Manasi Vasavada has less than three weeks left before she loses her legal right to be in the country.
The dental practice in Passaic County, New Jersey, where Vasavada, 31, has worked for almost two years closed its doors in mid-March because of COVID-19. She has been on an unpaid leave of absence ever since.
Vasavada is in the country on an H-1B visa, a temporary visa program designed for people with specialized skills. H-1B recipients can remain in the country legally only for 60 days without being paid. Her husband, Nandan Buch, also a dentist, is in the country on an H-1B visa that expires in June. They have been watching the days tick by with growing fear.
There may soon come a point when the couple can’t stay and can’t go: India, their home country, has closed its borders indefinitely. They also have a combined $520,000 in student loans from the advanced dental degrees they completed at U.S. universities, which would be nearly impossible to pay back on the salaries they would earn in India.
As many as 250,000 guest workers seeking a green card in the U.S. — about 200,000 of them on H-1B visas — could lose their legal status by the end of June, said Jeremy Neufeld, an immigration policy analyst with the Washington, D.C., think tank Niskanen Center. Thousands more who are not seeking resident status may also be forced to return home, he said.
About three-quarters of H-1B visas go to people working in the technology industry, though the exact levels vary year by year.
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