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