In my case , it not only needs courage and effort. The USCIS restricts me from working on anything else than the occupational field for which I got my work visa on. I am not whining or anything, this country has given me a lot of good things. In fact the pros outweighs the cons. I am just pissed off with the fact that my spouse can't work , just because she is married to an H1B worker. As an individual , its not her mistake that she married an H1B worker. She is not even allowed to have a SSN ! An alien who do not have SSN cannot open a bank account among many other restrictions.

She can't legally work, that sucks.

She can do many things that are not classified as work, though. And that's the important thing, she can still make/do/think/learn and might even go as far as unofficially trading with people for that (talk to a lawyer first - the trading part might not be such a good idea, but the first part sure is.)

Anyway, just pointing it out for the third time to try to get the point across, I find it a hard thing to do: You very frequently have more choices than those you think you have, and in the cases when you really don't it's because you've chosen a path that's led where you are, so you either get creative or get stuck.