US is “putting every ounce of its energy” into ending the lengthy visa wait times in India. This includes sending a team of consular officers to India and opening up its other foreign embassies in places like Thailand and Germany to Indian citizens seeking visas, according to a senior US visa officer.
To speed up the issuance of visas, the US is striving to involve diplomatic spouses and increase the number of direct employees at its embassy, a US official said on Tuesday.
Since the embassy reduced staff during the pandemic and was unable to handle the rising demand for visas at the requisite speed when the economy reopened, ordinary citizens and businesses have complained about long waits for US visas.
Arun Venkataraman, US assistant secretary of commerce for global markets, said, “We are doubling the number of direct hires, we have to facilitate the issuance of visas here at the embassy, and we are also looking to bring on diplomatic spouses to also engage in the process in the areas of visas.”
“So we are continuing to take steps. We have already made progress and are issuing more visas than we ever did before,” said Venkataraman, who is in New Delhi ahead of US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo‘s anticipated March visit.
According to him, the US has issued more H1B and L visas in 2022 than it did in pre-pandemic 2019, and progress has been made in granting student visas.
When discussing the challenges they had as a result of the epidemic, he remarked, “As you can imagine, during the pandemic, we had to significantly reduce our operations, and we are unable to issue visas in that context. I am pleased to say that we have really rebounded from that situation, we have taken a number of concrete steps to facilitate the issuance of visas.”
When the issue of the backlog of Indian visa applications was brought up during a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in September, the senior American diplomat responded that he was sympathetic to the situation and had plans to handle it.
The State Department has previously claimed that it has made significant progress on restoring pre-pandemic levels of visa processing and lowering appointment wait times.
The average wait time for appointments for visitor visas (B1/B2) is 900 days, the average wait time for students (F, M, and J) is 400 days, and the average wait time for petition-based temporary employees (H, L, O, P, and Q) is 300 days across all US consulates in India, as per travel.state.gov reports on October 31.
The Deputy Assistant Secretary for Visa Services, Julie Stufft, told PTI in an interview, “We’re putting every ounce of our energy towards eliminating these (visa) wait times in India.” The normalisation of visa procedures worldwide is currently a major focus, she said.
Julie Stufft said, “We’re sending a cadre of consular officers to help our staff in our embassy and consulates in India. They’re working shifts during the day. They’re working weekends, mainly to do visitor visa interviews, which of course are now the only remaining visa type that we have long wait times for”.
“One of the world’s most extensive visa programmes is run by the US. We need to serve a very wide variety of visa kinds in India. Students, IT employees, immigrants who are settling permanently in the US, and seafaring crew members are among those who frequently need visas. Except for the largest category—visas for visitors which requires an interview—the US has completed all of these,” she added.
The US has advanced significantly in processing certain visa classes this year, according to Stufft. For employment visas like the H-1B and L1 visas, the interview wait time has decreased from 18 months to roughly 60 days.
She added that India is now ranked second in the world for the number of foreign students entering the United States and that it may break the record for the most student visas again this year.
“We are really, we’re putting all of our efforts now focusing on this visa for visitors and those, in particular, if you don’t need an interview, you don’t need to wait very long at all for a visa renewal. And that’s also one part of our strategy as well,” she remarked.
