One U.S. policy professional expressed shock and surprise at how little people are talking about the issue. H-1B visa Situation in India – Once you leave the US and your visa stamp expires, how difficult is it to re-enter the US. Sam Peak, policy manager at the Economic Innovation Group, said he received a text message from a person on H-1B status who had to wake up at 3.30am to book a consular appointment for August 2027. Peak said the issue is still not discussed enough, and there is a lot of discussion about the H-1B weighted lottery, wage levels, firewall programs to stop H-1B fraud, and more.Peake observed that, fundamentally, the White House is making it very difficult to re-enter the United States.“Indian consulate wait times are often ridiculous, but visa holders can avoid these backlogs by traveling to U.S. embassies with less bureaucratic pressure, such as Canada, to renew their visas. The White House ended this practice last year. Now, Indian H-1Bs will not be able to seamlessly depart and return if they need to travel for business or have a family emergency in their home country,” Peak added.In December 2025, a serious impasse emerged when the Indian consulate rescheduled all H-1B, H-4 visa appointments and postponed them to mid-2026. All dates have been postponed and no new quotas have opened in India in the past six months. There are now reports that some dates in June and July this year were opened randomly, whereas until a few months ago, the situation in India was that there would be no vacancies until 2027.The mass rescheduling was triggered by a new policy on social media censorship of visa holders, with the consulate reducing the number of appointments per day. With hundreds of H-1B visa holders stuck in India indefinitely, their employers, some of whom allow them to work in the country, are in trouble.