Name: Companies warn employees against travel as visa delays mount
Uploaded: 2025-12-23T09:53:28.245Z
Duration: 3 min 35 s
Description: Major tech companies are warning some of their employees to not leave the U.S. amid mounting delays and cancellations in visa appointments. (Scripps News)

Major tech companies are warning some of their employees to not leave the U.S. amid mounting delays and cancellations in visa appointments. (Scripps News)

San Francisco

The Trump administration has expanded its travel ban to 20 additional countries and introduced new restrictions on H-1B visa applications, including social media reviews and a significant fee increase. These measures have left thousands of tech workers from companies like Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon stranded overseas or unable to return to the U.S., prompting employers to advise staff to avoid international travel.

Immigration lawyers warn that the new review processes could extend visa application timelines by months or even up to a year, potentially causing workforce shortages. Both foreign and U.S. workers are affected, with ongoing confusion about next steps and uncertainty regarding the future impact on the tech sector's labor force.

Companies warn employees against travel as visa delays mount

President Trump expanded his travel ban to 20 more countries. That's sparking chaos for workers at tech firms like Apple and Google. Thousands have been left stranded overseas and cannot get back to the U.S. Scripps News national correspondent Katia Tubman now is live in New York with the latest on this and Katia what led to this crackdown? Well good morning Holly or good afternoon. The big picture here is that the Trump administration has been aiming to tamper down on immigration into the U.S. by multiple means one being this this visa H1B1 visas which is meant to seek out the most highly skilled workers from outside of the country to fill in shortages and right now the U.S. is reviewing social media accounts from visa applicants as well as those who are out of the country seeking renewals during this holiday season and those are the people who've had to pause their return to the U.S. because their companies have advised them to do so. Right now this process of reviewing social media accounts as is led to what many immigration lawyers and the ones we spoke to this morning saying that processes for applications will probably extended months not even probably up into a year and this is going to cause major shortages in the amount of people who seek out these visas. Now we spoke to an expert who has been researching and looking into the process of getting a visa. He says this is making clear this is not an immigration visa this is about people coming to into the country to work but even as that is so he argued that these visas has been have been used to get lower paid workers into the country who rely on these companies and don't have much of a say when it comes to pushing back for workers rights and here's what he told us about that. They ask the worker to jump that workers gonna say how high because if that worker gets laid off they're gonna have to leave the country. This should not be viewed as this is a conservative or Republican or anti-immigrant issue this is a an issue around labor policy and those on the left you know Democrats also are concerned about how it harms both the H-1B workers it's bad for those foreign workers they'd much rather be immigrants and it also harms then the U.S. workers that they're competing with now supporters of the H-1B one visa say that there has been a pitted competition between U.S. workers and foreign-born workers who come into the country on this visa to work temporarily right now we know that Google Apple Meta and Microsoft and Amazon some of the companies that top the list of employing people with H-1B visas are cautioning their staffers to stay put to not leave the country if they can help it and for those who are already abroad to stay where they are as the continuation moves forward we figure out what are the next steps legally we should also note that this the step to review social media accounts is topping what already has been put in place to limit the amount of people who can come into the country on these visas as of September the Trump administration added a $100,000 fee for anyone applying newly to this program so a lot more hurdles in the way but right now a lot of people in confusion about next steps and largely looking ahead as to in terms of what the workforce will look like come next year especially as these rules take place Holly all right Scripps News national correspondent Katie Atum and live in New York for us thank you for bringing that to our attention we'll follow you as you follow the story thank you

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