The United States missions in India have unfolded plans to increase staff in order to accelerate visa processing.
Such a decision was confirmed by authorities in the United States while stressing that they would also introduce additional measures in order to increase visa processing capacity across the country, VisaGuide.World reports.
The recent changes have been introduced following the difficulties that the applicants are facing when requiring visa services. In addition, the United States embassy and five consulates in India confirmed that they would offer visa services on Saturdays as well.
“Our consular teams across India are putting in the extra hours to meet the needs of international travellers and bring down wait times. This is part of a mission-wide effort to find innovative solutions to facilitate travel to the United States,” Mumbai Consular Chief John Ballard pointed out in this regard.
It was also reported that in addition to the decision to increase the staff numbers and offer visa services on Saturdays the US embassy has also decided to extend its hours of operation, thus expanding conditions in order to offer for those who have previously been given visas “interview waivers” or process visas through remote interviews, while also offering slots in other countries for citizens of India.
“By this summer, the US. mission in India will be at full staffing, and we expect to be processing visas at levels from prior to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the US embassy pointed out in this regard through a statement.
The same source reveals that the spread of COVID-19 brought significant difficulties, thus leading to profound reductions in the department’s visa processing capacity while stressing that the majority of the embassies and consulates were back then only eligible to offer emergency services.
According to a report provided by the Hindu, there was registered an increased number of visa appointments registered last year. The US embassy stressed that India’s mission released over 250,000 additional appointments for tourism or business visas last year while stressing that there were adjudicated over 8,00,000 non-immigrant visas last year.
Despite all the measures introduced by authorities in the United States, it was reported that the wait time for a visitor visa interview in Delhi as well as other five Indian consulates is between 500 to 600 days, in contrast to Europe or even south Asia.
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