Posted on 09/09/2001 3:17:33 PM PDT by madrussian
George Kohli rolls up the door to storage lot 136 and confronts the remains of the boom economy.
Forty-eight identical striped couches, stacked floor to ceiling, fill a dimly lit mini-storage compartment the size of a large two-car garage. Across the way, mattresses are stacked on end. And in yet another compartment, dozens of TVs and VCRs are piled high.
Kohli's collection of domestic debris is a graveyard of sorts. All this furniture was, until very recently, in the homes of the tech elite. They came to Silicon Valley from cities in India such as Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) and Mumbai (formerly Bombay) to take big-money jobs writing code, the detail work of the dot-com dream.
Now the jobs are vanishing -- and so are they.
Kohli made his living renting furniture and cars to these workers. But in the past three months, most of his customers have been laid off. Many have left the area or returned to India leaving behind all the detritus of a pilgrim's life interrupted -- rented microwaves, blankets and kitchen tables. Each week, Kohli rents more space from All Aboard Mini Storage in Sunnyvale to make room for more furniture. And everything is for sale. If you need a twin-sized bed (or 200), talk to Kohli.
Technology companies and the foreign workers they once employed are not the only ones hurt by the economic downturn. During the boom, a whole ecosystem of services and other enterprises grew up to serve the needs of the workers here on H-1B and other work visas tied to tech jobs. Many valley businesses have been hit hard by the slowdown, but the businesses that catered to H-1B workers say they have been doubly hurt.
Since the temporary work visa program began in 1992, skilled technology workers have come here from China, the United Kingdom, Japan, the Philippines, Canada and elsewhere to fill jobs that employers say they cannot fill with American workers. More than anywhere else, they come from India. Last year, Indian nationals received 44 percent of the 115,000 H-1B visas issued compared with 10 percent for Chinese nationals, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Now, nowhere is the H-1B exodus felt more than in the Bay Area's Indo-American community. Evidence of a reverse migration is as close as the corner store. Today, Indian restaurants that expanded in the past two years say business is down as much as 40 percent. Taxi drivers who remember earning as much as $400 a day driving these workers to and from their offices -- and to Napa or Santa Cruz for weekend trips -- say they are lucky to make $100 for a 12-hour shift. Stores that rent Indian videos say every day brings a new stream of customers closing their accounts and retrieving their deposits.
``A huge infrastructure was being built up around their presence,'' said Rafiq Dossani, a senior research scholar at the Asia/Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.
The pain is most evident on a four-mile stretch of El Camino Real in Sunnyvale known as Gandhinagar after the capital of Gujarat state in India. During the boom, this stretch of Indian grocery stores, video rental shops, clothing boutiques and restaurants was riding high, thanks in no small part to H-1B customers -- mostly throngs of single men far from home.
``Last year, you couldn't get a place to sit in this place,'' said retired businessman Krishna Venkatesan, 59, while he ate lunch with his daughter at Bhavika Food To Go, a South Indian cafe with five tables in Gandhinagar. ``You'd have to stand outside and eat.''
Now, restaurants along the strip are half-full at lunch time. Makeshift ``For Sale'' signs hang on bulletin boards outside stores, as people in a hurry to leave the valley advertise their futons, ski gear, PlayStations and Hondas. Some of the fliers hint at how quickly the reversal has hit: ``Brand New Honda CRV. Bought May 2001 for $25,000. Want $20,500.''
Emboldened by the flush times, many restaurant owners such as Ricki Kumar decided to expand, only to be caught by surprise when the exodus began. The Kumar family's bakery and cafe, Lovely Sweets & Snacks, has been a popular Fremont establishment for five years. Several months ago, Kumar opened a second location in Sunnyvale to take advantage of the H-1B traffic in Gandhinagar. But the new venture has struggled. Recently he slashed the lunch special from $6.99 to $4.99 and began offering free drinks.
No one is sure how many Indian nationals came to Silicon Valley on work-related visas while the valley's tech industry was rapidly expanding; the Immigration and Naturalization Service only knows that half of H-1B visas went to the technology industry. And no one really knows how many of these workers have left the Bay Area for India or other destinations -- speculation ranges wildly from 1,000 to 10,000. The INS does not keep track of people leaving the country, said Eyleen Schmidt, an INS spokeswoman.
Many H-1B visa holders are still working. And not every laid-off H-1B worker wants to leave. Some are hoping odd jobs will see them through until the tech industry rebounds. In Sunnyvale's Gandhinagar, shopkeepers and taxi-cab dispatchers now find themselves in the awkward position of turning down former customers who are desperate for any kind of work. Most -- but not all -- business owners are aware it is illegal to hire a laid-off H-1B worker without securing a new working visa for that person.
Kalpesh Patel, chief executive of Dalpat Enterprises, which operates an electronics store, a grocery store and a wholesale grocery business, turns away laid-off H-1B workers asking for jobs. ``If you need help, I'll help you,'' he tells them. ``But I don't have any room anymore.''
A month ago, Kumar, owner of Lovely Sweets and Snacks, hired two laid-off temporary software engineers to hand out fliers, paying them minimum wage. They worked for a month before leaving for India, he said.
Aman Singh, owner of Green Cab of Sunnyvale, employs a laid-off engineer here on an H-1B visa as a driver on the night shift. The employee earns $2,500 per month driving, compared with the $4,500 monthly he made as an engineer, said Singh. ``You'd think engineering is a safe job,'' Singh said.
The exodus is not bad news for everyone serving the H-1B workers. Travel agents are reporting a brisk business in one-way plane tickets to India. The Immigration and Naturalization Service requires that employers pay for transportation home if laid-off temporary workers ask for it. In the past two months, Biren Chowdhary, owner of Orbit Travel in Newark and president of the Federation of Indo-American Associations of Bay Area, has sold up to 600 one-way tickets to India, mostly to Indians here on temporary work visas. ``I've been busy sending people home,'' he said.
While some H-1B workers head for the departure gates, others continue to arrive. Nishit Desai, 26, came to Silicon Valley from Goa on July 2. Since then, two of his roommates here on work-related visas have gone back to India. A third leaves this weekend. Desai and his roommates had rented furniture from George Kohli. As the roommates decamped, Kohli steadily reclaimed beds, sofas and chairs. Now, Desai finds himself living a nomadic life, bouncing from one shared apartment to another. ``There's no point in having a bed,'' he said.
The upheaval is generating its own urban legends. One making the rounds on El Camino Real is that H-1B workers are driving to airports and dumping their cars because they can not sell them before their departure to pay off the outstanding loan balance. Airport officials in San Francisco and San Jose say they have not seen an increase in abandoned cars.
For George Kohli, the end of the dot-com dream for his H-1B customers has meant the end of his furniture enterprise. ``I've taken my profit and who knows what God has in store for me,'' he said. He is rather sanguine about the loss. After prospering for a decade from a niche market, it was clearly time to diversify beyond Honda Civics and kitchen tables. One idea, albeit in the early stages, is a health business based on the healing properties of water.
Kohli recently showed a visitor a white Toyota Corolla with a smashed right side. That morning, the H-1B worker who rented the car from Kohli hit a parked car.
Kohli has lost six cars in the past month due to accidents. People's minds, he said, are somewhere else.
If I never set foot in California again it will be too soon.
I will give a $100 and fly out to pick it up.
I'll offer $250!
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