Indians living in Canada, as well as those that travel often to India, are calling for the return of the electronic visa program that was running in the country before the COVID-19 pandemic. They are also urging the authorities to increase the number of processing visa application staff, as the waiting time for submitting applications has risen significantly.
According to CBC, Indian visa applicants are dealing with very long waiting times to submit applications, which causes applicants not only distress but also leads them to cancel trips and thousands of dollars go up in smoke, VisaGuide.World reports.
Arminder Bajwa is one of the hundreds of visa applicants who have been facing these difficulties, and he says that his application for a visa has been submitted for 17 days now.
“I’ve spent like $8,000 on tickets. For my sister’s marriage … that’s my sister, and I have to be there because that’s like a tradition. That situation, inflation and everything … $8,000,” Bajwa says while trying to keep warm as temperatures in Metro Vancouver have dropped to zero.
Another person says he has been waiting for over two months for a response on his visa application, although the Indian consulate’s timeline stands at 30 days.
The situation could be improved if the electronic visa program would be fixed, which has already been restored in 156 countries but not in Canada, where Indians represent the largest community from the Asian continent.
Another solution to this situation involves hiring more people to process visas since the population in Surrey, Metro Vancouver, is increasing daily, as Bajwa pointed out.
On the other hand, travel agents say that the Bureau of Labour Statistics should consider opening more offices across the country, as there are nine BLS international offices, which is the only center that processes applications for Indian visas in Canada.
The Indian Association of Tour Operators, Grewal, has called for the e-visa program to be restored, as the program allows those in specific countries to fill out the application and get an electronic travel authorization before their e-visa gets stamped on their passport when reaching the designated destination.
“These days, there’s only one location in Brampton for the whole GTA. The main reason [for] the delay for the visas is because they are not opening e-visas,” Manpreet Grewal, the manager of the My Dream Traveler agency in Mississauga, said.
The Indian high commissioner-designate, Sanjay Kumar Verma, denied there are such delays happening in the system, but he did admit that there was a surge in application volume noticed recently.
According to him, the number of visa applications has increased by 605 percent compared to last year. He said the comparisons were similar for Vancouver and Toronto, recording 203 and 188 per cent increases since last October, respectively.
The post Canadians Forced to Cancel Trips to India Due to Visa Backlogs appeared first on VisaGuide.World.
