Date:20/05/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/05/20/stories/2008052054221000.htm

National

U.S. visa waiting period cut down to 12 days

R.K. Radhakrishnan

Goal to eliminate wait periods altogether
Consulate at Hyderabad to open by year-end

CHENNAI: There was a time when one had to wait as many as 187 days to get a visa to the United States. Now, this period has been cut down to 12 days.

It all began with a “visa blitz,” to clear the backlog and cut the waiting period for an interview. The man behind the change is the U.S. Ambassador to India David C. Mulford. He has been on the job since 2006. “We had an off-site in Jaipur [which discussed the issue in 2006]. The longest wait time was 187 days,” he said in an informal interaction at The Hindu on Monday. The off-site thrashed out problem areas and added more personnel to clear the backlog. The goal was to eliminate wait periods altogether.

After the Jaipur meeting, he made an announcement at the Consular Section of the U.S. Embassy, New Delhi, on October 5, 2006, stating that they had made a mission-wide commitment to reducing the wait periods for visa appointments, with the goal of eliminating them altogether; except, of course, if an individual prefers to make an appointment in advance to fit future plans.

He said all the visa issuing facilities of the U.S. in India — the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and the Consulates General in Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata — responded to the task and opened new visa appointments in all categories, including tourist.

“At one point the wait time for some category of visas came down to six days,” he said. Except in the Mumbai Consulate, the 12-day time-frame is being followed in all centres. “There are too many applicants in Mumbai,” he explained.

In 2007, the U.S. Embassy and Consulates processed 7.25 lakh Non-Immigrant Visa applications. “There were officers from other sections helping the Consular staff with the visa processing. They worked with the consular staff after their working hours and on holidays and were processing about 3,800 applications each day,” he said.

The fifth consulate in the country, at Hyderabad, is likely to open by the end of the year. This will have as many as 15 visa windows (Chennai has 18) and infrastructure to process one lakh visas in the first year.