Indians who have applied for US student or visitor visas overseas in countries such as Vietnam, Thailand and even Europe to bypass long interview waitlists at home, are facing yet another challenge with the latest Department of State (DoS) directive issued on September 6.

The US DoS has mandated that non-immigrant visas such as visitor (B1/ B2), employment (H-1B and O-1) and student (F1) can be applied only from the respective country where the applicants reside or are citizens of, with immediate effect. This means Indian residents or citizens who were looking to expedite their visa process by applying in other countries and have not completed the task will now need to apply only in India.

This comes at a time when the US visa processing is already stressed, with the wait times stretching over a year for short-term visitor visas to limited slots available for student visas.

Rachit Agarwal, founder of AdmitKard, an overseas education startup with the focus on US and Canada, said that since June, getting visa slots has been hard and one of the hacks they found was applying through other regions.

“We are sending students to Dubai, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, to get US visas, since slots are open in those countries,” he said. However, this process is expensive, since the applicants need to spend at least a week in that country to give biometric and interview, as both cannot be done on a single day.

The flexibility to apply in a different country was offered during the Covid-19 wave to ease backlogs. Now the DoS is removing that flexibility. Gnanamookan Senthurjoti, founder of immigration platform The Visa Code, said many people who had applied for student or visitor visas in places such as Europe, Asia and the Middle East will now need to reapply. They are largely in student visa (F-1) or B1/B2 category, and some include those who had applied for work visa renewals as well.

“They had applied overseas for two reasons. The wait times to get interview slots for some visas are much longer in India and the scrutiny is more,” he said.

Impact on students, visitors

Over the last few months, Indian students applying for US universities have been hit with uncertainty. Since June, there are limited slots that are available for the Indian students to book and even then the number of open slots get booked very quickly, said Senthurjoti. Those applying for B1/B2, a temporary tourist and business visa to the US, had also applied from these regions.

“Nearly everything is becoming more challenging in US immigration right now, and B-1/B-2 visas are no exception,” said Joel Yanovich, attorney at Murthy Law Firm.