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Laid-off H1B visa holders face immigration limbo

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CIOL Bureau
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Sonya Hepinstall

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WASHINGTON: When he was spared in company-wide lay-offs last September and

December, the telecom engineer from Bangalore, India, was lulled into a warm

sense of security - a false one, as it turned out to be. "You sort of

anticipate in this industry that if something comes up, we should be prepared.

But it's very difficult. We never thought it would really happen," said the

engineer, who identified himself only as 'Shekar.'

Shekar was a programmer at Chicago-based Internet consultant Xpedior Inc.

working on big business software systems for clients such as Unisys, Verizon and

Fannie Mae. "I really liked it... We were like a team. We were like a part

of the company. We were trying to build it," he said in a telephone

interview of those heady days.

But on March 20, Xpedior told 300 employees, or 42 per cent of its work

force, they had two hours to pack up and leave the company. Xpedior said it

wanted to sell all or part of its operations and has since voluntarily de-listed

from the Nasdaq stock market.

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"It was very painful to know that we couldn't go further and we had to

give it up and it was all over," Shekar said. A painful proposition for

everyone, but for holders of guest worker visas like Shekar, getting laid off

meant not only being out of a job but also being 'out of status.' As far the US

Government is concerned, that means - technically - he was here illegally.

A demand that never was…



It was the expected huge demand in the technical sector that led in October

2000 to a hike in the guest worker quota of so-called H1B visas to 195,000 per

year up to the end of fiscal 2003 from 115,000 in 2000. More than half of the

H1Bs granted to skilled workers in 1999 and 2000 were given to those in

technical fields in order to meet what was then seen as a desperate shortage of

high-tech talent, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) said.

Indians have made up 41 per cent of the beneficiaries since the program

started in 1992, followed by Chinese with 10 percent and Canadians a distant

third with three percent. But things now look different. The technical boom has

gone bust. Dotcoms are dissolving, options are worthless and profits even at the

blue chips of the tech sector are in free-fall.

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For some of the non-American workers who were supposed to be the foot

soldiers of a new technological era, the comedown has been devastating, and

incredibly sudden. Dotcoms have been known to fire employees - both domestic and

foreign - on the spot, sending H1B visa holders off on a frenzied scramble to

find new jobs.

Technically, the INS would be justified in ordering laid-off H1B workers to

leave the country. In reality, however, the INS, itself taken by surprise by the

situation, has taken the more pragmatic path of dealing with each person on a

case-by-case basis. Although the conventional wisdom is that H1B holders have up

to 10 days to find a new job, in fact there is no official timeframe, leaving

people in a kind of immigration limbo.

It wasn't your fault



Immigration lawyers said it was not that the INS had changed its policy.

"If the person's out of status, the INS has always been fairly reasonable

in its treatment towards immigration workers," said immigration lawyer Dawn

Lurie. The INS hopes to introduce proposed regulations in May that will pin down

exactly the amount of time left for H1B visa holders, said INS spokeswoman

Eyleen Schmidt.

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In the meantime, the deadline still remains vague. "Prior to this

particular slowdown we hadn't seen a lot of these types of requests and so it's

hard to say. It does seem that the sooner you can find employment, (the better

for you), she said. Lurie said in the meantime provisions in the new bills

passed by Congress, dubbed the 'American Competitiveness in the 21st Century

Act', that allowed for the "portability" of the H1B visas from job to

job with relative ease have helped laid-off workers find new employers.

The US immigration service does not know the total number of H1B visa holders

currently in the United States but quotes a Georgetown University report, using

INS data, that put the number at around 450,000. The number of H1B visa holders

who have been laid off is also not known. INS's Schmidt said there had been more

approvals than denials of applications to 'port' H1B visas after being laid off,

but could not provide figures.

Applications continue to pour in



Meanwhile applications for new H1B visas continue. As of March 7, nearly

72,000 new H1B visas had been granted in the fiscal year that started Sept. 1,

2000, and there are 66,000 more petitions pending. Shekar has not yet found new

work but he is lucky: his wife won H1B status just one week before he was laid

off so he is now a dependent.

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He is actively looking for work and has had a few bites, but salary is

starting to become an issue these days: They're saying, 'You'll have to take a

pay cut', he says. Despite the legal headaches, coming to the United States was

the right thing to do, he said.

"I don't regret it because it's given me so much knowledge and

opportunity. If I go back I have so much experience, I can market that in my

country," the south Asian national said. As for staying on: "You keep

trying till you get something to happen, but once you know it can't happen it's

wise to pack and go back."

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.

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