After a five-month drought that pushed appointments into 2027, US consulates in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata have started releasing fresh interview dates for H-1B workers, their H-4 dependants and first-time F-1 students. Immigration law firms monitoring the booking portal say slots are “dropping in batches”, typically at odd hours and vanishing within minutes. The bottleneck began on 15 December 2025 when the State Department rolled out enhanced social-media screening and halted “third-country national” processing. Applicants already in queue were rescheduled; many tech workers visiting India found themselves stuck, unable to return to US jobs. Students planning for the Fall 2026 intake faced similar uncertainty. Consular officers are now catching up, but experts caution the system is far from normal. Interview-waiver (drop-box) appointments remain scarce, and anyone with a prior refusal is excluded from the new F-1 batches. The Murthy Law Firm advises H-1B holders currently in the US to avoid travel “unless urgent” until backlogs clear. For mobility managers, the short-term task is vigilance: push real-time alerts to assignees so they can pounce on released slots, and secure contingency work-from-India approvals in case rescheduling strikes again. Longer-term, companies may consider global-hub stamping (Mexico, Canada) once those options reopen, to diversify risk away from a single geography.
Source: The Financial Express
