The US H-1B visa for highly skilled immigrant labor and the accompanying H-4 visa for their dependents lead to structural constraints that exclude dependents from the labor force. This paper investigates the economic consequences of the US immigration policy that decouples work and admission permission for H-4 visa holders. Using a pool of likely H-1B recipients who were recruited through firms’ job offers, we find that—despite labor force restrictions—the vast majority of married H-1B recipients are accompanied by their spouses. This is particularly the case for male H-1B recipients, making wives rather than husbands carry most of the burden associated labor force exclusions. Using a matched sample of married immigrants with work authorization, we estimate labor force participation probabilities and wages for the pool of likely dependent spouses if they were not facing work restrictions. We find that the policy-imposed labor force exclusion of H-4 spouses leads to substantial losses of spouses’ earnings of about (2014) US$28,000 per capita, which—in the aggregate—implies a sizeable productivity loss for the US due to its restrictive US immigration policy.

针对高技能移民劳工的美国H-1B签证以及针对其家属的H-4签证会导致结构上的限制，从而将家属从劳动力中排除。本文研究了美国移民政策的经济后果，该政策使H-4签证持有者的工作和准入许可脱钩。使用通过公司工作机会招募的可能的H-1B接收者，我们发现，尽管劳动力限制，绝大多数已婚H-1B接收者都由配偶陪同。对于男性H-1B接收者来说尤其如此，妻子而不是丈夫承担着与劳动力排斥相关的大部分负担。使用具有工作授权的匹配的已婚移民样本，如果可能的受扶养配偶没有工作上的限制，我们估计他们的劳动力参与概率和工资。我们发现，将政策强制性排除H-4配偶的劳动力导致配偶的人均收入严重损失（2014年），约为28,000美元，这总体上意味着美国因其H-4配偶而造成了相当大的生产力损失美国的限制性移民政策。