Some Chinese immigrants found themselves in a quandary when Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1990, introducing the H1-B visa program for highly educated and skilled immigrant workers, but restricting the time such visa holders could work in the United States to a maximum of six years. The act abruptly reversed previous immigration policy, which had eagerly welcomed foreign immigrants with advanced education or professional occupations. After 1965, the government had imposed virtually no limits on the admission of Chinese foreign nationals with specialized training.

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Critics soon denounced the H1-B visa program as “white-collar indentured servitude.” Middlemen recruiters took as much as half the salary of the workers they procured for companies, and visa holders were beholden to their employers, whom they needed as sponsors for permanent immigration status. If an H1-B visa holder wanted to switch companies, the potential new employer had to petition the Immigration and Naturalization Service, a process that could take several months. Those with H1- B visas had to wait years for a coveted green card, knowing that their visas might expire before they obtained one. Severe backlogs for green card applications developed because applicants from any one country could not make up more than 7 percent of the total number of green cards issued each year.

By the end of the decade, a few Chinese H1-B visa holders had begun to organize. In 1998, for example, Swallow Yan, a green card applicant from the PRC, helped create the Immigration Council of the Chinese Professionals and Entrepreneurs Association, a grassroots effort that lobbies politicians on behalf of H1-B visa holders. But in general, most H1-B visa holders were too terrified to voice their complaints to the press or lawmakers. While researching this book, I interviewed several Chinese on H1-B visas who spoke to me only on condition of anonymity.

One woman, whom I will call Sally Chung, asserted that the H1-B visa program had turned her into “a high-tech slave.” An immigrant from mainland China, she came to the United States in 1992 to obtain a bachelor’s degree in engineering. After graduation, she accepted a position as a software designer at a local company, where she was expected to work at least ten hours a day, including weekends, without raises or compensation for overtime. Though Chung was unhappy with her situation, she could not afford to leave—her appli-cation for a green card depended on being employed by this particular company. Quitting her job meant starting the paperwork all over again as well as forfeiting the $10,000 she had invested in legal fees for the green card. A backlog at INS caused the wait to stretch from months to several agonizing years. When she complained that she earned even less than entry-level workers in her field, her boss demoted her title from software engineer to librarian in order to justify her low wages. At the same time, however, he expected her to serve as a software engineer by programming a computer database for the company. “My boss enjoys calling me into his office, shutting the door, and then screaming at me,” she said. “He tells me I have to speak perfect English without an accent before I can get a raise. He says that if he lived in China for only one month, he would be able to speak perfect Chinese. My boss warned me that if I ask him for a raise one more time he will fire me.” Now, she says, “I’m scared to death I’ll lose my job.”

(Chang 353-355)