By brad stone and fe kagahastian
For the latest on the pursuit of the American Dream in Silicon Valley, all you have to do is to talk to someone like "Nagaraj" (who didn't want to reveal his real name). He's an Indian immigrant who, like many other Indian and Taiwanese engineers, came to America recently on an H-1B visa, which allows skilled workers to be employed by one company for as many as six years. But one morning last month, Nagaraj and a half dozen other Indian workers with H-lBs were called into a conference room in their San Francisco technology-consulting firm and told they were being laid off. The reason: weakening economic conditions in Silicon Valley. "It was the shock of my lifetime," says Nagaraj.
This is not a normal bear-market sob story. According to federal regulations, Nagaraj and his colleagues have two choices. They must either return to India, or find another job in a tight labor market and hope that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) allows them to transfer their visa to the new company. And the law doesn't allow them to earn a pay-check until all the paperwork winds its way through the INS bureaucracy. "How am I going to survive without any job and without any income?" Nagaraj wonders.
Until recently, H-1B visas were championed by Silicon Valley companies as the solution to the region's shortage of programmers and engineers. First issued by the INS in 1992, they attract skilled workers from other countries, many of whom bring their families with them, lay down roots and apply for the more permanent green cards. Through February 2000, more than 81,000 workers held such visas—but with the dot-com crash, many have been getting laid off. That's causing mass consternation in U.S. immigrant communities. The INS considers a worker "out of status" when he loses a job, which technically means he must pick up and go home. But because of the scope of this year's layoffs, the U.S. government has recently backpedaled, issuing a confusing series of statements that suggest workers might be able to stay if they qualify for some exceptions and can find a new company to sponsor their visa. But even those loopholes remain nebulous. The result is thousands of immigrants now face dimming career prospects in America, and the possibility that they will be sent home. "They are in limbo. It is the greatest form of torture," says Amar Veda of the Silicon Valley-basedImmigrants Support Network.
The crisis looks especially bad in light of all the heated visa rhetoric by Silicon Valley companies in the past few years. Last fall the industry won a big victory by getting Congress to approve an increase in the annual number of H-1B visas. Now, with technology firms retrenching, demand for such workers is slowing. Valley heavyweights like Intel, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard have all announced thousands of layoffs this year, which include many H-1B workers. The INS reported last month that only 16,000 new H-1B workers came to the United States in February—down from 32,000 in February of last year.
Visa holders are not allowed to take part-time work. Since many immigrants have rent payments to make and families to support here and back home, that rule is roundly ignored. One 22-year-old Taiwanese woman was forced to take up illegal employment after getting laid off from her job as a Web designer for a New-York dot-com in January. She waitressed, tutored kids, taught English to elderly immigrants and even volunteered to participate in a neurological study—anything to earn some cash. "Waitressing was the hardest job but the easiest to get," she says. "They didn't ask many questions or ask to see work papers. All they wanted to know was how much I weighed."
Last month, acknowledging the scope of the problem, the INS told H-1B holders "not to panic," and that there would be a grace period for laid-off workers before they had to leave the United States. INS spokeswoman Eyleen Schmidt promises that more specific guidance will come this month. "We're aware of the cutbacks," she says. "We're trying to be as generous as we can be within the confines of the existing law."
Among the established immigrant communities in Silicon Valley, there's growing consensus that the visa system itself is flawed. Kanwal Rekki, an Indian-American entrepreneur, says, "H-1B workers have become the indentured slaves of companies," since they rely on their employers to sponsor them for visas and green cards. Special-interest groups like the Immigrants Support Network are trying to remove those bonds, and have achieved a few modest successes. The organization lobbied successfully for the "portability" provisions in last year's H-1B visa expansion bill, allowing workers to transfer their visas and green-card applications among companies. Murali Krishna Devarakonda of the Immigrants Support Network says the goal now is to completely remove companies from the H-1B process. "What we are shooting for is simple freedom," he says. "Employers need us. The economy needs us. Why is the law structured in a way that we also need the employer?" He may have a point, but for now the lives of many immigrants are in chaos.
Vocabulary
wind (v) – to turn or twist sth repeatedly; wind down– to gradually reduce the work of a business so that it can be closed completely;wind up - to rest and relax after a lot of hard work; to bring an activity or meeting to an end
consternation – a feeling of shock or worry, when it is hard to think about what to do
nebulous – not clear or exact, vague; misty and having no edges:nebulous idea
dim– dark, too far away to see clearly: dim recollection/ awareness/ prospects/ future; in the din and distant past; take a dim view of sth (= disapprove of sth)
retrench – if a government or organization retrenches, it spends less money
confines – limits, borders: within/ beyond the confines
indenture – a former contract, especially in former times between an apprentice and a master