This development comes months after the White House announced a pilot programme for domestic renewal of certain categories of H-1B visas during the state visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June this year….reports Asian Lite News
In a move likely to benefit Indian professionals, 20,000 H1B specialty occupation workers will be able to renew their visas in the US beginning from January next year, according to State Department officials.
This development comes months after the White House announced a pilot programme for domestic renewal of certain categories of H-1B visas during the state visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June this year.
The visa renewal pilot programme is one of multiple measures the State Department is looking to add or continue with the aim of driving down wait times for travel to the US, Bloomberg Law reported, citing officials.
It would allow H-1B holders to renew their visas by mailing them to the State Department rather than travel outside the US and face uncertain wait times to secure an appointment at a US consular office before returning.
“We really need to get proof of concept that it works before we can extend it to a larger group,” Deputy Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs Julie Stufft told reporters on Monday. This is a huge change for folks who live here and previously would have had to leave the US,” she added.
Due to heavy visa backlogs, some H-1B workers have pursued work-arounds such as traveling to nearby countries with fewer backlogs to secure appointments.
According to Stufft, the domestic renewal option would help consular offices in those countries as well as India.
The average wait time to secure a visa appointment for travel to the US fell to 130 days last year, a drop of 70 days from fiscal year 2022. The State Department considers acceptable wait times to be closer to 90 days.
The White House announced the plan during the state visit of Narendra Modi in June. The step is also expected to benefit a massive number of Indian technology professionals.
The State Department had reportedly been working on launching this programme on a pilot basis for a while. However, it was only formally announced during Modi’s visit.
“We will do 20,000 in the first group. The vast majority of those will be Indian nationals living in the US and we will expand as it goes on,” Stufft said.
She added, “Because Indians are the largest skilled group of workers in the United States, we hope that India will benefit quite a bit from this programme and it will prevent people from having to travel back to India or anywhere for a visa appointment to get their visa renewed. It will allow our missions in India to concentrate on new applicants.”
Stufft also noted that the visa renewal programme is only for work visas. “This is an existing regulation that was allowed that we just have not used in about 20 years. These are work visas. It is intended for people who are living long-term in the US but want to renew their visa without going back overseas,” she said.
“We’re very excited about it. We’re starting small with a pilot of 20,000 cases in December, January and February and we look forward to opening that to more categories of workers living in the United States in the rest of 2024,” she added, calling the programme a “huge undertaking.”
The State Department was also appreciated by the National Immigration Forum “for taking these commonsense steps to make visa processing more efficient,” NIF President and CEO Jennie Murray said. “Doing so will help American businesses as well as visa holders and applicants,” she said.
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