Even as thousands of Indian students firm up plans to study in universities in the US in the 2022 Fall season, India is planning a change in the visa application system for those applying in the summer of 2022.
“Last year we interviewed more students and issued more student visas in India than ever before. This year we hope the number of student visas will be even higher than the 62,000 issued last year. However, that will also depend on how well prepared the student visa applicants are,”
Donald L Heflin, minister-counsellor for consular affairs at the US Embassy in Delhi, told this reporter.
Last summer, US campuses opened their doors to international students after being shut down during the pandemic, the US Embassy and consulates in India had announced the opening of “tens of thousands” of visa interview slots, since June 2021, especially for Indian students planning to join courses at universities and colleges in the Fall 2021 session starting August-September last year.
Students had been advised to visit the US Embassy website to schedule their visa appointments.
“Last year we faced two big problems; first because of the huge number of student visa applicants from India, our worldwide computer system crashed. Second, a large number of student visa interview slots were bought up by people who were not genuine applicants.
Also, while in the first part of the season we had good and genuine students applying for visas; in the latter part, last summer, many applicants who we interviewed were coming to us a second or third time having been refused student visas earlier. That was taking slots away from good students,”
Heflin said.
The US government has now made software changes to ensure that students who are refused a visa once in the summer-spring of 2022 will not be able to seek another visa interview appointment again this year.
Besides, student visa applicants are being advised to keep checking for interview dates on the US embassy website to schedule their visa appointments once they receive their documents from US universities without any special timeline being announced for them.
“We hope to address both the problems of non-availability of interview slots for good and genuine students as well as the blocking of slots by non-student agents, who don’t show up for the interview, with these measures,”
Heflin said.
Meanwhile, the visa interview waiver scheme, that was announced by the US government last year, has benefitted several Indian students.
“Many Indian students who are in the US and want to travel to India to meet their families are using the visa waiver drop box scheme. Currently, there are slots available for this facility,”
the minister-counsellor said.
While parents of Indian students, going to the US to study, who have valid US visitor visas can accompany their children when they go to the US this fall season to join classes; those who have never had a visitor visa will not be able to travel.
“Those parents who have B1-B2 visas that have expired in the last few years can try to grab a dropbox appointment to renew their visas,”
Heflin said.
He added that it is expected that by 2023, the US consular facilities will be back at 100% in India.
“Like businesses have had many issues in bouncing back, we too have had problems in going back to the pre-pandemic level of visa issuances. While, at present, we are issuing two-thirds the number of visas that we did before the pandemic, we expect to be closer to 100% by 2023.”
The US embassy also expects to start issuing new B1-B2 visitor visas in India in September this year.
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