The Trump administration has taken a new initiative to end the ability of spouses of H-1B visa holders in the United States to work legally. If the proposal takes effect, thousands of H-4 visa holders could lose their jobs.
The proposal has been included in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s long-term regulatory agenda. It is not yet a final decision, and no date has been set for when the proposal will be formally issued.
An H-4 visa is a U.S. nonimmigrant visa issued to the close relatives of H-1B, H-1B1, H-2A, H-2B or H-3 visa holders.
According to DHS’s proposal, the agency plans to remove certain H-4 dependent spouses from the category eligible for employment authorization, reversing a 2015 final rule and restoring the earlier policy of not granting work permits to H-4 visa holders.
Work permits are not being revoked immediately, however, as the proposal has not yet been finalized. To change the rule, DHS must first publish a formal Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in the Federal Register. Public comments would then be collected. Only after a final rule is issued could the new rule take effect.
Until then, H-4 visa holders with a valid Employment Authorization Document can continue working under the current rules.
An H-4 visa is not itself an employment-based visa. It is issued to allow the spouses and children of H-1B visa holders to live with them in the United States. However, an H-4 spouse who meets certain conditions can obtain a separate EAD and work legally — typically requiring their H-1B spouse to be at a specific stage of the green card process.
This is not the first time the Trump administration has moved to end H-4 EADs. During Trump’s first term, in 2017, DHS proposed revoking work authorization for certain H-4 visa holders, but that effort was never finalized and was withdrawn in 2021.
The new proposal comes as the Trump administration is also pursuing multiple changes to the H-1B visa system.
If implemented, the change would be expected to hit Indian professional families hardest, since a large share of H-4 EAD holders are Indian nationals. According to H-4 EAD application data from 2014 to 2017, 93% of approved applications went to Indian nationals, and 94% of those Indian EAD holders were women.