Visitors from India ranked as ones of the top five biggest tourism spenders in the USA in 2019 but are now forced to potentially wait years for a US tourist visa.
In a new post-COVID reality, US-bound travelers from India now have new hurdles to overcome besides submitting mandatory detailed information regarding their planned trip to the United States, proof of financially solvency, education and work history, and comprehensive information about any relatives residing in the USA.
Due to a bottleneck attributable to delays that have lingered since the global coronavirus pandemic when Washington halted all but emergency diplomatic services, prospective Indian visitors to the United States can currently expect to wait up to three years just for an in-person interview, which is the last instance in obtaining a US visa, depending on their location in India.
According to the United States Department of State, the wait times for a visa interview at its missions in India averaged 780 days in Hyderabad and 936 days in New Delhi and 999 days in Mumbai this month.
US State Department is currently bringing on more employees and expanding interview waivers for temporary workers and students, in order to speed up the process, the department’s representative said.
Washington is hoping to bring the situation back to pre-pandemic normal levels by the end of the year, he added.
It is not clear whether such goal is achievable, given that US State Department now has less than a month to straighten things out.
According to a recently conducted US travel industry study, with visa applications having ground to a nearly complete halt, the US would miss out on $1.6 billion in 2023 from Indian visitors who, having been unable to obtain the coveted visa, will take their rupees elsewhere.
While visiting the US as a tourist requires more and more hoops to jump through, undocumented aliens, entering the United States illegally, have to wait an average of 785 days to have their asylum claim heard as of this month, but they are allowed to stay in the US during that time.
WHAT TO TAKE AWAY FROM THIS ARTICLE:
- Due to a bottleneck attributable to delays that have lingered since the global coronavirus pandemic when Washington halted all but emergency diplomatic services, prospective Indian visitors to the United States can currently expect to wait up to three years just for an in-person interview, which is the last instance in obtaining a US visa, depending on their location in India.
- While visiting the US as a tourist requires more and more hoops to jump through, undocumented aliens, entering the United States illegally, have to wait an average of 785 days to have their asylum claim heard as of this month, but they are allowed to stay in the US during that time.
- According to the United States Department of State, the wait times for a visa interview at its missions in India averaged 780 days in Hyderabad and 936 days in New Delhi and 999 days in Mumbai this month.
