India Daily: U.S. Legislators Want Government to Prioritize Visa Backlog
Photo Credit: India is one of the U.S.’s top source markets that are experiencing long visa processing times. Unsplash / Henry Thong
Skift Take
The average wait time for an Indian tourist visa to visit the U.S. still stands at 11 months. The State Department needs to do better.
Top U.S. lawmakers have urged the Biden administration to address the visa wait time issue in India on a priority basis. Visa delays are the single biggest impediment to exponential growth in travel between the U.S. and India. The U.S. Consulate's all-hands-on-deck approach — such as bringing processing staff in on weekends, making embassies available to Indian nationals in other countries and hiring more staff — has reduced the wait times in the country by 50 percent, from an average of 669 days in mid-March to 337 days in early April, according to the U.S. Travel Association.
India is one of the U.S.’s top source markets that are experiencing long visa processing times. Applicants in India had an especially absurd wait time. In January, for example, they had to wait 999 days for an interview at the Mumbai embassy. In another development, U.S. Consul General Mike Hankey said earlier in April that the country also aims to increase visa interview appointments for Indian students by 30 percent. The U.S. embassy processed more than 200,000 visas to India till February this year and aims to process one million visas by 2023-end.
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