Trump administration reportedly orders visa denials for applicants involved in U.S. speech censorship, targeting H-1B workers in tech and social media sectors.

While reviewing the visa application, the US immigration officials will go through the publicly available data on all the social media handles used by them in the past five years

New US visa regulations have led to temporarily mass appointment cancellations for H-1B applicants in India, creating anxiety among workers.

Following the Trump administration’s new policy mandating social-media screening from December 15 for all H-1B and H-4 visa applicants, affected individuals are facing fresh disruptions. Immigration attorneys report that interviews at US consulates scheduled for mid to late December 2025,

Since early 2025, the United States has entered… what many describe as one of the most sweeping visa-crackdowns in recent history. Over 85,000 visas have been revoked, a move the U.S. State Department made public in a post on X.

An internal State Department memo said that anyone involved in "censorship" of free speech should be considered for rejection.

Trump has said he wants to impose steep fees on visas and casts the restrictions as part of a broader attempt to protect workers.

This comes amid the visa appointments of thousands of applicants scheduled for later this month in India being abruptly postponed by several months.

The country's government is making a $1.2 billion, decade-long investment to attract doctors, scientists and researchers in critical fields.

The government says it will fast-track immigration for U.S. H-1B visa holders and spend more than $1 billion to attract researchers from the United States and the rest of the world.