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There is finally some good news for US visitor visa applicants in India requiring interview appointments — typically first time applicants for B1 (business) and B2 (tourist) categories or those whose previous B1/B2 expired more than four years ago. The embassy has opened over 2.5 lakh visa interview appointments here. And the US State Department website on Wednesday (Nov 1) showed the current wait time for getting a B1/B2 interview appointment is down to 37 days, just over a month, in Delhi. This wait was 542 days, almost 1.5 years, last week in the capital.
While Delhi has seen the sharpest fall in wait period, some other consulates have seen a marked improvement too. On Wednesday the State Department website showed B1/B2 interview wait period in Kolkata is 126 days, down from 539 last week. Mumbai is now at 322 days — down from 596 last week. Chennai is down to 341 from 526 days. Only Hyderabad has seen a marginal increase from 506 days to 511 now.
The US embassy Tweeted Wednesday: “It was a busy weekend for our consular team! Over the weekend we opened over a quarter million nonimmigrant visa appointments! Book yours today at https://ustraveldocs.com/in/en .”
Post Covid reopening last year, the wait time in India had touched a peak of almost three years. That was perhaps capped as the US State Department wait period didn’t go beyond the 999 mark then. Then the US embassy took a series of steps, egged on by the Indian government with foreign minister S Jaishankar raising this issue on several occasions. These steps, including setting aside nonimmigrant visa interview appointments specifically for Indians in consulate abroad like Frankfurt and Bangkok, saw the US Embassy processing over 10 lakh non-immigrant visa applications this year till last month and the wait period had dropped to about 1.5 years till last week.
The resumed visa services will include the issuance of entry visas, business visas, medical visas, and conference visas for Canadian nationals. Entry visas are granted to people of Indian origin and to those who are dependent family members of employment visa holders. However, it’s important to note that tourist and e-visa services for Canadians will remain temporarily suspended.
“We advise many of our Indian clients to go to these places a day before appointment date and stay there for about a week in which time their passport would be returned by the US embassy with a decision on the visa. Such is the situation and we really hope the improvement is here to stay,” said a leading travel industry insider.The 10 lakh processing was almost 20% more than the numbers processed in pre-Covid 2019 and 2022. The embassy had last month said: “Indians now represent over 10% of all visa applicants worldwide.” Last year over 12 lakh Indians visited the US. Despite the long wait time for visa interviews and sky-high airfares, Indians were the second biggest overseas visitors (in terms of those going by air) to the US this summer at over 5 lakh.
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