Zoho Founder Sridhar Vembu Urges Indian Visa Holders to ‘come Home’ After Green Card Rule Tightening

(UNITED STATES) — U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199 on May 22, 2026, recasting Adjustment of Status as an “extraordinary form of relief” and pushing most temporary visa holders toward overseas Green Card processing, a shift that drew an immediate response from Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu.

Vembu urged Indian professionals in the United States to leave rather than remain tied to a system he portrayed as increasingly hostile. On May 23, 2026, he wrote on X: “Once again, my appeal to Indians in America on a visa. Please come home. Even if you feel it is hardship and sacrifice, self-respect should dictate your course. Let’s make Bharat proud.”

The new USCIS position affects workers and students who had long viewed Adjustment of Status as the standard path from a temporary visa to lawful permanent residence without leaving the country. Under the memo, most holders of H-1B, L-1 and F-1 OPT status must return to their home country and complete immigrant visa processing at a U.S. embassy or consulate.

DHS framed the move as a return to statutory design. In a statement dated May 22, 2026, the department said: “An alien who is in the U.S. temporarily and wants a Green Card must return to their home country to apply. This policy allows our immigration system to function as the law intended instead of incentivizing loopholes.”

Zach Kahler, a USCIS spokesman, defended the change the same day. “We’re returning to the original intent of the law. When aliens apply from their home country, it reduces the need to find and remove those who decide to slip into the shadows and remain in the U.S. illegally after being denied residency,” Kahler said.

USCIS then revised its public posture after backlash. On May 23, 2026, Kahler said the agency would allow exceptions for applications that provide an “economic benefit or otherwise are in the national interest,” though the policy language did not define either standard.

The memorandum also gives adjudicating officers broader room to deny applications on discretionary grounds, even when an applicant meets the formal legal requirements. It directs officers to weigh conduct “inconsistent with the purpose of the visa,” a phrase that adds another layer of uncertainty for people already in long employment-based queues.

That uncertainty landed as the State Department’s June 2026 Visa Bulletin moved sharply against Indian applicants in two core employment categories. EB-2 India retrogressed by 10.4 months to September 1, 2013, while EB-1 India retrogressed by 3.5 months to December 15, 2022.

EB-3 India moved the other way, though only slightly. Its final action date advanced by one month to December 15, 2013.

For Indian nationals already waiting in employment-based lines, the combination of consular processing and visa bulletin retrogression changes the practical path to a Green Card. Workers who leave the United States for an immigrant visa interview face a break in ordinary employment continuity, because the new policy offers no fixed timetable for how long overseas processing will take.

That risk runs through sectors that rely on H-1B and L-1 workers to remain in place during lengthy immigration processing. A forced departure can interrupt payroll, projects and internal transfers, especially when a worker has built a career around the expectation that Adjustment of Status would let the case proceed inside the country.

Immigration lawyers also warned of another hazard embedded in overseas processing. A person who departs after accumulating unlawful presence, even unintentionally through visa processing delays, can trigger 3-year or 10-year bars that block reentry after the consular interview.

Families can absorb the strain differently, but the exposure is broad. Mixed-status households may face separations lasting months or years while a principal applicant waits in India for an immigrant visa appointment and the case to clear all required steps.

Vembu’s intervention gave the policy fight a sharper political and economic edge in India’s tech community. He cast his appeal not only as a response to a restrictive U.S. immigration turn, but as a call for reverse brain drain built on self-respect and national pride.

He argued that India’s technology and startup base now offers opportunities that rival Silicon Valley, and that talent no longer needs to remain abroad by default. His language was direct, and personal. He told Indians on U.S. visas to “come home,” and tied that appeal to the idea that “Bharat Mata needs your talent.”

Sridhar Vembu has long spoken about building from India rather than treating the country as a feeder for foreign labor markets. In this case, his remarks landed against a policy change that reorders the calculus for Indian engineers, managers and students who had planned their careers around a U.S. permanent residence timeline.

The economic effects remain contested, but the pressure points are concrete. Workers facing uncertain Green Card processing abroad may decide to relocate permanently to India or move to countries that offer steadier immigration pathways, including Canada.

Indian applicants occupy an outsized place in employment-based immigration backlogs, which makes every shift in final action dates and filing procedures more visible in that community than in many others. When EB-2 and EB-1 dates move backward while domestic Adjustment of Status becomes harder to access, the result is a narrower route with more decision points controlled by consulates and discretionary review.

USCIS has published the change through its Newsroom and listed the memorandum under its policy memoranda archive. The June visa movement appears in the State Department’s bulletin, which applicants and employers use to track when immigrant visas become available for final adjudication.

Those official postings now sit at the center of a question many Indian professionals thought they had already answered: whether years spent in the United States on temporary status still lead, in a predictable way, to permanent residence. Vembu’s answer was blunt. “Please come home.”