Making every effort to reduce waiting time for visa interview in India: America

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Washington: Julie Stuft, Deputy Assistant Secretary for US Visa Services, said the US is making every effort to reduce the time it takes to schedule a visa interview in India. These efforts include sending consular officers to India and opening its other foreign embassies in Germany and Thailand for Indian visa applicants, Stuft said in an interview with PTI.

“We are making every effort to reduce the time taken for visa interview planning. Stuft said that our priority right now is to normalize the visa process around the world. “We are sending consular officers to assist our staff at our embassy and consulates in India. They are working in shifts. They are working on the weekend and this is mainly due to the visa interview which is definitely taking a long time now.

“We have many different types of visas that we need to service in India,” Stuft said. Prominent among these are visas for students, technical workers, expatriates who are permanently settled in the US, and ship crew members. Stuft said that this year America has made a lot of progress in this direction. The interview placement time for work visas, such as H-1B, L1 visas, has come down from 18 months to about 60 days.

He said that last year set a record for issuing the highest number of US student visas to Indians and this year could be the same. India now ranks second in the world in terms of international students coming to the US. Stuft said that the Foreign Ministry is making efforts to bring the visa process to the level before the global pandemic. Foreign Minister Antony Blinken is personally looking into the matter.

An official of the Ministry of External Affairs said, “There is a huge demand across the world for various visa categories. It is our responsibility to meet that demand. That’s what we’re doing now. “There was a time when there was a waiting time of more than 1,000 days in interview planning, however now there is no waiting time in any visa category except one. Stuft said the wait time in one visa category is still more than 400 days, but is much lower than before. It is reducing every day, yet ”400 days” is not acceptable.

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