Трудности с трансфером

[Vol]

H-1B Visas a Grade A Problem
by Lakshmi Chaudhry

3:00 a.m. Apr. 13, 2000 PDT



Silicon Valley conjures up images of smug, happy employees, jumping from one job to another in search of ever-fatter salaries and better stock options.
But foreign workers face a different reality. When their work visas expire, some find themselves sitting at home, broke and unemployed.

The situation is a result of severe backlogs at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which doesn't have the resources to process H-1B visa transfers in time.

That's made for big problems in Silicon Valley, where the Computing Technology Industry Association says 269,000 technology jobs are unfilled and companies are largely dependent on workers from India and China. INS officials say the agency does not keep track of the number of foreign workers affected by the H-1B backlog.

Companies have to sponsor foreign workers for an H-1B, a visa allowing them to work in the United States. But if a worker wants to switch jobs, the existing H-1B has to be transferred to the new employer.

That process, which used to take between two and three weeks, now lasts up to five months for applications filed in California, Washington, and Oregon.

The catch is that a foreign worker can't start work at a new job until the application is processed. For employees between jobs, that could mean months without a paycheck.

Hsin, a Taiwanese software engineer who filed for a transfer in mid-December, is still waiting for her application to go through. (Hsin's real name and those of other H-1B employees quoted in this article have been changed upon their request.)

Completely broke, Hsin is now living with friends, working programming jobs in return for room and board. "It's come as a complete shock to me," she said, crying. "I never expected to be in this situation."

Aziz, who has been waiting for his visa for five months, was required to give a 30-day leave notice as part of his contract with his former employer. "I am completely broke, frustrated and my family is skimping on the little resources that I had managed to save earlier," he said.

The backlog was created by an INS internal directive to focus on issuing new H-1B visas, rather than transferring old ones.

The directive was issued several months ago because the agency found it had over-issued new H-1B visas last year, breaching the annual cap mandated by Congress, INS spokeswoman Eyleen Schmidt said.

(The annual cap, which stands at 115,000 today, does not include the H-1B transfer applications, since those visas merely transfer existing ones.)

The discrepancy was caused by significantly different processing times between the INS' four regional service centers. Vermont and California lagged significantly behind Texas and Nebraska, Schmidt said.

In order to stay within the cap this time, the INS ordered all the regional centers to process new visa applications at the same rate, even though Vermont and California shoulder the majority of the burden. As a result, the California service center has shifted a good deal of its resources away from processing H-1B transfers and toward new H-1B visas.

"We are very focused on the cap," said Donna Coultice, director of the California center. "We will process the transfers as soon as we are done with the H-1B cap cases."

Coultice said that would be completed by mid-May.

Technology companies have spent most of their efforts over the past few years lobbying Congress to raise the annual cap on new H-1B visas. There are at least three bills in Congress which would do just that.

"What is the point of constantly raising the cap for new (H-1B visas) when 10 percent of people with existing H-1Bs are sitting at home without jobs?" asked Madhavan, an Indian software engineer who has been waiting four months for his application to go through.

Schmidt admits it's a good question, but says the backlog is "not normal."

No one seems to have been prepared for the backlog or its consequences on people's lives. In fact, when Wired News first contacted the INS, Schmidt was not aware of the problem.

The California service center said it "had not tracked the problem," and could not say when the H-1B transfer cases started to pile up. "People tend to file far enough in advance" for a transfer, Coultice said. "We weren't terribly worried about this."

But because the backlog was sudden, employees did not prepare for a delay greater than 60 days. The prolonged wait has come as rude shock for many, including prospective employers.

When the company that was supposed to hire software consultant Jie realized she wouldn't be able to start in April as promised, the job offer was withdrawn. "They said they can't wait for three months. It's too much," Jie said.

She has since received four job offers. But in each case, the company changed its mind when it discovered how long it would have to wait.

Technology companies contacted by Wired News declined to comment on the problem.

"My future manager is no longer hiring H-1B cases," said Rajiv, who is worried the project he signed up for may not exist by the time he joins his new company.

The problem is also partly caused by foreign workers who abuse the system. Nervous about long processing times, many accept offers from more than one company. Each employer then files for an H-1B with the INS, and the worker takes the job that produces the H-1B first.

"It overloads the system," Madhavan said. "In the end, everyone loses."

But as with many other problems facing the INS, the backlog is the result of a severe resource crunch. The Vermont center processes half of all H-1B applications. The California office, which processes 25 percent, is severely short-staffed and has the highest workload per employee, Schmidt said.

"Since 1992, we've had a 300 percent increase in the number of petitions, and only a 50 percent increase in resources" for processing, Schmidt said.

The INS budget has increased nearly four times between 1993 and 1999. But most of that money is set aside for "enforcement" activities designed to crack down on illegal immigration, Schmidt said.

She says the agency has routinely lobbied Congress for more money for processing applications, but to no avail.

The Immigrants Support Network, which lobbies on behalf of H-1B workers, says it is pointless to attack the INS. The problem instead lies with Congress, which it says has adopted a knee-jerk response to immigration issues.

"They've got all these foreign workers into the country and now they don't know what to do with them," ISN founder Pradeep Chaphalkar said.

Chaphalkar says most politicians and employers are not aware of the problems facing H-1B workers, who are afraid to bring attention to their troubles.

"People who come here on H-1B are very timid, very shy," he said. "When something goes wrong, they treat it like fate."