Amazon quietly opened a small door for a very specific group of employees — and then welded most of the hallway shut behind them. An internal memo posted on December 17 lets US-based Amazon staff who were in India as of December 13 and who now find themselves stuck waiting for rescheduled visa interviews stay on the payroll and work from India until March 2, 2026. But the permission comes with a list of prohibitions so broad that affected employees and outside lawyers say it strips many roles of their substance.

On paper, the move reads like a rare exception to Amazon’s ironclad return-to-office rules. The company normally expects corporate staff — engineers, product managers, operations leads — to be in the office five days a week, and allows only brief, tightly controlled windows of overseas remote work for visa renewals. The memo’s three-month carve-out is therefore unusually generous. In practice, though, the memo’s “don’ts” turn that generosity into something of a work-only-in-name relief.

What’s forbidden reads like a blacklist of core tech work. Employees working from India may not do any form of coding — that includes development, testing, troubleshooting, deployment and even documentation that’s tied to code. They’re barred from making strategic business decisions, from product management and business development work, from negotiating or signing contracts, and from interacting directly with customers, partners or vendors. They also may not visit or work out of an Amazon office in India; all work must be performed from a residential or other non-Amazon location. The memo stresses there are “no exceptions” to these rules, citing compliance with local law.

Taken together, the restrictions turn many jobs into shadows of themselves. A software engineer quoted in reporting on the memo estimated that 70 to 80 percent of their job — coding, testing, deploying, documenting — is now off limits. Managers who normally hire, review, or sign off on releases are effectively frozen: “All reviews, final decision making, and sign-offs should be undertaken outside India,” the memo says. For those whose work requires customer contact or contract negotiation, the new rules instantly sever the principal arteries of their roles.

Why the paranoia? The answer lies at the intersection of immigration law, international tax rules and the calculus of corporate risk. When employees perform sustained, revenue-generating work in a foreign country, that work can create a “permanent establishment” for the employer under local tax rules — a legal hook that can trigger corporate tax liabilities, penalties, and regulatory scrutiny. By restricting activities that look like local management, sales, or contract-signing, Amazon is trying to draw a bright line between temporary, individual disruption and anything that could be framed as on-the-ground control or income-generating activity for an Indian Amazon entity. Lawyers and tax experts have warned companies to be cautious because the consequences can be material.

But the proximate cause of the mess is the sudden, broad tightening of visa processing at US consulates. In December, the State Department expanded vetting for certain employment-based visa categories — including H-1B and H-4 applicants — to include wider reviews of applicants’ online presences and other security checks. That change has led to canceled and rescheduled visa appointments at consulates worldwide; in many places, appointments were moved out by months, and in some reports were pushed into 2027. The result: employees who planned a routine stamping trip now find themselves stuck abroad, unable to return to the United States and back to their desks.

The slowdowns prompted major tech employers to issue travel advisories. Internal warnings at Google, Apple and Amazon told employees with pending interview slots to stay in the US if they could, because a routine overseas trip might leave them stranded for a long stretch. The industry reaction underscores how tightly modern tech operations are wound around a migration system: when consular calendars shift, whole teams and projects can be disrupted.

Amazon’s memo is therefore also a political and managerial dodge: it lets the company vocalize empathy — “we will keep you on payroll until March” — while protecting itself from tax, regulatory and legal risk. But for the people caught in the middle, that compromise can feel like a kind of work exile. Engineers who can’t touch code, product leads who can’t make decisions, and managers who can’t sign off on hiring or promotions are left doing work that is often peripheral, unclear, or impossible to measure. For them, the arrangement is better than unpaid limbo, but still a fragile, time-boxed stopgap with no assurances beyond the March deadline.

There’s also a broader signal here: US tech’s return-to-office push and a more restrictive immigration regime are colliding. Companies that pushed to pull employees back into offices now face a policy environment in which travel can sever employment ties overnight. The scramble to carve out ad hoc policies shows how little preparatory contingency many firms had for a scenario in which a visa appointment becomes a de facto exit from the workforce. For Amazon — one of the largest users of H-1B visas — the stakes are acute; the company filed tens of thousands of H-1B applications in recent years, and a prolonged backlog could ripple through hiring, project timelines and talent planning.

For employees, there’s a practical calculus: accept the temporary arrangement and watch your role atrophy, or push to be made whole some other way — unpaid leave, a domestic transfer, or even permanently leaving the employer. Some will be able to ride out the three months and return to their teams; others may see promotions, performance reviews, or critical projects move forward without them. Either way, the episode makes painfully visible a dependence that many in tech prefer not to talk about: the industry’s business model still leans on a migration system that can be turned into a blunt instrument by a rule change.

Amazon’s memo ends with bureaucratic clarity but little comfort: if your appointment gets bumped past March 2, the memo offers no new accommodation. For now, staff and managers are left to balance compliance, tax risk, and the human cost of being stuck on the wrong side of a consular calendar. The solution — structural changes to visa processing, clearer corporate contingency plans, or a genuine rethink of how cross-border work is managed — will have to come from outside this memo. Until then, thousands of technical and managerial roles may be kept nominally active but practically hollow, while the clock quietly ticks toward March.

Full memo:

H-1B/H-4 Visa Appointment Postponement Issue – December 17, 2025

Temporary Remote Work Authorization

Effective immediately, impacted employees who were in India as of December 13, 2025, and are awaiting their rescheduled visa appointment may work remotely until March 2, 2026. You must follow all current limitations on remote work activities, including restrictions against coding. See the FAQs below for details.We continue to monitor developments closely and will provide further updates as more information becomes available. In the meantime, if you need additional support please reach out by asking Aza or contacting MyHR Live Support to be connected to an HR expert. You and your household also have 24/7 access to a wide range of support and resources through Resources for Living.

Employee Guidance

The remote work grace period is subject to the same activity restrictions (listed below) as all current remote work guidance in India. In compliance with local laws, there are no exceptions to these restrictions. If you have questions, please work with your manager and HRBP to determine what activities you can engage in while abroad, based on these guidelines:

• Do not code. This includes troubleshooting, testing, or documentation.
• Do not work from or visit an Amazon building or site. All work must be remote from a residential address or other non-Amazon location.
• Do not give the impression of authority to bind any Amazon entity or appoint an agent authorized to bind any Amazon entity to any contract or agreement.
• Do not undertake any strategic business decisions, business planning, product management/development, and/or business development type activities.
• Do not negotiate any contracts, sign/execute or otherwise conclude any contracts, or secure any orders, either in the approval tools and/or DocuSign (or via any other method).
• Do not render any services to any customer (resident or otherwise) or to any Amazon entity in the country where the employee is remotely working, or otherwise perform any activity that directly benefits an Amazon entity in the country where remote working is taking place.
• Do not perform any activity relating to directing, controlling, or supervising or facilitating the day-to-day operations of any Amazon local entity or employee of an Amazon local team in the country where the employee is working remotely.
• Do not make hiring decisions for any Amazon entities in India.
• Do not perform any activity related to managing any customer/partner/vendor relationship, such as discussing specific contract terms, pricing negotiations, placing orders, accepting orders, or soliciting sales.
• All employment-related matters should continue to be decided by the respective legal employing entity, i.e. the Amazon U.S. entity.
• All reviews, final decision making, and sign offs should be undertaken outside India.
• AWS employees are expected to adhere to the AWS Operating Guidance whilst working remotely, the same way they would follow the guidance during normal times.