When engineer husbands relocate to pursue dream jobs, their H4 visa-holding wives must cope with the resentment and loneliness of losing their own careers

The South Bay H4 visa holder’s support group is having lunch in Palo Alto. The group organizes several meet-ups a week: coffees, dinners and shopping expeditions. Today, turnout is high. Fifteen women – some carrying babies and toddlers – take their seats at the table running down the centre of an upscale burger restaurant. The contrast with the other customers – groups of software engineers and VC associates carrying silver laptops – is striking.

These are the wives of Silicon Valley: women who are integral to the continued success of the Valley’s multibillion-dollar computing industry – but also entirely invisible to it. Their husbands are the engineers who, headhunted from across the globe, emigrate to Silicon Valley as H1B “skilled workers”, helping to drive innovation in companies like Apple, Google and Facebook.

But their wives – H4 visa holders – are prohibited from working. And their collective story speaks both to tech’s labour shortage but also the rigidity of US immigration law.

Over lunch, the H4 women recall their journeys to Silicon Valley. First, a flattering, unsolicited call from a recruiter. Then, an interview followed by their husband’s dream job offer – and a salary package too good to refuse. And finally, the realization that, once arrived in the US, they would be a dependent spouse in every sense of the word.

“I feel guilt,” says Heather Zachernuk, a 33-year-old New Zealander. “So much guilt – for having this lifestyle ... for resenting my situation even while it’s also a luxury.”

Zachernuk, whose husband works for Apple, was a parliamentary researcher in New Zealand. She hasn’t worked since she arrived in Silicon Valley. She fills the spare time while her three-year-old daughter is in daycare with art projects and online courses. Some H4 wives try volunteering; others write blogs; many vow to take up running or tennis in order to occupy the long hours alone.

Like Zachernuk, all the women I speak to at the support group are highly educated, articulate and bright. Yet immigration law has now reduced them to housewives, leaving many struggling to find new personas in a strange country. As one new arrival confides: “Before, I was very career-focused … my career was my identity. Coming here has forced me to ask questions: who am I? What am I good at? What are my hobbies?”

The extended career break is seen by many as both a constraint and an opportunity. Former financial analysts can now spend hours cooking and playing tennis. Many take advantage of their enforced career sabbatical to have babies, leaning in to family life.

Others speak of isolation, boredom and frustration at their financial dependence. Their lives in America are lived at a distance: few have any American friends.

Support groups like this one – mostly organized online – are a lifeline for new arrivals, a chance to be with “people who understand”. But they still reflect a universe shaped by their husbands’ jobs. The iSpouse support group – featuring events like chocolate chip cookie bake-offs and movie nights – requires Apple employees to send an email confirming their wife’s identity before she can join.

Indian women are particularly affected by the H4 trap. Of the 125,000 H4 dependent visas granted in 2015, 80% were issued to Indian passport holders. While the extent to which Indian engineers now power Silicon Valley is well-recognized, their wives’ marginalized status in California – unable to work until their green card is approved, unable to even obtain a social security number – is often overlooked.

Sandhya Ravindran, a 38-year-old Indian woman who has lived in the Bay Area since 2007, says “99%” of her social network comprises other Indian H4 wives. She speaks of loneliness, resentment and marriages under strain. She is emphatic when she tells me, “Honestly? If I had known what life on an H4 would be like, I would not have come.”

For others – like Mechthild Schnaithmann, a 30-year-old German – the H4 was a necessary evil. After three years in a long-distance relationship while she was working as a music teacher, she decided she had to give up her job and move. “I had no choice: this was the only way for us to be together.”

A year ago, H4 visa holders won a partial victory: the US government decided to allow those who had been approved for green cards (permanent residency) to apply for work permits. Some of the women I talk to are now able to work, or are hopeful that they will be able to in the future. But unlike their husbands – whose engineering skills mark them out as highly desirable global migrants – many have less-immediately transferrable skills, and so continue to struggle to find employment.

I ask all the H4s I meet whether they know any male H4 visa holders – a “tech husband”. They all say no. Ravindran laughs: “Men don’t stay long. They don’t like being unable to work, being dependent. Either they transfer their visa status once they arrive, or they go back home.” Figures obtained from the US Office for Immigration Statistics confirm that women make up 90% of adult H4 visa admissions.

This is hardly suprising given that three-quarters of computing jobs in the US are held by men.

Yet the impact of tech’s gender bias on families is not limited to H4 wives alone. Listening to these women talk about guilt and disempowerment, I feel a surge of recognition. From my window in San Francisco I watch workers line up to catch the Google campus bus in the morning and reflect on my own life as a tech wife.

While I have never been formally prevented from working, my earning potential is a fraction of my husband’s. The choice we made to move to San Francisco was about his career, not mine.

I discuss this with a friend whose husband works as a senior software engineer while she studies and cares for their young son. She nods in recognition: “I feel so conflicted about being a tech wife. I could never have gone to grad school if he didn’t work in tech … but I am also the one holding the baby.”

Set against millions of vulnerable migrants, H4 visa holders are lucky. They are safe, and they are wealthy. But their experiences highlight a community of women pushed to the edges of Silicon Valley by an immigration system focused only on meeting corporations’ needs.