Many H-1B workers rushed to make it onto Saturday’s Air India Flight 179 from Mumbai to San Francisco, in hopes of getting back to the U.S. before the $100,000 re-entry fee took effect.When President Trump announced changes to the H-1B visa program Friday, it was the middle of the night in India and most of the eventual passengers of Air India Flight 179 were asleep. For many of them, the next day and a half would be a chaotic race around the world—and against the clock.
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The administration said Friday evening that it planned to add a new $100,000 fee for H-1B visa applications—widely used by the tech industry and the primary pathway for foreign professionals to enter the country—beginning at 12:01 a.m. ET Sunday. Trump appeared with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick when announcing the move in the Oval Office. When asked if the policy would apply to existing visa holders, Lutnick appeared to say yes.
For foreign technology workers who had traveled to India, the first emails and texts from friends landed in the middle of the night. Some awoke to a flood of text messages and calls and had few options that would get them on the ground in the U.S. ahead of the deadline.
Then, just after midnight ET Saturday morning, Google sent an email to its H-1B workers saying that the “initial advice” the company had received was that, starting Sunday, it would cost $100,000 for workers to re-enter the U.S.
Workers who received it said its message was unequivocal: Get home now, “before the proclamation takes effect.” Other technology giants, including Amazon and Microsoft, sent similar directives.
Air India Flight 179 on Sept. 20 was one of the ways back. It left Mumbai at 1:25 p.m. and was scheduled to land in San Francisco at 8:25 p.m. local time. But seats went fast. Online trolls on the message board 4chan encouraged each other to disrupt Indian H-1B workers’ efforts to book seats by finding flights from Indian cities like Mumbai to San Francisco and sitting on bookings as long as possible to clog reservation systems.
Finding a way out
The woman who would eventually occupy seat 22D on the flight received a call from a friend at 6:30 a.m. local time telling her to get back to the U.S. Many people on the flight declined to give their names because of concerns about online harassment.
The woman, a Bay Area technology worker who has lived in the U.S. since 2021, had traveled to Pune, a city about three hours from Mumbai, days earlier to attend a funeral for her fiancé’s father. She had planned to stay for two weeks.
Ninety minutes after her friend called, she was in a cab on a three-hour drive to the airport with her passport and without half of the clothes she had packed for the trip. She asked her sister in Mumbai to print a few documents she might need at immigration—a letter of employment and pay stubs—and to meet her at the airport.
Some travelers say they left children and family members behind with hasty goodbyes; others rushed to fly back to avoid being separated from family in the U.S. if they were unable to re-enter the country.
Air India Flight 179 was a gamble, at best. It was a 19-hour journey from Mumbai to San Francisco with a two-hour refueling stop in Kolkata.
The White House’s proclamation didn’t say how immigration officials would enforce the 12:01 a.m. ET Sunday deadline, but by the time the flight was due to arrive in San Francisco, travelers would have just over half an hour to get off the plane and through customs.
As passengers waited in Mumbai to board, some said they checked the flight’s record of on-time arrivals: It frequently arrived after 9 p.m. What if they got in too late?
There was no public Wi-Fi available in the air, which meant the passengers lucky enough to get a ticket would be in the dark on any immigration policy updates while in transit.
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport was filled with workers trying to get back to the U.S., some of the people there said.
A crowd gathered around Gate 66, included some who had just arrived from San Francisco and were turning around to fly back, the passenger who occupied seat 12B said. When a passenger called out “H-1Bs, raise your hands,” about 20 people put up their hands, he said.
Switching seats
Two hours after takeoff, the plane landed in Kolkata for a final refueling before its trans-Pacific flight. More than 125 passengers with H-1B visas aboard formed a WhatsApp group to share information.
During the refueling, the person in 12B said he and another passenger explained their situation to the airplane’s captain, and asked if there was any way to speed up the plane. The pilot said he couldn’t control gate assignment or traffic conditions, but that he thought he could cut 10 to 15 minutes off the time and would give an update as they approached San Francisco, the person in 12B said.
An Air India spokeswoman said the flight operated on schedule with “no expedited landing or any special facilitation.”
At 6:10 p.m. local time, Air India Flight 179 completed refueling and took off for San Francisco.
While they were in the air, the first news reports surfaced in the U.S. saying that current H-1B holders wouldn’t be subject to the $100,000 fee. The White House later confirmed that with a post on X.
The passengers on board didn’t need to meet the deadline after all, but they wouldn’t know for hours. Many spent the flight thinking of new ways to beat the clock.
Passengers onboard said that during the flight, they organized to have people in economy class with H-1B visas move to the front of the plane an hour before landing, swapping seats with business class passengers with the goal of helping them reach customs faster.
Before landing, the captain asked passengers who weren’t in a hurry to stay in their seats, so the H-1B travelers could make a dash for immigration, people on board recalled.
The flight landed in San Francisco at 7:59 p.m. local time. When cellphone service returned for those on board, many found messages from loved ones saying the new $100,000 fee wouldn’t impact them after all.
The woman from seat 22D sat in her seat crying while waiting to deplane.
By 8:15 p.m. PT, the first passenger in the WhatsApp chat had cleared U.S. customs. “All cleared,” the person wrote in a message to the group that was viewed by The Wall Street Journal. “No questions asked.”
Write to Robert McMillan at robert.mcmillan@wsj.com
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