Nowhere to Go
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 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-1Bs 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 regulation, 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 Services (INS) allow 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 families with them, lay down roots and apply for the more permanent green cards. Through February 2000, more than 81,000 worker 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 that he must pack 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 possibilities that they will be sent home. “They are in limbo. It is the greatest form of torture,” says Amar Veda of the Silicon Valley-based Immigrants 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.
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 spokeswomen Eyleen Schmidt promises that more specific guidance will come this month. “We are aware of the cutbacks,” she says. “We’re trying to be as generous as we can be within the confines of the existing law.”
翻译参考答案：
无家可归
这不是正常的有市场疲软而引发的悲剧故事。根据联邦政府的规定，纳加拉吉和他的同事有两个选择：要么立即回印度，要么在供过于求的劳动市场找到一份新工作，然后寄希望与移民规划局把他们的签证转到他们的新公司去。在法律上，他不能有收入，除非他办完移民局所有的手续之后。“没有工作，没有收入，我怎么生存呀?” 纳加拉吉愁眉不展。
不久前，H-1B签证还是硅谷各公司解决当地程序员和工程师短缺问题的香饽饽。H-1B签证始于1992年，移民局希望通过签发这种签证来吸引其他国家的熟练工人来美工作。他们中的许多人带着妻儿，落地生根，并申请有永久居住权的绿卡。截止到2000年2月，大约有8.1万名工人持有这种签证。但随着网络经济的崩溃，许多人遭到解雇。这导致了在美国移民社区的很大不安。当一个工人丢了饭碗，移民局就认为他“没有身份乐”，在理论上，你可以认为他必须卷起行李回家了。由于今年工人被解雇幅度太大，美国政府近来有所让步，宣布了一系列模糊不清的政策，暗示如果他们符合某些特例并能找到一个公司为他们担保签证的话，他们还可以留下来。这一政策的结果就是数以千计的移民在美国面临着暗淡的不确定的前景，甚至被突然遣送回家。“他们生活在地狱的边缘，这也许是最痛苦的。”坐落在硅谷的移民互助网络组织的阿玛·维达这样认为。
在过去的几年里，硅谷的公司对这种H-1B的作用大肆吹捧，导致现在的情况更加糟糕。不久前，它们刚刚成功说服国会增加每年的H-1BQ签证的签发数量。但现在技术公司的紧缩使这一需求减慢。今年，硅谷的大公司如英特尔﹑思科和惠普都宣布裁员上千人，其中有许多H-1B签证持有者。移民局上个月声称今年2月份有大约16，000名H-1B工人来到美国，大大低于去年2月份的32，000人。
上个月，了解到问题的严重性的美国移民局通知H-1B签证持有者“不要惊慌”，在他们被迫离开美国之前，会有一个宽限期。移民局的女发言人埃仑·史密斯表示：“我们对裁员很清楚，这个月将有更多的导向性的政策出台。我们将在现有法律允许的范围里采取更宽容的政策。”
