Indians have been left fuming in the queue for US visas even as the US Embassy in New Delhi started a 12-day-visas program to motivate people to apply for H and L visas.
However, the announcement made on social media left many Indian netizens fuming. They have been facing long delays in obtaining visa interviews to travel to the US.
It has been observed that getting Indian Visas for Americans is now so much easier and faster than having Indians get visas to the US.
Currently, the wait time for visa appointments in India runs into almost 1,000 days.
Among the H and L, the H-1B and L-1 are the most popular non-immigrant work visas in America. In October 2022, the US Embassy in India released around 1 lakh appointments for H and L visas for workers and their families to reduce the wait time.
Their efforts must be appreciated, but it would be better if they keep in mind about B1/B2 visas as well. Many of the families have to wait until mid-2025 to get an appointment to reunite with their family.
The waiting period for B-1/B-2 candidates who need to be interviewed is 999 days in Mumbai, 994 days in Hyderabad, 961 days in Delhi, 948 days in Chennai, and 904 days in Kolkata.
According to reports, a presidential panel issued a memo to the US State Department to reduce visa appointment waiting times to a maximum of two to four weeks for countries like India that have heavy backlogs.
A senior US embassy official had said last month that the processing time for visas is expected to mark a specific decrease by mid-2023.
