A US policy professional expressed surprise and surprise at how little people are talking about the H-1B visa situation in India – once you are out of the US and your visa stamping is over, how difficult it is to re-enter the US. Sam Peek, policy manager at the Economic Innovation Group, said he received a message from someone on H-1B status who had to wake up at 3.30 a.m. to book a consular appointment for August 2027. Peek said this issue is still under-discussed while there is much discussion on the H-1B weighted lottery, salary levels, Project Firewall to prevent H-1B fraud, etc.Peake said that at a basic level, the White House has made it much more difficult to re-enter the United States.Peek said, “Wait times at Indian consular offices are usually ridiculous, but visa holders can overcome these backlogs by going to US embassies with less bureaucratic stress (like Canada) to renew their visas. The White House ended this practice last year. Now, if an Indian H-1B needs to travel for work or has a family emergency in their home country, they may not be able to seamlessly depart and return. Will be.”A major standoff occurred in December 2025 when consular offices in India rescheduled all H-1B, H-4 visa appointments and postponed them till mid-2026. All dates were pushed back and no new slots were opened in India in the last six months. Now such reports are coming out that some dates are opening randomly in June, July this year, whereas till a few months ago the situation was that there were no slots available in India till 2027.Mass rescheduling of dates was triggered by the new policy of social media checking of visa holders, for which consular offices reduced the number of appointments per day. As hundreds of H-1B visa holders were stuck in India indefinitely, their employers were in a dilemma about allowing some to work from India.
