Rajiv's Comments in The Times of India - Immigration after the midterms: A new Congress, but who holds the power?

Published by The Times of India  - 05, November 2026
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/immigration-after-the-midterms-a-new-congress-but-who-holds-the-power/articleshow/135568574.cms

Quotes and Excerpts from Rajiv in the article:

Rajiv S. Khanna, managing attorney at Immigration.com, offers a more detailed account of the tools available to the incoming Democratic majority. Congress, he says, can narrow the authority delegated to the executive through legislation, prohibit particular fees or write programmes such as OPT and H-4 employment authorisation into statute. 

But there is a significant obstacle: the presidential veto. A bill must be signed by the President to become law, unless Congress secures a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override a veto. 

Khanna believes Democrats could instead use spending legislation to attach restrictions on funding for particular immigration policies. They can also use congressional oversight to demand documents and testimony from officials responsible for implementing controversial measures. The Congressional Review Act offers another possible route for challenging certain final agency regulations. It allows Congress to pass resolutions of disapproval through an expedited process, although such a resolution still faces the possibility of a presidential veto. Proposed regulations and presidential proclamations are not covered in the same way.

Khanna points out that Senate Democrats have already filed a resolution, S.J.Res. 99, against the interim version of this rule. However, the resolution would still require the President’s signature to take effect.

On this front, Khanna believes that the House Oversight Committee is where a Democratic majority can make itself felt fastest. Under House rules, the committee may investigate any matter at any time, even one assigned to another committee. It can compel testimony and the production of documents by subpoena. Officials involved in the $100,000 fee, the OPT fee and the EAD backlog could therefore be called to testify under oath, while the internal analyses behind these measures could be demanded.

Where House oversight can do the most good is on pretextual delays. This administration has been assassinating legal immigration by slowing it to a crawl, without changing a single rule. Since Dec 2025, when the State Department ordered an online-presence review of every H-1B and H-4 applicant, consulates in India have cut daily interviews and cancelled appointments wholesale. Individuals are now offered H-1B interview dates more than six months out, and H-4 spouses often find no appointment at all. At USCIS, a standalone H-4 EAD renewal is taking more than a year, and with automatic extensions gone, every month of delay past the card’s expiry is a month a lawfully present spouse cannot work. None of these nefarious, underhanded schemes, too numerous to count, appears in the Federal Register. The Oversight Committee can demand the staffing figures, the internal guidance and the emails behind these slowdowns, and put the officials responsible under oath. Like noxious black mould, furtive toxicity withers in daylight; dispelling secrecy is an important antidote,” Khanna emphasises.