The Visas & Law Desk
Status, paperwork, and the rules that govern movement
Notified on 1 May 2026, the new rules replace the familiar blue OCI booklet with a digital e-OCI record and move every OCI application online. Minors may no longer hold an Indian and a foreign passport at the same time.
Total H-1B registrations fell from 343,981 in FY 2026 to 211,600 in FY 2027 — the steepest year-on-year drop in the programme's history. Indian-origin workers, who account for roughly 71% of approvals, take the brunt.
A USCIS Policy Memorandum issued on 21 May 2026 stipulates that aliens in the United States temporarily seeking permanent residence must return to their home country to apply, except in extraordinary circumstances. The change disproportionately affects Indian H-1B and L-1 holders.
A growing number of diaspora families are quietly moving back. The plane is the easy part. The actual return runs through tax-residency arithmetic, customs paperwork at Nhava Sheva, banking accounts that have to be redesignated on a clock, and a hundred small adjustments nobody warns you about. This is the practical map.
The Government of India has extended Overseas Citizen of India eligibility to the sixth generation of Indian-origin diaspora in Trinidad and Tobago — recognising the descendants of indentured Girmitiya labourers who arrived in 1845. A historic outreach with implications for other long-tail diaspora communities.
Most Indian estates are run on default settings: no will, no plan, no conversation. For the OCI cardholder thirteen time zones away, that default is the slow tax — months of paperwork, frozen bank accounts, sibling disputes, property that mutates into nobody's. This is the part of the law where preparing in advance costs almost nothing and not preparing costs years.
How the Indian tax system actually treats an Overseas Citizen of India — the residency rules that determine what is taxable, the TDS regime that bites every kind of Indian-source income, the DTAA framework that reduces it, the TCS that catches money flowing out, and the 1 April 2026 rule changes that reshape the residency test for high-Indian-income NRIs.
A practical guide to what Overseas Citizens of India can and cannot buy on the subcontinent, how the 2021 government notification settled the rules, why a Supreme Court judgment caused panic — and what the tax position looks like on the way out.
Persons of Indian Origin cards are no longer accepted at India's border check posts. PIO holders who did not convert to OCI must now apply for an Indian visa to travel.
Effective 8 April 2026, eligible foreign nationals can apply for an Overseas Citizenship of India card without completing six months of stay in India.
From 1 May 2026, OCI applications and renewals are paperless. The new fee structure: US$275 from abroad, ₹15,000 in India.
A wage-weighted lottery, a US$100,000 petition fee, and a Congressional bill calling for a 3-year pause: the H-1B is in the middle of its biggest overhaul in a generation.
From April 2026, every passenger flying to India — including NRIs and OCI cardholders — must complete a Digital e-Arrival Card before boarding. The physical disembarkation card has been discontinued.
What the OCI actually is The Overseas Citizen of India card, in plain language, is a lifetime visa to India that comes with most — but not all — of the practical rights of Indian citizenship. It is a document, not a status. It does not make you a citizen of India. India does not permit […]
Smita Ghosh, an Indian-origin appellate attorney at the Constitutional Accountability Center, has been part of the legal debate over birthright citizenship in the United States — a question with direct stakes for the Indian diaspora.
It was January 21, 1974 , At that time, Jharkhand was still a part of Bihar, and the Chief Minister of Bihar was Abdul Ghafoor. There was a leader in those days named Vishwanath Modi. He gave a speech in Jhumri Telaiya and then led a large rally through the town. When the rally reached […]