Visa delays push Amazon to allow employees remote work till March 2026

Caught in the H-1B visa backlog, some Amazon employees in India are getting rare flexibility from the company.

Breaking from its five-day office mandate, Amazon is allowing affected staff to work remotely from India until March 2, 2026, provided they were already in the country as of December 13, 2025, and are still awaiting US visa appointments.

The temporary policy was outlined in an internal memo shared on Amazon’s HR portal, which was reviewed and reported by Business Insider. It applies to a narrow group of employees whose return to the US has been delayed by prolonged consular backlogs.

The move reflects mounting disruption caused by slow H-1B processing, which has left thousands of foreign workers employed by US technology firms unable to travel back after overseas visits. Many Amazon employees had travelled to India for personal reasons, only to find visa appointment slots unavailable or pushed far into the future.

Rather than placing staff on extended unpaid leave, Amazon has opted for a tightly controlled work-from-India arrangement. Under its standard policy, the company permits overseas remote work for no more than 20 business days.

The flexibility, however, comes with significant restrictions. According to the memo cited by Business Insider, employees working remotely from India are prohibited from coding, testing software, deploying code or carrying out development and quality assurance work.

They are also barred from visiting or working out of any Amazon office in India. The memo reportedly restricts employees from signing contracts, managing teams, or making strategic decisions connected to Amazon’s Indian operations. All reviews and final decision-making must be conducted outside India, citing compliance with both US and Indian regulations.

Amazon has said there will be no exceptions to these rules and has urged employees to work closely with managers and HR to ensure assigned tasks remain within permitted limits. Non-compliance could result in legal or policy violations, the company warned.

The situation is not unique to Amazon. Other major technology companies, including Google, Apple and Microsoft, have reportedly advised visa-holding employees to limit international travel amid fears that consular delays could leave them stranded abroad for months.

The impact is particularly acute for Amazon, one of the largest corporate users of the H-1B programme. In the 2024 US fiscal year, the company filed 14,783 certified H-1B applications, underlining its reliance on foreign talent.

For affected employees, the remote-work concession offers short-term relief. Beyond early March next year, however, uncertainty remains, with no clear signal on whether visa processing timelines — or company flexibility — will meaningfully improve.