From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. I'm Al Etzen.

For the past eight months, Data Reporter Sonduja Rangarajan has been reporting on an issue

that affects thousands of people, including her own family.

When on, has she slept? Yeah. After my husband, Vinod and I put our daughter to sleep,

we've gotten into this routine. Okay, let's go down and are you ready? Okay.

We go down to our drawing room, open up our laptops, and get to work, because we've been trying

to immigrate to Canada. Express entry. Okay. We have like a job after our daughter goes to sleep,

which is like just immigration really paperwork. Sonduja, I got to say, I was really surprised

the first time you told me you were thinking about leaving the US. I've known you for years,

two of us used to work together here at Reveal. Now your reporter at Mother Jones,

you have a great career and it just seems like you built a life in this country.

I have, and so has my husband Vinod. We are originally from India, but we've lived here in the US

for years. Our daughter was born here. Vinod also has a great job here. He's an executive at a tech

company, but our future still feels really unstable. And our immigration status is tied to our jobs,

and Vinod is on this work visa called H1B. In basic terms, what's an H1B? Well,

there are pretty high-skilled people. Lots of computer programmers are on them. Employers apply

on your behalf and you need to have a minimum of a bachelor's degree. These visas are really popular

among Indian immigrants around 70% of people on H1Bs are Indian. And these visas are temporary,

but they get renewed a lot. You say a lot. I mean, how much is that? Two-thirds of H1Bs approved

in the last fiscal year were actually renewals. Vinod's been on H1Bs for years without any problems,

but when he was getting ready to renew his visa this year, a lawyer told us there's a chance

it could get denied. They're asking that be powerful than renewal earlier than usual.

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