Visa Wives- Emigration Experiences of Indian Women in The US

Women who emigrate to the US on ‘dependent visas’, to join their husbands working on H1B visas, often do not know what to expect. They uproot themselves from their homes and families and arrive in an alien land to begin life anew, clueless as to what this might entail. Strained marriages and lives thrown out of gear are only some of the complications that ensue.

This book gives voice to some such ‘visa wives’ and their experiences, while offering practical advice on settling in, working, networking, assimilating and making friends, to those contemplating a move to the US.

Oh my God!' I screamed.

My husband had just told me he had to move to the US. In four days. Impending travel had left us hanging in the air for the past few months. My husband works in the IT industry, and his H1 visa had been approved six months ago. Delay in his actual travel had put us in a bind for all these months.

`What are we going to do?' I exclaimed as I hugged him tight, reality suddenly hitting home. Our beautiful Chennai apartment would soon become history. And so would the proximity of the extended family scattered in different suburbs of the forever-summer metro city. Mixed emotions. Would this nomadic life-of job postings and shifting to new cities every few years-never end?

`Four days!'

So many things to do . . . How would I manage after he left? Wind up a whole home, deal with phone connections, gas connection, pack all the books and clothes, dispose of or pack away and store the furniture-all for a project that would probably not last long.

The moment my husband got his visa, I knew I was soon to be a dependent 'visa wife'. True, I was on a low-health phase then which got in the way of my work, but this moment ruined any hope of reviving my career. Why did I agree to the move?

Could I actually back off? Or was it pre-voyage jitters? Maybe this is just a phase.

`It's only for nine months, this project,' he explained. Maybe I should stay put. But before I could figure out my own thoughts on the matter, he had informed our landlord that we would move out.

Two days later, he was in his father's former office in Bengaluru, to purchase a suitcase from their Central R&D organization's 'dry canteen'.

The retiree father's moment of pride had arrived, after years of surviving the frustration of watching colleagues' kids head off to the US for studies, reach academic heights, some of them even turning scientists at their alma mater, while his own kids lagged behind in India.

`He is heading to the US,' his dad repeated to friend after friend as my husband went red with embarrassment. `But I could not take away that moment from him. I had no right to do that. He was so proud to show me off!' he explained to me later.

Two years later, when we visited India from the US, he talked of my dad showing him off too, as 'the son-in-law who lives in the US'.

What makes entire families still look at America as the place to be?

For someone like me, who would rather simply visit the US than live there, the run-up to D-day was a confusing phase. It was hard to accept the sudden change, but somewhere deep inside me, a part of me looked forward to the trip, while yet another part worried about the future and what to expect from it. A million thoughts ran through my head all the time, warring against each other, till I didn't know what to think any more.

Forty days later, I took a snapshot of my family and relatives at the Chennai airport, their smiles trying hard to mask pangs of grief.

And turned into a visa wife overnight, over-flight.

Little did I know, much like the thousands of women who immigrate to the US, what the move to America really meant.

Year after year, numerous flights-via the Middle East, Germany and England in the western direction, and via Singapore, Hong Kong, sometimes Tokyo, in the eastern direction-fly across the world, carrying Indian engineers and allied professionals, all heading to the US as skilled workers. Their spouses, women like me, follow suit. I say that women follow their husbands because the number of men following their wives is negligible. Despite our qualifications that make us eligible to work, we become dependent visa wives, by rule.

**Contents and Sample Pages**