Stranded in India due to visa delays? Amazon allows remote work — but with major limits

Amazon has allowed some employees stranded in India due to visa delays to work remotely until early March, making a rare exception to its five-day-a-week office policy, according to reports by Business Insider.

As per an internal memo dated December 17, employees who were in India as of December 13, 2025, and are awaiting rescheduled visa appointments may work remotely until March 2, 2026. However, the temporary arrangement comes with strict limits on the kind of work they are permitted to do.

Employees working remotely from India are barred from coding of any kind, including troubleshooting, testing and documentation. They are also not allowed to make strategic business decisions, negotiate or sign contracts, or interact with customers. Additionally, staff cannot work from or visit Amazon offices or sites in India.

“All reviews, final decision-making, and sign-offs should be undertaken outside India,” the memo states, adding that “in compliance with local laws, there are no exceptions to these restrictions.”

The move comes as US companies face growing disruption due to delays in visa processing following changes to the H-1B visa programme under the Trump administration. One of the new measures requires consular officers to review visa applicants’ social media accounts before issuing visas. This additional screening has slowed processing, with some embassies and consulates postponing appointments by several months.

The delays have prompted several major technology firms, including Google, Apple and Microsoft, to issue travel advisories in recent weeks, warning employees on US work visas to avoid international travel to prevent extended stays outside the country.

Amazon typically allows employees travelling abroad for visa renewals to work remotely for up to 20 business days as an exemption to its broader return-to-office policy. The latest memo extends this allowance for affected employees in India.

However, the guidance does not address employees whose visa appointments have been rescheduled beyond March 2, 2026, or those stranded in countries other than India. Some US embassies and consulates have reportedly pushed visa appointments as far out as 2027.

For employees in technical roles, the restrictions raise questions about how much work they can realistically perform. “Seventy to eighty percent of my job is coding, testing, deploying, and documenting,” an Amazon software engineer told Business Insider.

A US State Department spokesperson said in December that the social media screening aims to use “all available tools” to identify visa applicants who are inadmissible, including those who may pose risks to national interests.

The delays present a particular challenge for Amazon, one of the largest users of the H-1B visa programme. During the 2024 US government fiscal year, the company filed 14,783 certified H-1B applications, including 23 for Whole Foods, according to Business Insider’s analysis of publicly available data from the Department of Labor and US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.