Human Rights Violations Among H1-B Visa Holders’ Spouses Francis C. Assisi

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Today, Raj, who is an assistant professor of social and behavioral sciences at Boston University School of Public Health, is applying her data to help solve real problems that she has uncovered in the community.

Her latest findings, reported in the October 8th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association, show that H1-B Visa holder’s spouses may be subjected to human rights violations while in the U.S.

That’s because U.S. immigration policies that prevent Indian women on spousal visas from working or petitioning on their own for a change of visa status put them at risk for sexual and physical abuse by their partners, according to Anita Raj’s new study.

"H-4B visa holders are legal residents of the U.S. who are being denied the right to work and the right to self-petition for legal permanent residency in the U.S.," Raj said. "These policies violate basic human rights and must be changed for the U.S. to demonstrate a commitment to eliminating policies that increase women's risk for violence."

Raj and her colleagues surveyed 189 married immigrant South Asian women, gathering information about demographics, immigration status, and health. They asked about immigration-related partner abuse — such as threats of deportation, refusal to file for change of visa status, and not allowing access to immigration paperwork — as well as about intimate partner violence. The team also conducted in-depth interviews with immigrant Indian women with a history of such violence.

The study focused on people with H-1B visas, which are work visas granted primarily to professionals. Holders of an H-1B visa can convert to legal permanent resident status by acquiring a green card with the sponsorship of their employers. Spouses of H-1B visa holders are given H-4B visas, which legally permit them to be in this country, but prohibit them from obtaining paid employment. The law requires that H-1B holders petition for green card status. It also prohibits H-4B holders from getting a social security card, which prevents them from opening a bank account or obtaining a driver’s license and keeps them economically and legally dependent on their spouse.

The researchers found that even among high-income and highly educated women, those with partner-dependent visa status were more likely than those with other immigrant status (work visa holders, green card holders, and U.S. citizens) to report physical or sexual violence from their husbands. Deportation threats and refusal to file for change of status were also significantly related to physical abuse and sexual abuse. The interviews revealed that batterers prevent access to immigration documents as part of a strategy to control their spouses.

“Overall,” the researchers say, “our findings demonstrate the need for policy changes that would allow women coming to the U.S. under spousal dependent visas to become employed and to self-petition for a change in visa status if they choose.”

"I don't want to imply that if you're on an H-4 visa, you're going to be abused," Raj said. "If you are in an abusive relationship and you are on an H-4 visa, you are at so much greater vulnerability for abuse."

EARLIER STUDY ON SPOUSAL ABUSE

The study had its origins in an earlier survey which began when Raj interviewed married Indian women and found that her respondents asked as many questions as they answered.

"I started getting calls from people who just wanted my help," Raj says. "Usually it was people saying they were calling for friends, but you never know. One woman said, 'I have a friend, her husband has moved out of the apartment and left her there. She doesn't have any money.'"

Another woman told of how she had argued with her spouse, who subsequently threatened to deport her along with their premature infant. Several others called asking for advice on visa and green card problems.

Then Raj collated the alarming survey results: 40 percent of the participants reported that they had been abused in some way by their partners, and 90 percent of these incidents had occurred within the past year. Among the abused women, about two-thirds reported sexual abuse and almost one-third reported injuries, some requiring medical attention.

"I can't say that South Asian women have partners who batter them more than other populations of women, because I don't have the data to make a comparison," she says. "But what we can conclude is that domestic abuse is very pervasive, and there are culturally specific and immigrant-specific issues that increase a woman's vulnerability and affect her ability to seek help. It's a clear indication that we don't need to be just talking about the problem, we need to be doing something about it."

Raj already was a member of Saheli, a Boston-area fellowship and support group for women from South Asia. But the survey inspired her to step up her involvement with the organization, she says, "because that way I could use my research to actually help people in the community."

Today Raj is Saheli's grant writer and one of its most active members. Saheli has close ties with community agencies, and members draw on personal friendships with immigration lawyers, doctors, and therapists to help those in need.

Besides her work with Saheli, Raj is a member of the South Asian Advisory Board of Boston's Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence. The task force is including a synopsis of Raj's study in a larger report on domestic violence, and Raj hopes this information will help the agency attract new grant money.

"As a researcher," she says, "one of my goals is to learn what needs specific to the South Asian community are not being reflected in current government services, so we can provide services that are more tailored to this population."

The first study was reported March 2003 in the American Journal of Public Health under the title Immigrant South Asian Women at Greater Risk for Injury From Intimate Partner Violence.’

Raj, an Indian-American who grew up in Mississippi, has overlapping interests in both the problems of immigrant populations and issues affecting women, especially partner abuse.

"We went to apartment complexes where there were what we call software wives -- women who come to the United States on their husbands' H-1B work visas and are not allowed to have jobs," Raj says. "We also surveyed women who were born and raised here and very much acculturated, and women like my mom who arrived in this country already married, with children."

The survey was not large or comprehensive enough to conclude that South Asian women are abused more than immigrants from other parts of the world, Raj says. But it demonstrated that if a husband has abusive tendencies, his wife can be more vulnerable when they are on foreign soil.

"It's typical for women to come to this country with lower legal immigrant status than their partners," she says. "For instance, the husband will be sponsored on a work visa, and his wife is brought into the country under a spousal visa. She depends on him for her status."

This may help to explain at least one finding in her survey: only 3 percent of women who reported having been abused said they had taken out a restraining order against their partner. Also, many immigrants are not aware that wife-beating or sexual abuse in a relationship is illegal.

A stigma against divorce in many South Asian cultures can complicate matters. So Raj was not surprised to find that few abuse victims in her survey had ever gone to a battered women's shelter. And respondents who have no relatives in the United States were significantly more likely to acknowledge abuse.

francisassisi@hotmail.com