The US consulate in Kolkata will hold special visa interviews on select Saturdays to clear a huge backlog of applications, the US mission in India has announced.
Similar Saturday interviews will also be held in the US embassy in New Delhi and the consulates in Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad.
The additional interviews will help first-time visa applicants who require to appear in-person for the interview. Those who are applying for renewal of visas that expired recently do not have to appear for an in-person interview.
The US mission issued over 800,000 non-immigrant visas in 2022, including a record number of student and employment visas, the US embassy said in a statement. In most other visa categories, interview wait times in India are at the pre-pandemic levels.
Till March, dozens of temporary consular officers from various American embassies and Washington will arrive in India to speed up the processing of visa applications. Also, the number of permanent consular officers in the embassy in Delhi and consulates will increase, the embassy said.
“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,” says the statement.
The delay in issuing visas hit hard business and tourist visa applicants. The US mission has accorded priority to student and other emergency visas.
A source aware of the difficulties said anyone applying for a visa gets appointment for an in-person interview at least a year later. The new measures are part of an overall approach to increase the speed of processing visa applications that slowed down during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In November, US consul-general in Kolkata, Melinda Pavek, had told students during an interaction that they should apply through other cities that have more visa officers than in Calcutta to expedite the process of getting a visa.
The consulate in Kolkata had said it had the smallest visa unit among all consulates in India, with only three officers.
“I urge students to consider making their visa applications to other cities,” Pavek said at a US visa information outreach programme in November.
The US consulate general in Mumbai currently issues the most visas in India.
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