Yes, it can be done. The route is a B-1 visa issued to your employee as a personal or domestic worker under 9 FAM 402.2-5(D). It is a real category with a written rulebook, and one of the least understood uses of the B-1 at the Indian posts. In my experience most families who ask about it do not qualify on the day they ask.
The rule, stripped to its bones. You must be a US citizen who lives abroad, or a foreign national in a listed nonimmigrant status (L-1, H-1B, O-1 and E-2 all count). Green card holders cannot use this route at all. Your nanny must have worked for you for at least a year before you entered the US, or you must show a years-long pattern of employing household staff. And there must be a signed contract promising US wages, free room and board, a paid return ticket and no other employer.
Then she goes to a US consulate in India, without you in the room, and persuades an officer under section 214(b) that she will come back. That last step is where the file usually dies.
Three doors in the FAM, and the green card that closes all of them
The Foreign Affairs Manual splits domestic-worker B-1s into three employer types. The full text is at 9 FAM 402.2-5(D).
| Who you are | FAM paragraph | How long she must have worked for you |
|---|---|---|
| US citizen with a permanent home abroad, in the US temporarily | 402.2-5(D)(1) | Six months before your admission, or a record of employing someone in that role abroad. One year of experience. |
| US citizen whose job involves postings abroad of two years or more, back in the US for up to six years | 402.2-5(D)(2) | Six months, or the same record, plus HR confirmation of the transfer pattern. One year of experience, shown by earlier employers' letters. |
| Foreign national in B, E, F, H, I, J, L, M, O, P, Q or TN status | 402.2-5(D)(3) | One year before your admission, or a current job plus years of regularly employing domestic staff. One year of experience. |
Paragraph (D)(4) is the one that surprises NRI families. Lawful permanent residents, conditional residents included, may not employ anyone in B-1 domestic status. The category exists for employers who are themselves temporary. A green card says you are not. An H-1B family with an approved I-140 and years of backlog ahead is still nonimmigrant, and the third door stays open, once your own visa is stamped.
The one-year clock, and why a cook hired in March does not pass it
For a nonimmigrant employer the FAM wants one of two things. Either she worked for you abroad for at least one year before the date of your admission to the United States, or the job exists when she applies and you can show that you have regularly employed domestic workers over several years.
The year runs to your admission date. A couple who moved to Austin on an L-1 in January and hired a cook in March through relatives in Jaipur cannot count the months since. The second limb rescues established households that have kept staff on the payroll for a decade. The person can be newer, provided she can prove a year of experience somewhere.
Proving any of this is the first practical problem, because most Indian households pay staff in cash. An officer wants bank transfers and letters from earlier employers with phone numbers that get answered. Building that trail after the fact is possible. Inventing it is fraud, and it gets found.
The contract clause by clause, and what each clause is proving
For a nonimmigrant employer, 9 FAM 402.2-5(D)(3) requires a contract in a language she understands, signed and dated by both of you, with four promises. I explain each to families as a piece of evidence.
- The greater of the federal, state or local minimum wage or the prevailing wage, for an eight-hour workday. This proves she will not be an exploited worker. A contract in rupees, or at Indian rates converted to dollars, fails on its face.
- Free room and board. This proves she can live on the wage without a second job.
- You are her only employer. This proves the visa is tied to your household and ends when your assignment does.
- You pay her travel to the US and, at the end, to your next posting or back to India. This proves she is not stranded.
The paragraphs for US-citizen employers add two more, and I put them in every contract regardless. Two weeks' notice on either side, and any other benefit normally required for domestic workers in the place of employment, which pulls in state overtime and sick-leave rules.
The Wilberforce pamphlet she receives at interview tells her that her employer may not keep her passport and cannot make her stay on the premises after hours without pay. Neither is a FAM clause. I write them in anyway. The officer reads the contract against the pamphlet.
What the wage clause costs a family in Seattle or New Jersey (as of September 2026)
The federal minimum wage is US$7.25 an hour, but almost no family bringing staff lives where that number governs. As of 2026 California's state minimum is US$16.90, Washington's US$17.13 and New York City's US$17.00. The US Embassy in Santo Domingo points applicants to the Department of Labor's OFLC wage search for the prevailing rate, and the contract must carry whichever is higher.
Forty hours at the Washington rate is a little under US$700 a week, roughly US$35,000 a year before overtime, which at any exchange rate seen this year is well north of ₹25 lakh. A live-in nanny who works ten-hour days is owed for ten hours.
You also become a US household employer. IRS Publication 926 for 2026 sets the threshold at US$3,000 in cash wages for the year, above which you pay social security and Medicare (7.65 percent each side), and US$1,000 in any quarter for federal unemployment tax. You need an EIN, you file Schedule H with your 1040, you issue a W-2, and you must complete Form I-9 before she starts.
Form I-765, category (c)(17)(i), the work card she applies for after landing
A B-1 domestic worker's visa lets her enter. It does not, by itself, let you put her on payroll. She must file Form I-765 with USCIS under eligibility category (c)(17)(i), the code for a B-1 domestic servant of a nonimmigrant employer. Domestic servants of US citizens file under (c)(17)(ii).
The USCIS initial-evidence checklist for (c)(17)(i) asks for her I-94, evidence of your own nonimmigrant status, the year with you (or a year of experience plus your record of employing domestic staff), and a residence abroad she does not intend to abandon.
The fee sits around US$500 as of September 2026; confirm it on the USCIS G-1055 fee schedule. Processing runs months, and the gap between her arrival and the card is real. Have a US accountant who handles household payroll lined up before she lands, because the I-9 cannot be completed without the card and the contract promised wages from day one.
Why the Mumbai or Hyderabad officer says no, in four patterns
She interviews alone. The pamphlet says so, and the FAM directs the officer to confirm she has read and understood it. Her job is to satisfy section 214(b), the presumption of immigrant intent every visitor faces, with her own ties, since paragraph (D)(3) says her residence abroad must be shown even though yours need not be.
Pattern one is her ties, or the absence of them. A 26-year-old unmarried woman whose parents live in your outhouse and who owns nothing in her own name has, on paper, no reason to return. Families that succeed have usually helped her build a life she is returning to, a bank account that has held her salary for years, a small plot in her name.
Pattern two is the contract at Indian rates. I have seen drafts promising ₹40,000 a month, converted to dollars. That is a refusal before she opens her mouth.
Pattern three is the timeline. Hired eight months before your move, or after it, with no history of employing staff.
Pattern four is the family itself. Still waiting for the L-1 stamp, or already holding a green card. Her visa is a shadow of yours, and if yours does not fit the category, hers cannot. The general shape of a 214(b) refusal is covered in why visas get refused; for a domestic worker it applies with less margin.
The interview queue in India as of September 2026
A B-1 domestic worker books in the same visitor-visa queue as everyone else. Reporting on the State Department's figures this month puts the next available B1/B2 appointment at about 12 months in Hyderabad, 11.5 in Mumbai, 10 in New Delhi, 7.5 in Chennai and 6.5 in Kolkata, per a 25 September 2026 report. Plan on her joining you six months to a year after you land, at the earliest.
How I would build this file for a family leaving Bengaluru on an L-1
I start with two dates, your admission and her first day, and the evidence between them. If the year is met, we move. If not, I ask whether the household has employed staff for years and whether older contracts or bank records can prove it. If neither limb works, I say so in the first conversation.
The contract is written twice. Once in English to the FAM provisions and the employment law of your destination state, with the prevailing wage printout attached, and once in Hindi, Kannada or whatever she reads, because an officer may ask her what clause three means.
Her file is built separately from yours. Passport history, family, property and bank records, letters from earlier employers, and a short statement in her own words about what she does for your children and what she will go home to. The DS-160 is filed as a B-1 with you named as employer, never as a B-2 with a story about visiting. Interview preparation happens in her language, and she answers from the contract because the contract is hers.
When should you not attempt this alone? When the employment history is thin, when there has already been one refusal in her name, when your own status is anything other than clean and current, or when a relative has told you a B-2 will do. Each of those is where a file gets damaged in a way a second application cannot repair.
When the answer is no: the J-1 au pair, and the visitor visa you must not use
Most families end up hiring locally, and the wage clause above means the B-1 route would have cost about the same.
The J-1 au pair programme is the other legal route, and it is a different animal. Under 22 CFR 62.31 participants must be between 18 and 26, secondary-school graduates, proficient in spoken English, limited to 10 hours a day and 45 a week, placed only through State Department designated sponsors for one year, and with 200 hours of documented infant experience if any child is under two. Your 45-year-old nanny from Patna is not an au pair, and no sponsor will pretend she is.
The route families are most tempted by is the worst one. Bringing her on a B-2 to visit while she looks after the children is unauthorised employment, a misrepresentation on the DS-160, and a problem for her passport for years. If what you need is a grandparent around a birth, that is a genuine family visit and a separate piece covers it, a B-2 for the grandparents around the delivery. A paid employee is employment, and this category exists so nobody has to pretend otherwise.
Three questions families ask me before they sign the contract
She has been with us for eight months. Should we wait four more and then apply?
Waiting only helps if you have not yet been admitted to the US, because the FAM measures the year to your admission date. If you have already moved, the extra months do not count under the first limb, and you would need the second, a documented history of employing domestic staff over several years.
We are on H-1B and our green card was just approved. Does she lose the B-1?
In effect, yes. 9 FAM 402.2-5(D)(4) bars lawful permanent residents from employing anyone in B-1 domestic status, so a new application will be refused and her existing status stops fitting the category. There is no domestic-worker visa for a green card family.
Can the contract be in Hindi only, since that is what she reads?
The FAM requires a language she understands, so a Hindi contract is compliant. I still produce an English version signed alongside it, because the officer, USCIS and later a US accountant will read it in English, and the two texts must match exactly. You do not want the version she understood and the version the officer read to be different documents.