Panic, confusion and anger reigned as workers on H-1B visas from India and China were forced to abandon travel plans and rush back to the US after President Donald Trump imposed new visa fees, in line with his wide-ranging immigration crackdown.
Tech companies and banks sent urgent memos to employees, advising them to return before a deadline of 12.01am US Eastern Time Sunday, and telling them not to leave the country.
A White House official on Saturday clarified that the order applied only to new applicants and not holders of existing visas or those seeking renewals, addressing some of the confusion over who would be affected by the order.
But Trump’s proclamation a day before had already set off alarm bells in Silicon Valley.
Fearing they would not be allowed back once the new rule took effect, several Indian nationals at San Francisco airport said they cut short vacations.
“It is a situation where we had to choose between family and staying here,” said an engineer at a large tech company whose wife had been on an Emirates flight from San Francisco to Dubai that was scheduled to depart at 5.05pm local time on Friday.
The flight was delayed by more than three hours after several Indian passengers who received news of the order or memos from their employers demanded to deplane, said the person who spoke on condition of anonymity. At least five passengers were eventually allowed off.
The engineer’s wife, also a H-1B visa holder, chose to head to India to care for her sick mother. “It’s quite tragic. We have built a life here,” he told Reuters.
On the Chinese social media app Rednote, people on H-1B visas shared their experiences of having to rush back to the US – in some cases just hours after landing in China or another country.
Some likened the panic they felt to their experience during the Covid-19 pandemic, when they urgently flew back to the US before a travel ban took effect.
“My feelings are a mix of disappointment, sadness, and frustration,” said one woman in a post on Rednote.
The woman said she had boarded a flight from New York to Paris, which started taxiing, but after some back-and-forth with the airline the captain agreed to return to the gate to let her off the aircraft.
Companies including Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Goldman Sachs were among those that sent urgent emails to their employees with travel advisories.
This step to reshape the H-1B visa programme represents his administration’s most high-profile effort yet to rework temporary employment visas.
It is a U-turn from Trump’s earlier stance when he sided with one-time ally Elon Musk in a dispute over the use of the H-1B visa, saying he fully backed the programme for foreign tech workers even though it was opposed by some of his supporters.
Trump’s H-1B proclamation read: “Some employers, using practices now widely adopted by entire sectors, have abused the H-1B statute and its regulations to artificially suppress wages, resulting in a disadvantageous labour market for American citizens.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Friday said companies would have to pay US$100,000 (RM420,000) per year for H-1B worker visas.
However, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt later said that this was not an annual fee, only a one-time fee that applied to each petition.
An Nvidia engineer, who has lived in the US for 10 years, had been vacationing in Japan with his wife and infant when he rushed to reschedule his return flight after hearing the news.
“It feels surreal,” he said. “Everything is changing in an instant.” — Reuters
