An official in the US said that in December, the country will start a pilot program for renewing certain types of H-1B visas in the US. This will help a huge number of Indian technology workers.
The White House first talked about the plan during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit in June, which was months ago.
PTI talked to Julie Stufft, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Visa Services. She said, “In India, the demand (for US visas) is still very high.” The six, eight, and twelve-month wait times are not what we need and don’t show how we feel about India.
“We want Indian tourists to be able to get appointments as quickly as possible.” And one way we do that is through the program to refresh domestic visas, which is mostly for India. This is a test run,” she said.
Starting in December, the State Department will give 20,000 visas to foreigners who are already in the United States over the course of three months.
“The first group will do 20,000.” Most of those people will be Indian citizens living in the US, and we will add more as time goes on.
“Because Indians are the most skilled workers in the US, we hope that this program will help India a lot. It will also save people from having to travel back to India or anywhere else for a visa appointment to renew their visa.” “Our missions in India will be able to focus on new applicants,” Ms. Stufft said.
A trial program for this kind of program has been in the works for a while now at the State Department, but it was officially announced during PM Modi’s visit.
The plan was talked about in the joint statement and revealed by PM Modi in his speech to the Indian diaspora at the Ronald Reagan Center. The Indian community in the US is happy about it and supports it.
It was asked of Ms. Stufft when she said that the first official notice of this would be published in the federal register very soon. This notice would list all the steps that need to be taken, who is qualified to apply in the first round, and how to do them.
We are giving out these cards here in the United States, though. The plan is for the US to mail a visa to us in Washington, DC. “We print the visa, process it, put it in the passport, and send it back to someone in the US,” she explained.