The Trump administration’s immigration squeeze is tightening once again, this time, catching H-1B workers and their families in a new set of uncertainities. With Washington mandating mandatory social-media screening from December 15 for all H-1B and H-4 applicants, hundreds of visa seekers are now confronting sudden interview cancellations and months-long delays.
Interviews scheduled for mid to late December at consulates in Hyderabad and Chennai have been abruptly cancelled many pushed as far out as March 2026.
The chaos began soon after the US Department of State expanded its “online presence review” to cover all H-1B and H-4 visa applicants. From December 8, Mission India started sending out cancellation emails to anyone with appointments on or after December 15.
What is enhanced vetting?
The new scrutiny is part of what the US government calls “enhanced vetting,” a policy first rolled out for F-1, M-1 and J-1 student visa applicants in June 2025. Under it, consular officers comb through an applicant’s social-media footprint to check for “hostile attitudes towards U.S. citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles,” or any signs of “support for terrorism.”
The process has already slowed down student visa issuance worldwide. Applicants faced longer waits for interview slots and post-appointment delays as officers pored through years of online activity. Now, the same playbook is being applied to skilled workers and their dependents. H-1B and H-4 applicants must not only disclose all their social-media handles from the past five years, but also set their accounts to public mode before attending their visa interviews, a requirement that has raised fresh privacy concerns.
The rollout has triggered “operational constraints,” according to the US Consulates in India. As a result, interview appointments for both new and renewal visas have been cancelled en masse and rescheduled for far later dates, in some cases, as late as the end of 2026.
But options to reschedule sooner are slim. A separate State Department policy issued in September 2025 requires applicants to apply only from their country of nationality or last residence, limiting their ability to shift to faster consulates abroad.
‘Trump just inadvertently laid off 1000s of H-1Bs’
Netizens also posted their opinion on the post. A user noted, “Trump just inadvertently laid off 1000s of H-1Bs. Indians flew back to India for vacation and had visa stamping appointments lined up. Then the U.S. consulate suddenly cancels everything, says they need more time to review everyone’s social media, and pushes the appointments out by three months. Now companies are firing them, and they’ll need to spend around $100k to come back on a new H-1B. Guess that means more new jobs for Americans.”
Another claimed, “Yeah this really impacted my company significantly. Because it’s holidays think a lot of people were outside of country. If my company allows Indians to take time off or somehow make exceptions for them I will definitely sue. They’ve already lost lawsuits for only hiring H-1Bs, I expect to also be able to take a 6 month sabbatical without risking my job if H-1Bs, can do it.”
A user noted,”H-1Bs literally run the tech industry in the US. You can’t just stop processing their visa withexcuses like this. Remember when Trump brought the EO ban and then chickened out within 12 hours and created exception which are as big as the holes in Titanic.”
“Now those folks on H-1B will work from India,” wrote a netizen. “Basically 1000s of jobs moving to India,” added another.
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