Issue#06 The Amreeka Wala Rishta

The unacknowledged lives of H-4 wives

First, my apologies! Despite my best efforts, I missed the last issue of This Immigrant Life because of travel. You know how international travel can be and immigrants especially know how next-level-extra-insane traveling back to the native country can be!

Please give today’s issue an extra warm welcome into your day. It is an immigration issue close to my heart and I hope it will leave you thinking about it as well…

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I begin with a little note of cultural explanation to my non-Indian readers -

For a long time, Indian men in the US have occupied the top spot in the heirarchy of eligible bachelors in our society. Well-meaning parents wanting the best life and upward mobility for their daughters have viewed these matches particularly favourably.

“Amreeka wala rishta” is a Hindi phrase that translates to “the America match”. But it’s one of those phrases that’s more than its literal translation. It connotes material comfort, security, a rise in status, a chance at a better life. So common is the sentiment that there are terms sprinkled across Indian languages that wink at it. America Mappillai (son-in-law from America) in Tamil is just one of many examples.

Amreeka wala rishta is supposedly this impossible-to-say-no-to proposal. So much so that the phrase is often said teasingly or maybe even tinged with the green of envy.

Growing with the heyday of immigration from India to the US- a period that started roughly around the 1990- this belief is now well entrenched. Unfortunately, the aunties, marriage brokers and miscellaneous concerned relatives intent on arranging the marriages of all unattached women within sight have not kept up with the realities of US immigration.

Let’s ask the question today - Is the “Amreeka wala rishta” all it’s cracked up to be? And what’s the sticker price?

There are several visas an immigrant can live on in the US and they each have dependent categories. However, this discussion is framed around women marrying immigrant men working primarily on the H-1B work visa who then arrive in the US as H-4 visa holders, the dependent visa to the H-1B.

The reason for this framing, is…well, reality.

In the majority of the marriages I’ve described - where one partner is a working professional in America and the other joins them after marriage, the one doing the joining is a woman.

Coming to the H-1B visa…

By far and away, the H-1B is the dominant work visa for skilled immigrants in America. They are largely awarded to professionals in male-dominated fields - Science, Technology, Engineering, Management, Finance etc.

So while the H-1B visa and H-4 visa are gender-neutral, the problems inherent to H-4 visas are not. They disproportionately impact women, plain and simple.

This is why, the rest of this article will be not just framed around women marrying work visa holders in America, but directly addressed to them. They’re whom I’m writing this issue for.

Girls, here is what you should know about this supposedly fabulous life in America along with information on how to deal with the downsides -

Before you’re even married -

When marriages are arranged to grooms living in India, your family will typically go through a series of “due diligence” steps. This includes visiting the prospective in-laws, contacting mutual friends and relatives, visiting your future husband etc.

In more progressive families, you might have the opportunity to spend time with your prospective husband in person as well. In case of your typical Amreeka-wala-rishta, this important due diligence gets limited to the first tier - inquiries about the in-laws and family.

“Courtship” is also limited to calls and chats. Few have the resources to fly to the US to meet with the prospective groom in meaningful ways.

Because of this, you can end up missing serious red flags about the person you are to spend the rest of your life with.

How to handle this:

Admittedly, there are some limitations on what can be done here unless you’re able to actually visit a future partner where he lives in the US. But, failing that, do spend as much time as possible virtually (preferably video calls) and in-person with your future husband.

Trust your instincts and don’t ignore red flags.

Losing your career in the “Land of Opportunity”

In any foreign country, you cannot legally work without explicit permission from the government. This “permission” goes by several names in the US.

Here’s the headline: Out of the box, dependent visas in the US generally do not come with work authorizations [1].

While in the US as a dependent wife, you will be on the H-4 visa. The work authorization relevant to H4 visa holders is the H4 Employment Authorization Document or the H4-EAD.

You’ll want to remember these two terms - H4 (the visa) and H4-EAD, the thing that gives you permission to work for the rest of the article. It’s going to come up. A lot.

Here’s the deal. By itself, the H-4 visa does not allow you to work in the US.

You will need to be eligible for and acquire an H4-EAD, if you want to work. To do that, your husband must receive this thing called an I-140 approval. The I-140 is the application which gives your husband a spot in the (often looooong) queue for a Green Card.

A prospective husband on the H-1B visa may tell you that you will be allowed to work once they enter this Green Card queue.

That’s true...BUT, it comes with several giant asterisks which even they may not be fully aware of.

Asterisk# 1: The filing and approval of the I-140 application can take years. This is because for most immigrants on work visas, this application is not in their control. It is the employer that controls when, how and how well the application for a Green Card is done.

Asterisk# 2: As said before, once your husband has an approved I-140 application, you’re eligible for an H-4 EAD. However, processing the H-4 EAD is among the lowest priorities for the USCIS (the US immigration agency that you’ll deal with).

Delays in EAD approval are common and have previously run into months, even over a year.

Meanwhile, you’re stuck and unable to have any income whatsoever.

Asterisk#3: Let’s say you crossed all of that. You have an EAD and it’s now time to look for a job… There can be yet another reality check.

Many companies (except, perhaps Big Tech) are hesitant to hire H-4 EAD holders because they’re aware of the hassles with EAD approvals, a problem that recurs every 2-3 years or so when you renew your EAD.

Asterisk# 4: This is a big one, mostly because of how little awareness there is around it…

Work authorization for H-4 spouses is not established by law. It’s just something written on a very official piece of stationery by President Obama. Legally, there is little barrier to it being repealed.

An anti-immigrant President coming along and dismantling the whole possibility of H-4 wives working, is a very real possibility.

Indeed, Trump did try to…

What is the current situation?

There have been some reforms in the processing of the H-4 EAD - both in the speed of processing, as well as to address the periods of unemployment that renewals were causing.

But, between the difficulties in getting hired and the shaky foundations of the program, the H-4 visa remains an uncertain one to build a career on in the US.

You also cannot legally work anywhere else while on the H-4 visa, like in India.

With the Green Card backlog for Indians, the H-4 visa will be your reality for a long, long time. This is not a matter of tolerating a difficult visa situation for a few short years and moving on, so understand the career implications it comes with before you take the plunge.

How to handle this:

Step 1: Ask any prospective groom whether he has an approved I-140 application. This is the thing that makes you eligible for an H4 EAD in the first place.

Until you get your EAD, you have no real way of working legally in the US. Once you have an EAD and a job, the way out is to convince your employer to sponsor you for an H-1B visa.

This positions you better job-wise and immigration-wise in the US (more on the latter further ahead.)

But if my husband otherwise earns well, why is this an issue?

This is a valid question.

The first step is to consider your goals in a few key areas -

Career/ professional aspirations, standard of living, financial independence, and freedom.

We covered the career bit above. If you are fine prioritizing family life over your career, a perfectly valid and empowering choice for those who make it in an informed, willing manner, then that questions is settled.

The next thing to consider, is cost of living.

Whether a single income can sustain a standard of living that you wish for yourself, depends greatly on where you live. If you live in expensive coastal cities in Massachusetts, New York and California and your husband has even an above average salary, you will have a fairly basic life. You’ll have the essentials, perhaps the occasional treat, but that’s all.

There’s also more to work than well…work and money! In the US, work is all bundled up with identity and social connection in ways that are quite different from India.

The identity bit first...

You can tell a lot about a country by the first question someone asks when they’re introduced to you. In the US, that question is “What do you do?”.

And they very much mean, for work.

I never recognized how disconcerting that simple question could be until I myself had to stop working due to visa issues. This is not an isolated experience.

Work forms a huge part of identity in American life and culture and not having a conventional answer to that question can erode your identity, your place in a conversation and frankly, your self-worth.

There is one more important aspect of life that work links to in America - social connection. The days of organically forming warm relationships with those who live in your communities, are over in America, much like in big cities in India. Work increasingly is a portal to meaningful adult interaction.

Not being employed therefore, means more than just not having a job. It can mean feeling disconnected. A major contributor to this is that, outside the heart of downtown in major cities, mobility is a significant issue in the US.

For most of American life, mobility requires driving. For most young immigrant families, the one car is dedicated to the office-goer. Two-cars is a luxury quite out of reach.

Public transit is all but unavailable anywhere other than the very heart of major cities and rideshares like Uber and Lyft can be expensive.

A lack of mobility becomes yet another factor that conspires to keep you in the home, all day…isolated. Many H-4 wives, unable to work and restricted to their immediate neighbourhoods, find their lives shrinking rapidly for want of meaningful social relationships. Even if you’re perfectly content in your decision to not work, the social isolation can be not just upsetting but in some cases, actually depressing.

How to handle this:

Step one, learn to drive. Right away. This is a must. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it - not the voice in your head, not your husband, no one!

If you’re in a single car (or no car) household, set aside a budget for public transit, rideshares or car rentals. The latter two may feel like a splurge, but think of it as an investment towards your mental health and an insurance policy against social isolation.

There are many more things you can do, but you’ll have to discover what works best for you. In my forced-unemployed days, people offered lots of well-meaning suggestions. But anything anyone says in that circumstance - “Do some courses”, “pick up a hobby”, “find meaning”, “volunteer” sounds incredibly infantilizing and shallow. After all, you’re not a child whose time needs to be filled with some productive-sounding stuff.

This is why, I will only say this - if you feel that hard-to-define vacuum in your life, don’t ignore it! Assess it, examine it and try your best to find a solution to it. Try different things.

Some things won’t work, but others might!

I myself tried online courses, learned investing and attended a knitting Meetup when I was forced into unemployment. I also wrote to share my experiences and eventually released a podcast with a friend.

The online courses did not work for me. The other things did, in small ways, help fill the big work-shaped hole that was suddenly missing from my life.

Lifestyle changes

Here’s the good news: In the US, mostly due to lack of household help, the view towards housework tends to be more egalitarian in households where both spouses work. But, this otherwise healthy dynamic has has a flip side: If you do not work, you will be saddled with more household work that you ever had to do in India.

If a young child is part of the equation then the one perk of unemployment - free time - is entirely out the window. You are a full-time caregiver, keeper of the home and doer-of-chores and life can very quickly turn into an endless run on the hamster wheel.

The other big change in your life will be financial dependence. If you enjoyed financial independence before marriage, this can be a shock to the system. Contrary to lore, professional life in America with some narrow exceptions, does not pay a salary that will necessarily leave plenty over for discretionary expense every month.

How to handle this:

Step one, set up an independent bank account and bring some money over from India. Your own money. Also open up a secured credit card (if you’re able to) and start building credit. The point isn’t just to have access to funds if you need it. It is also to understand and learn to work with the banking system.

Losing freedom

When you leave your country of citizenship, you will lose some freedoms. There is no way around that. One of those under-acknowledged lost freedoms are travel restrictions.

At various times in your life in America, you will not be able to leave the country. Here’s why -

The H-1B visa is approved for 3 year terms. Renewal is a lengthy process. Additionally, any change in jobs, geography, roles etc requires an application with the USCIS (the government agency that you’ll be dealing with). The H-4 visa is issues based on an approved H-1B visa. As a general rule, when you have an application pending with the USCIS, you will likely face travel restrictions, often for months.

This, I can tell you from personal experience, is an unacknowledged but particularly painful downside to immigrant life in America.

How to handle this:

Unfortunately, with this one, there’s not much that can be done. If you have an application pending, you’re mostly going to have to wait it out. In some cases, you can choose to either be stuck within the US, unable to go anywhere else. Or be stuck outside, unable to come into the US.

Those are your choices.

Ok, fine…You’ll just study!

Where this is possible, education provides a decent exit strategy from the pathologies of dependent life. Happily, you are also able to work on student work authorization!

But education is hugely expensive in the US and especially so, for international students. Scholarships are also scarce for international students with some exceptions for PhD students.

How to handle this:

If you are seriously considering studying in the US, you need to have a proper plan in place to fund your education. This includes getting detailed information on work authorization, universities and having full-fledged conversation with your parents and future in-laws.

Don’t get married and hope studies will somehow just work out. Hope is not a plan.

The slow divide

Over time, women on H-4 visa may experience a gap separating them from their family members.

While their lives may seem unfulfilling, things are often going swimmingly for the rest of their family.

The husband is making great strides at work, the kids are doing well at school. In short, everyone seems to be prospering, except you. In such situations, given the realities of Indian (and generally South Asian) cultures, women simply subordinate their happiness for the sake of the family.

And this becomes life.

How to handle this:

It takes a certain personality to be a strong self-advocate. It also takes a healthy family to recognize and prioritize women’s needs and well-being. It is best not to let things get this far. Pulling the carpet from under the family when things are going well for everyone else is not easy. Start speaking out often and early about the issues you are facing. And importantly, insist on working towards solutions.

When things go wrong…

Trigger warning! The next few points deal with domestic violence, divorce and tragedies. This is where we enter the “red” section of the article where awareness is still very, very low on the downsides of the H-4 visa.

As an H-4 spouse, the only basis for you being permitted to stay in the US, is your marriage to an H-1B holder. If that marriage is ends, you are no longer able to stay in the US. Unfortunately, this often remains true no matter how valid your case may be for the marriage ending [2].

Tragically, this is true even in case the H-1B holder passes away!

No marriage, no legal status for the dependents. That’s that.

Sushumna Kannan is an independent researcher residing in San Diego, California. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies from Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore, India. She has written on the plight of Indian women on dependent visa and seen up close, as an expert witness, how divorce and child custody cases can go for women on these visas in the US.

She makes it clear in no uncertain terms that the H-4 is a hugely vulnerable visa to be on from a legal perspective.

…the wives need to convert ASAP to an H-1B. But as we very well know, only the tech industry will invest the money that goes into the H-1B process. Women marrying into the US possess various kinds of degrees, not all of them are in the tech industry. So, the end result for such women is that they never obtain jobs or even when they do, they end up remaining under the threat of going back to India should a divorce happen [because they are still on a dependent visa].

With this looming threat, women who have children are walking a thin rope.

They are investing their time, energies and risking their very bodies for something that they may lose, all in an instant, should a divorce be filed by the spouse.

Even if divorce isn’t in the picture, the intense vulnerability that a dependent creates can have hidden impacts.

For example, you may hesitate to get the authorities involved in case of any mistreatment. Because police action against your husband, can impact his visa status and therefore, yours.

As if the power imbalance already favouring the H-1B holding husband- legally and financially- aren’t enough, biases in the legal system add to the legal woes that H4 wives face in the US.

Quotes below are from my conversation with Sushumna and from her article published on womensweb.in on the divorce case of “Nina”, an H-4 wife in the US [3].

Lack of cultural awareness in the American legal system

Marriages and parenting have significant cultural underpinnings. And there is an immigrant-shaped hole in the American legal system.

By not understanding the cultural practices of immigrants, US courts, following American law, are failing to be responsive to immigrants in divorce cases.

In Nina’s instance, for example, the fact that she chose to co-sleep with her child was a major sticking point. This is the sort of cultural parenting difference that US family courts are poorly positioned to recognize, Sushumna notes -

…hundreds of Indian immigrant parents in the USA retain ways of child-rearing that they subconsciously learnt from their parents. In fact, it is suspected many American parents too co-sleep with their children but do not admit to doing it.

But differences in parenting styles makes a justified case for divorce in the west. It is likely that Nina’s husband used it as a tactic to procure divorce.

Nina needed a lawyer who could argue that co-sleeping with children was common in India—but she had an American lawyer. Her American lawyer, however, made several efforts to get experts who could make the culture argument, but there was no guarantee that it would be understood by the American court system.

The 2nd blind spot in the US family courts, comes from not understanding immigration.

In 1994, the Neerja Saraph vs Jayant Saraph case before the Supreme Court of India brought this issue in stark relief. Jayant married Neerja in India and upon his return to the US, filed for annulment. Because Neerja was in India and unable to attend proceedings, the annulment was granted by the US court ex-parte [4], meaning in a one-sided hearing and decision.

Sushumna notes the ignorance of American courts in her article -

In many cases, wives on H4 with no income, had no funds to book tickets to travel back and forth to the USA to attend court proceedings.

Not to mention that Indian women married to an H-1B holder in the US, need the cooperation of their husband to maintain their immigration status and enter the US, in the first place. If H4 wives are outside the country and a divorce/annulment is filed, or if their husband does not cooperate in getting their visa stamped, there is precious little the women can do to travel to the US.

The Supreme Court of India, acted in this case to safeguard women in such cases. As a result, marriages between an NRI (Indian residing abroad) and an Indian woman which has taken place in India cannot be annulled by a foreign court.

When simple logistical aspects of immigration are lost on the US family courts, it seems almost fantastical to expect recognition of the more nuanced burdens of the H-4 existence. Nina had been diagnosed with depression and was on medication. Despite holding an H-4 EAD, with an Indian non-STEM education (Masters in HR), she struggled to get a job.

Nina just had a lot in her life, culturally and legally, that the family court she ended up in simply was not positioned to acknowledge, understand and factor into her case.

Lack of awareness among Indian women

The significant social and familial implications of divorce keeps many women in India from having a clear-eyed perspective of the realities facing them, when faced with divorce. Adding legal dependence through the H-4 visa, Sushumna says can leave women in desperate straits -

Often, Indian women just feel gutted when a divorce is filed because their dependent status never allows them to think in that direction. Even when they are suffering various kinds of abuse, their first thought is less likely to be about divorce because of their dependent status.

The result is that when reality finally hits, H4 wives are not prepared to make the strongest case for themselves. In some cases, they may erroneously hang onto assumptions from the Indian legal system, which heavily favours mothers in child custody, particularly for young children.

In Nina’s instance, Sushumna observes that a lack of understanding of American culture and expectations, worked against her -

Nina had to do something about child custody that was US culture sensitive. She had to offer a win-win solution, so the courts perceived her as prioritizing her child’s well-being. Child welfare is of paramount importance at US courts…Nina had to think through the worst-case scenario and move forward. Instead, she was optimistic and hopeful.

Sushumna brought up another factor that can hampered Nina -

She only trusted her parents, but knowing nothing of American culture, they were of no help in fighting the case. Distrust of everybody is another classic symptom of the H4 situation—the person has no acculturation and is unable to determine if she is being helped or hurt.

A lack of exposure, exacerbated by emotional, financial and logistical dependence on your husband, can make it so that H4 women are unfamiliar with even the most basic structural processes in the US, to navigate their way in America. This adds to the deep vulnerability already baked into the H4 visa and the lives that women lead on it.

How to handle this:

1. Addressing adjustment issues before marriage

There are very real adjustments that you may face in your transition to the H4 life. Recognizing this and setting the expectation that you will need support in your transition is a necessary step with your partner-to-be, before you tie the knot. Often, in the excitement of the upcoming wedding, these crucial aspects of what will make your partnership successful, are lost.

Sushumna has some guidance for the H-1B husbands as they get ready to bring their H4 wives to their new lives -

Men need to be extraordinarily patient in facilitating the adjustment of their wives. They need to be committed to make the marriage work, anticipating the hiccups caused by cultural difference and the depression it can cause in their dependent wives.

Husbands would also do well to recognize that their wives may have a vastly different experience job-hunting on H-4 EAD, particularly if they are outside the relatively immigrant-friendly tech bubble.

A little empathy, understanding and compassion goes a long, long way.

2. Gain exposure

Much of the trouble Nina ran into, stemmed from a lack of exposure and awareness. In Sushumna’s experience, hers is not an isolated instance. Often, the dynamic in a marriage of this type is that the husband has been in the US, working for several years. As a dependent wife, it is likely your first experience of life in the US. The knowledge gap is hard to bridge. The husband quickly becomes your portal to all things worldly and you’re left with little opportunity to build a comprehensive, independent understanding of how systems work.

This is one where you will need to take serious initiative.

Step 1, have an independent bank account, as we talked about before. Get a social security number as soon as you can as well as a credit card, so you can start building credit history. Get a library membership, cultivate curiosity in finding out how things work around you.

Asking questions is the first step. The answers will come.

3. Independent social life

Perhaps one of the biggest issues that afflict H4 wives that are not working in the US, is a lack of social support independent of their husbands. The only friends they tend to have, are their husbands’ friends. This is a problem when issues arise in the marriage.

Members of your community through the apartment community, religious organizations, social groups, mom groups, neighbourhood associations etc. are a great resource to form independent bonds that have vibrant interactions.

Whether you or someone you know is considering the dependent life, this is a decision that can have significant implications on quality of life, financial and mental well-being and importantly, legal status and rights as a person. It is not a decision that should be taken without a clear-eyed view of just what dependent life looks like in America.

I leave you with a wonderful work of fiction by Vineet Deshpande. It is a story of a woman who does take the step towards dependent life and captures many of the silent nuances of dependent life that left unacknowledged, unshared and unvalidated: https://thebombayreview.com/2021/05/19/h4-fiction-by-vineet-deshpande-creative-writing-workshop/

Footnotes:

[1] There is one notable exception to this. The limited term L-1 visa, where the dependent spouses (who are on an L-2 visa) allowed to work. But the L-1 has other limitations that are beyond the scope of this discussion.

[2] There are some limited exceptions providing EADs (Work authorization) to battered H4 spouses, in case of divorce granted due to domestic violence. However, the Violence Against Women Act, only protects victims of perpetrators who are US citizens or Legal Permanent Residents, leaving H4 spouses outside its protections.

[3] Name redacted to protect privacy.

[4] An Ex Parte Application is used for one party to ask the Court for an order without providing the other party(ies) the usual amount of notice or opportunity to write an opposition.

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Guest Bio:

Sushumna Kannan is an independent researcher residing in San Diego, California. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies from Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore, India. Her research on the South Asian devotional traditions and feminist epistemology focused on the medieval saint, Akka Mahadevi and her vachanas. She received the BOURSE MIRA, French research fellowship in 2006 and 2007 and the Sir Ratan Tata fellowship for PhD Coursework and Writing in 2003 and 2007. She received the Indic Academy fellowship in Indic feminism in 2021.  She has published her research on Bhakti, dharmashastras, ethics, women’s writing in Kannada and English as well as on translation theory in peer-reviewed journals and as book chapters.  She is Senior Book Reviews editor at Jaggery Lit. She writes for newspapers and magazines when not researching Hinduism or feminism. Her articles on the plight of women on H4 visa were nominated for the Laadli media awards 2017 and 2018. She runs an academic editing and writing business in San Diego.  She is the author of Hinduism, Violence and Nonviolence (forthcoming) and is currently working on the Mahabharata.

For more of her works, visit: www.sushumnakannan.weebly.com;

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