The US is going to launch a pilot programme in December for the domestic renewal of specific H-1B visa categories, according to a US official. This initiative will help a substantial number of Indian IT professionals.
This is occurring months after the idea was unveiled by the White House during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's state visit in June.
Julie Stufft, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Visa Services, stated in an interview with PTI, "In India, the demand (for US visas) is still very high. The wait time of six, eight and 12 months is not what we need and (it is) not indicative of how we view India."
"We want to make sure that Indian travellers can get appointments as quickly as possible. One way we are doing that is through the domestic visa renewal programme, which is focused very much on India. We are piloting that," she added.
The State Department will grant 20,000 visas to foreign nationals who are currently in the nation over a three-month period starting in December.
"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. 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 said.
Even though the State Department has been preparing to introduce this initiative on a trial basis for some time, PM Modi's visit marked the official announcement of it.
The Indian community in the US has applauded and welcomed the proposal, which was stated in the joint statement and declared by PM Modi during his speech to the Indian diaspora at the Ronald Reagan Centre.
In response to a question, Stufft stated that the first official notice of this would be released very soon in the form of a federal register notice, which will outline the instructions and include an outline of all the necessary stages as well as information on who is eligible to apply in the first tranche.
She further said, "But I can say that we are doing these visas here in the United States. So, the idea is for a visa to be mailed from the United States to us in Washington. We print the visa and process the visa, put it in the passport and send it back to someone in the United States."
"So (that) the people don't have to go to either Mexico or Canada or back to India or anywhere (else) to get that visa renewed. That is something that will be laid out very clearly in this federal register notice that comes out in a few weeks," she continued.
Stufft underlined that the domestic visa renewal policy only applies to 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." Describing it as a "huge undertaking", Stufft added, "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."
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