Whilst the hold out occasions in Mumbai (332 days) and Kolkata (357 times) have dropped down below a yr, applicants opting for Chennai may nonetheless require to hold out for nearly two a long time, 680 days to be correct, for their B1/B2 visa appointments.
The US Embassy at New Delhi has the shortest wait for vacationer and organization visa appointments – 247 days.
For F-1 scholar visas
- Kolkata: 78 times
- Mumbai: 73 days
- Delhi: 74 times
- Chennai: 58 times
The United States has been taking extra methods to lower visa wait around occasions for Indians, which include shifting staff from other departments around the world to visa workplaces in India.
India was just one of the very handful of nations around the world where by applications for US visas saw a key upswing right after coronavirus-connected journey limitations had been lifted.
Before this thirty day period, Julie Stufft, deputy assistant secretary for consular affairs, mentioned lowering the wait time was her No. 1 priority. “It is the 1st detail I do when I wake up,” she claimed. “It really is a the moment in a life span condition. The visa operations in India are incredibly distinctive from any other place for the reason that of the assortment of visas and the substantial demand from customers.”
Stufft acknowledged that the hold out time is even now “far too significant” in India. But the division experienced taken ways such as waiving interview prerequisites for normal travellers and opening other US embassies/consulates to just take Indian applicants. “It truly is not perfect but it can be helping men and women who need to travel urgently,” she reported.
The US Embassy in India processed above 1 lakh purposes just in January 2023, their maximum complete in a one thirty day period and the best in any month because July 2019. In 2022, the US issued 125,000 pupil visas, which is more than any other calendar year, Stufft had claimed.
Making use of from a 3rd country
For people who are unable to pay for the wait around, third country countrywide (TCN) visa processing arrive to the rescue. A 3rd Country Nationwide visa is a visa application or a visa acquired from a U.S. consulate in a nation other than your house nation.
“Applying from a 3rd place for many visas is a superior notion. This is called third nation nationwide processing TCN is essentially at present encouraged for function visas,” suggests Rajiv S Khanna, managing partner at immigration.com.
Exclusive interviews & distant processing
As element of the multi-pronged strategy to minimize the visa backlog, the US embassy in Delhi and the consulates in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad performed “special Saturday interview times” on January 21, with far more this sort of interviews planned in the potential.
The mission will continue to open “extra slots” for appointments to choose area on choose Saturdays in the coming months.
“These supplemental job interview times are just 1 part of a multi-pronged initiative to tackle the backlog in visa processing prompted by COVID-19,” it the Embassy mentioned.
It said the US Condition Department has executed distant processing of job interview waiver situations for candidates with previous US visas.
Among January and March 2023, dozens of short-term consular officers from Washington and other embassies will get there in India to boost visa processing capability, it said.
The US mission in India launched much more than 2,50,000 added B1/B2 appointments. Although B1 is a business visa, B-2 is tourism visa.
The mission explained the Consulate Standard in Mumbai also extended its weekday running hours to make space for additional appointments.
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