Indian Information Technology Workers in the United States: The H-1B Visa, Flexible Production, and the Racialization of Labor

Abstract

Advances in information technology (IT) have been critical to the USA for maintaining its competitive edge in the global economy, and the role of workers on the H-1B visa has been central in this process since the 1990s. The H-1B visa program, which allows US employers to hire skilled foreign workers on a temporary basis, enabled the recruitment of thousands of IT professionals, the majority of whom has been from India. Based on 40 in-depth interviews with Indian IT workers in the USA, this paper illustrates how the interplay between visa policies and flexible hiring in IT marginalizes this workforce. As a result of their fragile immigration status under H-1B visa terms, these workers are disproportionately employed as contract labor in an exploitative system of subcontracting. As an employment-based visa, the H-1B makes these workers dependent on their visa-sponsoring employers for immigration status and livelihood. The compulsion to remain employed and legal drives H-1B employees to accept severely exploitative work conditions, including wage cuts, deduction of commissions from hourly wages, lack of benefits, and frequent relocations. Theoretical insights from Asian-American studies, which foreground the historical nexus between US immigration policies and the gendered racialization of immigration, anchor the analyses of how current visa policies sustain the exigencies of late-capital.