This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.

As US President Donald Trump sends mixed signals on the H-1B visa programme, Amazon could find itself in a tight spot.

The $2 trillion tech giant has bagged the most H-1B visa approvals each year since 2020, according to data from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. The USCIS data includes newly issued visas and renewals. The H-1B visa allows highly skilled foreign workers to live and work in the US for up to six years, after which they can apply for a green card and be eligible to become naturalised citizens.

In 2024, Amazon Com Services obtained at least 9,265 H-1B visas. Many of its subsidiaries, such as Amazon Web Services and Amazon Development Center, also obtained visas in this category.

US tech giants have become increasingly dependent on H-1B visas as they “have grown exponentially over these past few years, and they’ve added many more verticals … so they need more IT people for that,” Poorvi Chothani, founder of Mumbai-based global immigration law firm LawQuest, told Rest of World.

The Trump administration is split on the visa programme, with key figures like the president’s homeland security adviser and deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, pushing for severe restrictions. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, as an informal adviser to Trump, has advocated for its preservation.

Trump has shifted his position on the visa in the past. In 2016, he vowed to “end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labour programme”. In late 2024, however, he said, “I’ve been a believer in H-1B. … It’s a great program.”

On January 17, the Department of Homeland Security introduced a slew of measures to tighten the H-1B protocol – the most notable of which requires employers to submit more evidence for proof of control over foreign employees to mitigate alleged misuse of the program. The department also increased the non-refundable fee per entry to $215 from $10 during this year’s filing cycle.

USCIS has set the annual cap for new H-1B visas at 85,000, distributing them through a lottery system. More than two-thirds of the visas go to tech workers each year. Indian tech workers typically secure more than 70% of H-1B visas.

“The demand for these visas is still there and companies are just rolling with the changes. They are also filing additional paperwork and providing enhanced information in the H-1B petitions to mitigate the risk of denials,” Chothani said.

For most of the 2000s, Indian IT companies dominated the H-1B visa programme, securing thousands of approvals. By 2024, the balance had shifted: Five US tech giants – Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple – were among the top 10 companies to get the H-1B.

Over the years, Democrats and Republicans have both proposed tightening the programme to save American workers from being “ignored or unfairly disadvantaged”.

Ananya Bhattacharya is a reporter for Rest of World covering South Asia's tech scene. She is based in Mumbai, India.

This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.