But the \u2018dependent\u2019 part of my visa still bothers me. Even though the comparison is uneven, when recently reading about the spouses of H1-B \u2018skilled guest worker\u2019 visa holders, certain themes resonate with me. These women discuss how it was not just their CVs that suffered from the forced career break \u2013 until 2015, spouses on restrictive H-4 paperwork were forbidden from pursuing employment<\/a> in the U.S. \u2013 but that their core sense of self<\/i> took a hit.<\/p>\n Interestingly, those affected have substantially been Indian women. In 2015, 90% of H-4 visas, the category American immigration assigns to immediate family of H1-B visa holders, were issued to women. 80% of all H-4 visas<\/a> issued in the U.S. were granted to Indian passport holders. This is the story Jhumpa Lahiri tells in her novel The Namesake<\/i> through Ashima\u2019s struggles in Massachusetts, and the tale that features more recently in Aziz Ansari\u2019s brilliant TV series Master of None<\/i>. Asked what she did on her first day in the U.S., after immigrating for her husband\u2019s medical career, the mother of Ansari\u2019s character Dev answers that she \u201csat on the couch and cried\u201d.<\/p>\n The problem is still relevant for recent H-4 spouses. Many report that their new dependence on their partners for virtually all social and economic needs has jarring effects on their mental, emotional, and sexual health. Depression and suicidal thoughts are not uncommon, nor are \u201cmarital problems stemming from financial insecurities in a single-income household, and even domestic abuse<\/a>\u201d for which women may have extra difficulty seeking help since support networks, money, and legal standing highly depend on their relationship with the person abusing them. Some resort to having babies as the only \u2018productive\u2019 thing they can do under the circumstances, even if motherhood had not previously been a priority<\/a>, compromising their freedom to decide when \u2013 and if \u2013 to become a parent.<\/p>\n The\u00a02015 ruling on H-4 right to work<\/a>\u00a0was just a beginning, and a flawed one. It still determines employment authorisation eligibility based on the H1-B visa holder\u2019s green card application status, not on the spouse\u2019s own qualifications. It has been far from an easy or transparent process. Yet it was a crucial reprieve for many women, psychologically and financially. In an interview following the change in regulations, journalist Neha Mahajan celebrated the ruling<\/a>\u00a0as signifying the first time in her seven years in the U.S. when she could get back to her \u201creal self. I will no longer be my husband\u2019s wife only.\u201d<\/p>\n My situation is different but I can relate to the dampening of confidence and sense of autonomy when your partner has a purpose and source of validation in the host country that you lack. There\u2019s been, if not a \u2018loss\u2019, a new unsteadiness of self as I confront complicated feelings of being a wife when I had not prepared to be, in a country that I am allowed to call home only because of the accomplishments of my husband and the grace of his employer. In the dynamic relationship of sexuality and self-care<\/a>, when the means through which you normally nurture yourself and find fulfilment suddenly change, it can be hard to communicate desires and set boundaries in a satisfactory way, or even to want to. Being less sure how you feel about yourself, sexuality too is disrupted<\/a>.<\/p>\n Adding to this dissociation, the U.S. has not been in a good place. Along with much of the world, I absorb the North American news cycle feverishly, yet slightly out of pace from my time zone. I scan the screen as if searching the weathered face of a person who has been sick for a long time. The illness has long been evident, in chalk outlines on asphalt around black bodies left to go cold, but the disease is not yet terminal. It is toxic to be so immersed, and though I\u2019m familiar with the rules of self-care as \u201cpolitical warfare,\u201d\u00a0 that love itself is an act of resistance, I struggle with the question of how best to offer love from here. My body is not on the line.<\/p>\n I worry about the discrimination and cruelty that are being normalised, in overt ways like the Muslim travel ban<\/a> (which it is, no matter what the administration says, since incoherent \u2018religious tests\u2019<\/a> are now involved). We see the \u2018banality of evil\u2019 unfolding in real time as ordinary people gamely follow outrageous orders<\/a>, or are themselves too vulnerable to refuse them. But I also worry that in the race to fight the most pressing crises, we will lose focus on other needed reforms of long-running patriarchal and racist practices, such as the H-4 restrictions, and allow the needle to move steadily backward. This is the brilliance of salami tactics, a strategy with many aliases authoritarians use to divide and exhaust the opposition. Going forward, it will likely be difficult to bring attention to injustices that are less topical in the \u201caccelerated metabolism<\/a>\u201d of journalism that gasps for air in the orange haze of \u2018alternative facts\u2019 and gross incompetence. Triage is the new normal.<\/p>\n The H1-B program itself is now\u00a0in the crosshairs<\/a>. The proposed crackdown on this visa category is a less-publicised aspect of this government\u2019s pivot on immigration that nevertheless has thrown lakhs of lives into uncertainty. If a \u2018compromise\u2019 is reached on H-1B, which is likely given that\u00a0more than 100 tech companies<\/a>\u00a0have joined together to rebuke the administration\u2019s immigration policies, it would not surprise me in the least if it upheld the executive order\u2019s revocation of H-4 spouses\u2019 right to work. Thousands of women now stand to lose a hard-won reprieve from dependence. This is unjust in itself, but is also symptomatic of\u00a0resurgent xenophobia and isolationism<\/a>\u00a0in the U.S. that should concern all of us.<\/p>\n All of this leaves me feeling quite apprehensive as to what kind of country we might eventually return to. But in the meantime, I have to balance attentiveness to one home with investing in where I am now. I work, I write. I muffle my social anxiety to make small talk with strangers and to spark existing acquaintances into more durable friendships. I take delight in small victories, and all the weird and wonderful that comes from learning a new city and country. I steady myself, and prepare for what\u2019s next.<\/p>\n Cover image by Murad Osmann<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When recently reading about the spouses of H1-B \u2018skilled guest worker\u2019 visa holders, certain themes resonate with me. These women discuss how it was not just their CVs that suffered from the forced career break \u2013 until 2015, spouses on restrictive H-4 paperwork were forbidden from pursuing employment in the U.S. \u2013 but that their core sense of self took a hit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":11060,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1139,6],"tags":[727,1140,1131],"class_list":{"0":"post-11057","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-categories","8":"category-marriage-and-sexuality","9":"category-theicolumn","10":"tag-kristin-francoeur","11":"tag-marriage-and-immigration","12":"tag-marriage-and-sexuality"},"menu_order":995,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11057"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11062,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11057\/revisions\/11062"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Marriage](\"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Insert-image-1_Kristin-300x121.png\")
\n