No agency is tracking the number of Indians stranded in India due to delays in H-1B visa stamping.
With thousands of H-1B visa holders stuck in India with no appointment dates for 2026, immigration attorney Rosanna Berardi said they don’t know when these people will finally be able to return to the United States. “The government is playing games with social media censorship. And we don’t have an estimate of when [they] “They’re coming back. These are people who are in the United States legally,” Berardi told the San Francisco Standard.The Standard tells the story of a San Jose woman from Hyderabad who had to return to India in November due to a family emergency. The woman, an electric vehicle engineer, is in the United States with her husband and two children, whom she last saw before traveling to India in November. The woman, who goes by the initials JK, had had her visa stamped multiple times in India, so she didn’t anticipate problems even after the U.S. State Department announced that all H-1B visa renewals would be subject to social media screening. But when she went to schedule a renewal, there was no appointment. “I think it’s an inhumane way to deny people visas,” JK said. “It’s been almost four months. If they really wanted to help, they should be able to find a solution.”Due to the social media censorship, all visa appointments were rescheduled and the December interview was postponed to March 2026, creating a domino effect of all dates being pushed back. No agency tracks how many H-1B visa holders are stranded in India, although thousands are believed to be affected. The Hyderabadi woman had lived in the United States for more than a decade, coming to the United States on a student visa and being hired by a technology company, which granted her the first H-1B visa. She married in 2010 and the couple, now the parents of two U.S. citizens, settled in San Jose. They have applied for green cards.JK told the San Francisco Standard that her company allowed her to work in India, but the time in San Jose was 12.5 hours behind local time in India. JK said her husband sought help from Congressman Leo Jimmy Panetta and his office contacted the US Consulate in Hyderabad, but the consulate said they could not expedite her visa stamping without an appointment.
