The US Embassy has decided to appoint more employees to cut the waiting time to get a visa.
Earlier this week when Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar talked about the long waiting we Indians need to do to get it approved and get the visa for going to the US secretary Antony Blinken the US embassy in Delhi came out with the procedure to improve the situation.
Don Heflin on Thursday stated that in India the requirement of staff will start like the pre-covid times and it’s expected to take less than a year, steps like getting staff who will remain temporary and more drop boxes will be allowed which means the people who already own the US visa and somehow had their visa collapsed will no longer have to wait to get an appointment, this will help to cut the time in getting the visa. He also said that in the next few weeks there will be appointments of around 1lakh for H and L workers.
The US embassy in Delhi stated that the requirement for more staff will be back like before covid-19 pandemic happened and the process will be back with 100% in less than a year.
For the long waiting process for us Indians, Mr. S. Jaishankar offered the American Authorities cooperation.
Don Heflin said that it is good news that their recovery from covid and pre-covid staffing issues is well underway. They only had 50% of visa staffing when the pandemic was at its height, but now it is almost 70% and soon there will be a 100% staff requirement by next year it will help them to manage with 100% volume of applications they got before Covid.
Heflin also stated that Washington is sending out temporary staff and they will get staff from other big embassies so that they can handle more cases between this summer and next summer.
According to the US department of state website, an appointment for a visitor visa in Mumbai and Delhi is 848 and 833 days whereas in China it is only 2 days in Beijing and 18 days in Guangzhou.
Admitting to the fact that Business and Visitors’ first-time applications have to wait for the longest time Heflin said that they are going to rectify the work to reduce the time for waiting and will reduce it in the next month.
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