Sleepless in Silicon Valley

For Indian IT professionals in the U.S., retrenchment is now a reality, says SARMISHTA RAMESH.

IT was a typical sunny Californian morning, when Pradeep Chawla got into his brand new BMW sedan and drove to his office. For Chawla, things could not get any better. He was young and ambitious and had a great job in a hi-tech company in the heart of the Silicon Valley. His parents, back home in India, were busy looking for the right girl for him - and if things went well, Chawla might even have his dream wife by his side before the end of the year. Oh yes! Life was really good.

But as soon as he entered his office, Chawla knew that something was wrong. His friends and colleagues were gathered in huddles. There was palpable anxiety in the air. And sure enough, Chawla found the reason. By mid-afternoon, he was walking out of his office building, still reeling from the shocking pace of events, with a little box containing his personal belongings and a severance package tucked in his pocket. Chawla, along with a majority of the staff, had been laid off.

The start-up company he had been working for had been unable to sustain itself in the slowing American economy. The company was shutting down and the employees were being asked to leave. No questions asked; no emotions involved.

Welcome to America 2001. This is one country where you can be a tech whiz kid on a fast track towards your career pinnacle, and yet by the end of the day, be jobless.

All the travails of the hi-tech industry began sometime towards the end of last year when the booming dot-com domain slowly began to crumble. Unable to generate the projected advertising revenue, hundreds of these cyber sites had to close shop. And with this began the domino effect. As the dot-com companies collapsed like a pack of cards, the bigger conglomerates began to suffer financial setbacks.

While the market gurus have been making predictions and counter- predictions about the future of the world's largest economy, retrenchment has been the order of the day. Even hi-tech giants like Cisco, Intel, Oracle, HP and Sun have been in the lay off mode for more than two months now. Thousands of people across the United States have lost their jobs since the beginning of this year and new job openings do not come aplenty these days. But the worst affected of them all, are the immigrant workers in the hi- tech industry. According to the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) records, almost 46 per cent of H-1B visas (work permits) are issued to Indians. So now that the techno bubble has burst, Indian IT professionals are finding themselves in a legal quagmire.

If a person on a H-1B visa loses his job and does not have another one to move on to, then he is considered to be "out of status" - and because of a lack of clear laws, his stay could be considered as "illegal" by the INS.

Almost everyday, hundreds of Indians faced with this dilemma are forced to return home - their dreams of working in the U.S. temporarily shelved, they leave with a fervent hope that they would get a good job at least in India.

"One of my friends who was working here in San Francisco was laid off from his contracting company. He was here only for a few months and he was unable to find a project. So when his company offered him a ticket back to Chennai, he just decided to leave," says Nagarajan Padmanabhan, a 30-year-old electrical engineer from Bangalore.

While the exodus of disenchanted Indian IT professionals had continued to increase, there are thousands of others who are willing to take the legal risk. And Padmanabhan is one among them.

Padmanabhan came to San Francisco in April last year. He was hired by a consulting firm and worked as a contract employee in a dot-com company. But on March 15 when his contract with his client came to an end, the consulting firm laid him off. Reason? They already had too many contractors on "bench" (not working on any project) and they could not afford to pay them all.

Padmanabhan believes that he has 180 days to look for another job. But, unfortunately, this is far from the truth. "There are no clearly defined laws for this situation. If a person has lost his job, he needs to know whether he has time to look for another one, and if so how much time. But these are questions which do not have straight answers," says Murali Krishna Devarakonda, member of the board of directors, Immigrants Support Network (ISN).

Various INS officials over the years have stated that the H-1B worker must submit an application for a change of employer within 30 days or 60 days. However, these statements are merely opinions and do not have the force of law.

While the guidelines come cloaked in uncertainty, the INS has very clear and strict punishments for immigrants who are "out of status". If a person has been out of status in the country for six months then he can be barred from entering the U.S. for three years; Similarly if the "out of status" period is almost a year he can be barred for 10 years.

While the legal angle to an H-1B worker's plight continues to predominate, a dried up job market compounds the issue. "Until last year I was a hot commodity with my Java experience. But now it just does not seem to matter," says Padmanabhan. "Every time I apply for a job, they want to know whether I am a citizen or a green card holder. When I tell them that I am here on an H-1B visa, the response has always been a 'no'. I guess they do not want to be involved in the legal hassles that come along with an 'out of status' H-1B worker," adds Padmanabhan.

Added to all this, the cost of living especially in the Silicon Valley is exorbitant. Manoj Banjara's project with Cisco has come to an end and his contracting company has forced him to take a salary cut. "I have two children and one of them goes to school and with the salary that I am now receiving, I cannot afford to stay in the valley," he says.

Mukund Srinivasan's case is equally tragic. Mukund had gone to India in March to get married. But when he got back to his job in Atlanta, he found that he was going to be laid off soon. "Now all my plans of bringing my wife over have taken a back seat. But my company has been kind enough and given me time till June. I am technically jobless, but I am allowed to use the office computer to search for a job," says Srinivasan with a sad smile. However his calls to India and to his wife have reduced drastically. "I have to save the money that I have. But every time I speak to my wife, she wants to know why I do not call her. I still have not told her about my situation here. But if things are not going to improve, I will have to burden her with the truth," he adds.

While such stories of software engineers and IT professionals across the U.S. continue to grow by the day, many are waking up to a sad truth: that they might have to give up their American dream and go back home to India. "I came here to further my career. But now I am forced to settle for just any job and I cannot do that," says Chawla vehemently. "I might have to leave the country now, but soon the market is going to pick up and they will need talent like mine again," he adds, his tone full of promise.

(The names of laid off H-1B employees have been changed on request)

* * *

* There are no official figures on how many Indians have been laid off and how many are going back to India. According to a study by a leading American university, the number of H-1B visas companies applied for had dropped from 50,000 last year to around 15,000 early this year.

* The crisis in America has created a manpower surplus in India. It has also led to undercutting.

* Software service providers are now looking at Europe where salaries are about 20 per cent lower than in the U. S.. But given the extent of vacancies there, salaries may rise.

* Europe has not been impacted to a large extent by the U.S. downturn because only five per cent of its software exports go to the U.S.. Also many European Union companies are liberalising their immigration rules to attract Indian talent.

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