forced to have.
According to a survey conducted by online visa tracker TruVisa, around 70% of nearly 14,000 individuals expressed the intention to leave if their spouses could not work. Apart from Canada, Australia, China and India were among the most popular options.
Anamika Chandel is a part of the trend. A few years ago, her family decided to leave the United States for a life in Toronto.
"America was my husband's dream," she said of their move to America in 2007. "And for a long time, I believed it was mine too."
A former resident of Iowa, receiving her work permit first promised a new career.
"The rules for an H4 are much more relaxed than an H1-B," she said. "I could change jobs easily and even start my own business if I wanted."
News of the possible revocation quickly changed her mind and the family began to consider moving to other countries.
"We chose Canada because we knew my son wouldn't have much of a culture shock fitting in," she said.
Hers is one of the many stories heard by Vikram Rangnekar. A tech worker, he founded MovNorth to help others in the industry migrate to Canada, where he found the path to citizenship much easier.
Rangnekar was hired on an H1-B visa in Silicon Valley, but found the wait for a green card too tedious. Canada offered a more stable home where he could start his own business venture, he said.
"As I began blogging about my experiences moving to Canada, I had numerous responses pouring in, asking how I'd done it." he said. "With more restrictions on visa holders in the U.S., there's definitely more motivation to leave. A lot of people look at Canada as a way to stay in North America, but in a predictable immigration climate."
The ease of staying permanently is an incentive for many, he added.
"You're investing and being a part of the community," he said, "And that's what you ultimately want to pass down to your family, a sense of permanence."
Chandel's family has found theirs. "The process was a breeze," she said of the move. "We received permanent residency in eight months. In America, we're still waiting in line for our green cards. It's been nine years."
William Kerr, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, has analyzed the economic patterns and benefits highly skilled workers bring to the U.S.economy. This innovation primarily happens in Silicon Valley, where tech giants like Google and Apple rely heavily on foreign talent. Killing the H4 EAD program would affect not only dependents, but also their working spouses, he said.
"Since the mid-1990s, almost all of our growth in the STEM workfoce can be connected to highly-skilled immigration," he said. "In certain companies that are quite dependent upon foreign workers, this would have an immediately noticeable effect."
Kerr explained that highly-skilled workers leaving would likely not have an immediate effect on innovation and the tech industry, but could potentially see long-term consequences.
We're preventing the best and brightest minds from coming here and contributing to the economy," he said. "Not only are H1-B spouses exceptionally qualified, their spouses all hold degrees. If these people leave, it may not result in a disaster the next day, but we're for sure going to see more people discouraged to come to the United States."