Amazon allows India-based employees affected by H-1B visa delays to work remotely until March 2, 2026, with restrictions on coding and contracts.

According to reports, Amazon has made a rare exception to its five-day-a-week office norm by permitting some employees who are stuck in India because of delayed visas to work remotely until early March.

Employees who were in India on December 13, 2025, and are awaiting rescheduled visa appointments may work remotely until March 2, 2026, according to an internal memo dated December 17. However, there are stringent restrictions on the type of work they can perform as part of the temporary agreement.

Remote workers from India are prohibited from doing any form of coding, including documentation, testing, and debugging. Additionally, they are prohibited from negotiating or signing contracts, interacting with customers, or making significant company choices. Additionally, employees are not permitted to visit or work from Amazon locations in India.

According to the document, “all reviews, final decision-making, and sign-offs should be undertaken outside of India,” and “there are no exceptions to these restrictions in compliance with local laws.”

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The action was taken in response to the Trump administration’s modifications to the H-1B visa program, which have caused increasing inconvenience for US businesses due to visa processing delays. Before granting visas, one of the new regulations is that consular officials examine the social media profiles of applicants. Processing has slowed as a result of this extra screening; some embassies and consulates have delayed appointments by many months.

A number of significant tech companies, like as Google, Apple, and Microsoft, have issued travel warnings in recent weeks warning employees on US work visas to avoid overseas travel in order to avoid prolonged stays abroad due to the delays.

As an exception to its more general return-to-office policy, Amazon usually permits employees who are traveling overseas for visa renewals to work remotely for up to 20 business days. This allowance is extended for impacted employees in India by the most recent memo.

However, employees who are stranded in nations other than India or whose visa appointments have been rescheduled after March 2, 2026, are not covered by the guidance. According to reports, several US consulates and embassies have delayed visa appointments until 2027.

The limitations make workers in technical positions wonder how much work they can actually accomplish. An Amazon software developer told Business Insider that development, testing, deployment, and documentation make up 70–80% of their work.

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The goal of the social media screening, according to a US State Department official in December, is to employ “all available tools” to identify visa applicants who are inadmissible, particularly those who would endanger national interests.

One of the biggest users of the H-1B visa program, Amazon, faces a unique issue as a result of the delays. Business Insider’s research of publicly accessible data from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of Labor shows that during the fiscal year 2024, the corporation filed 14,783 certified H-1B applications, including 23 for Whole Foods.