Event, News by admin Sep 30, 2022

USA Visa Update

USA EMBASSY TO ADD STAFF TO CUT VISA WAIT TIME: 1L APPOINTMENTS SOON

Days after foreign minister S Jaishakar raise the long wait times for visas with US secretary of state Anthony Blinken earlier this week, the US embassy in Delhi spelt out steps being taken to remedy the situation.

The minister counsellor for consular affairs at the US embassy in New Delhi, Don Heflin, said on Thursday that while staffing at consulates in India is expected to return to pre-Covid level in less than a year, steps like getting temporary staff and allowing more drop boxes (where no appointment is required for those who already had a US visa that lapsed in a certain time frame) will help cut the waiting period in the interim. He also said 1 lakh appointments would be opened for the H and L worker visa categories in the "next few weeks".

Attributing the inexorably long visa waiting period to the impact of Covid, the US embassy in Delhi said staffing should be back to 100% of pre-Covid level in less than a year.

Earlier this week, while raising the matter with his US counterpart, foreign minister S Jaishankar has also offered cooperation to American authorities to cut the backlog in India.

"...Good news is our recovery from Covid and post-Covid staffing problems is well underway. At the height of Covid, and for a while after, we only had about 50% of the (visa staffing) we should have. Now, we're at about 70%. We're going to be at about 100% staffing a little bit before this time next year... at that point (we'll) be able to handle about 100% of the volume of (applications) we got before Covid," the minister counsellor for consular affairs at the US embassy in New Delhi, Don Heflin, said.

"Washington is sending us out temporary (staff). We're also going to get temporary (staff) from other big embassies. So, we should come to a point sometime between now and next summer where we're able to handle somewhat more cases," Heflin said.

While the appointment wait time of visitor visa in Mumbai and Delhi is now 848 and 833 days, respectively, the same is only two days in Beijing and 18 in Guangzhou, according to the US department of state website.

Admitting that one of the longest wait times is for B1 (business) and B2 (visitor) first-time applicants, he said: "We're going to work on reducing that in the next few months as well. There's still going to be wait times but we're going to keep recovering."

Indians working on H1 visas in the US have also not been able to come home as they need to get their passports stamped before returing. About them, Heflin said: "There are people in the US on H and L visas who haven't been able to come home and see their family since Covid started. We sympathise with them a lot. We are going to - sometime in the next few weeks - open one lakh appointments for this category of visas."

"Our immigrant visa operation in Mumbai is steadily cutting into the backlog. Mumbai was one of the most called up big immigrant visa posts in the world before Covid hit. And we expect withing the next year that they'll be back to pre-Covid waiting times," he said.

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