Apple, Google and others tell some foreign employees to avoid traveling out of the country

Massive Tech corporations, together with Apple, Google, Microsoft, and ServiceNow, have warned staff on visas to keep away from leaving the nation amid uncertainty about altering immigration coverage and procedures.

Following an assault on Nationwide Guard members in Washington, the Trump administration expanded travel bans earlier this month, and beefed up vetting and knowledge assortment for visa candidates. The brand new coverage now consists of screening the social media history of some visa candidates and their dependents.

Quickly after the announcement, U.S. consulates started rescheduling appointments for future dates, some as late as summer time 2026, leaving staff who required appointments unable to return.

“Please remember that some U.S. Embassies and Consulates are experiencing important visa stamping appointment delays, at present reported as as much as 12 months,” famous an electronic mail despatched by Berry Appleman & Leiden LLC, the immigration agency that represents Google. The advisory additionally beneficial “avoiding worldwide journey presently.”

Business Insider earlier reported on the journey advisories.

Microsoft’s memo famous that a lot of the rescheduling is happening in India, in cities similar to Chennai and Hyderabad, and that new stamping dates are as far out as June 2026.

The corporate suggested staff with legitimate work authorization who had been touring outdoors the U.S. for stamping to return earlier than their present visa expires. These nonetheless within the U.S. scheduling upcoming journey for visa stamping ought to “strongly think about” altering their journey plans.

Apple’s immigration crew additionally beneficial that staff with out a legitimate H1-B visa stamp keep away from worldwide journey for now.

ServiceNow, a enterprise software program firm, equally issued an advisory recommending that these with legitimate visa stamps return to the U.S.

Microsoft declined to touch upon its memo. Apple, Google and ServiceNow didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.

Corporations warned that delays because of enhanced screening is for H-1B, H-4, F, J and M visas.

H-1B is a high-skilled immigration visa program that permits employers to sponsor work visas for people with specialised abilities. This system, capped at 85,000 new visas per 12 months, is a channel for American tech giants to supply expert employees, similar to software program engineers.

Massive Tech corporations similar to Amazon, Google, and Meta have persistently topped the charts by way of the variety of H-1B approvals, with Indian nationals as the biggest beneficiaries of this system, accounting for 71% of authorised H-1 B petitions.

H-1B visas are awarded by a lottery system, which its critics say has been exploited by corporations to interchange American employees with low cost international labor.

In September, the Trump administration introduced a $100,000 payment for brand new H-1B worker hires. However after extreme pushback, it clarified that it utilized solely to employers searching for to make use of the H-1B visa to rent international nationals not already within the U.S.

The H-1B program is a matter that has not solely animated the appropriate but in addition splintered it. These on the tech-right, similar to Elon Musk and David Sacks, are strongly in favor of strengthening expert immigration, whereas the core MAGA base is vehemently against it.

Proponents of this system usually spotlight that expert employee immigration made the usa technological chief, and nearly half of the fortune 500 companies had been based by immigrants or their kids, creating jobs for native-born People.