December 2000 Update on Chennai Consulate
Posted Jan 19, 2001

This article is a summary of the issues discussed during Attorney Murthy’s recent visit to the Chennai Consulate. As we had mentioned in December 2000 issues of the MurthyBulletin, Attorney Murthy had scheduled a visit to meet with Senior Officials in the Consular section at the U.S. Consulate in Chennai, India in December 2000. In this article, we present a brief overview of the non-immigrant and immigrant visa application processes at the Consulate in Chennai. In addition to a detailed meeting with the new Vice Consul in charge of H1B visas, Attorney Murthy had the opportunity to discuss issues with the Vice Consul in charge of immigrant petitions, and meet with the Chief of the Consular section.

H1B and Other Non-Immigrant Visas : A new position was created in Chennai in early 2000, with the title of Vice Consul in charge of H1B visas, in recognition of the fact that the U.S. Consulate in Chennai issues about 40% of the H1B visas worldwide. The officer in charge was very helpful and gave us an overview of the H1B visa process and information with certain statistics of the numbers of H1s processed at the Chennai Consulate, as well as approximate time frames and a summary of various problems that occur at the Consulate. 

The Chennai Consulate primarily uses courier services for delivery of all types of non-immigrant visa applications. Very few applications are done in person any longer or by the direct dropbox method. Rather, there are drop-off sites around the area for the courier company to then deliver the applications to the Consulate. Of the non-immigrant visa applications for the Chennai consulate, over 70% is now sent by courier. There are also branch offices both in Bangalore and Hyderabad, two major cities in South India, which have a large number of H1B visa applicants. These 2 cities act as sub-offices to the main office of the courier company in Madras. The goal is to enter the data at the courier company and transfer it by floppy disk or eMail directly to the Consulate to save time and expenses. Of course, Internet security was one of their key concerns. 

The Consulate was also willing to entertain the idea of non-immigrant visa applicants entering their own data into a software program. Copies of original documents such as degree certificates and transcripts, etc. for each visa application would be sent by the courier service once the computer system has automatically assigned a file number.

For example, on December 21, 2000, 330 people applied for non-immigrant visas at the Chennai Consulate. This figure is much higher than the daily average of about 200 visa applicants because it was before the holidays and those who needed to travel for the holidays were submitting their applications in person. The average per day generally tends to be around 200 since the majority of cases is sent by courier (i.e. by using the TT Services dropbox locations) and others tend to use the direct dropbox method. 

The Consular Officer in charge of the H1B visas explained that the anti-fraud unit or AFU at the Consulate in Chennai is one of the better organized AFUs in the world, especially with respect to verifying employment based documents. Apparently, the Chennai Consulate works closely both with the Texas Service Center and the Nebraska Service Center. Accordingly, if either of these Service Centers has sent the documents to Chennai to review credentials of an applicant during the processing of the petition, it is more likely that the Chennai Consulate will issue, for example, the H1B visa for the person if the investigation was completed prior to issuing the H1B approval notice.

Generally only about 10-30 H1B cases per day need to have an in-person interview at Chennai because the documents are either insufficient or because of fraud indicators. This figure represents a small proportion of the over 200 H1B visa applications that are submitted each day. Generally, “Monday letters” are sent to candidates who are scheduled to present themselves for an in-person interview at the Chennai consulate. Mondays are allocated each week for H1B interviews. Sometimes an H1B interview may be scheduled on a Friday.

The Chennai Consulate has a degree check database for the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Some large Indian companies who use the Business Express program and whose employees benefit from a faster issuance of the H1B visas for travel to their U.S. branch offices are paying for the cost of supporting the database. The British High Commission has access to certain U.S. databases through exchange of information between the U.S. Consulate General in Chennai and the British High Commission.

Immigrant Visas : With respect to immigrant visa cases, the Chief of the Immigrant Section explained to Attorney Murthy that there has been a 326% increase in immigrant visa family cases, without any increase in the number of personnel available to process cases. 

With regard to immigrant visas (IV) for employment-based cases, the Chennai Consulate is not willing to accept attorney certified packages, unlike the Mumbai Consulate which had been amenable to attorney certified packages for IV cases, even prior to the September 2000 State Department cable memo. The Chennai Consulate expects to receive the original I-140 petition and related documents directly from the NVC. Attorney Murthy asked Amanda Cronkhite, the Chief of the immigrant visa section at the Chennai Consulate, how the September 2000 cable from the U.S. Department of State would impact her workload. As many of you are aware, the Sept. 2000 cable requires that the consulate in the home country of the IV applicant is required to process the IV case if accompanied by the I-824 receipt notice, the original I-140 approval notice, and copies of the I-140 petition and related documents. Ms. Cronkhite mentioned that there was a 230% increase in employment based IV cases in the last three months, with the majority of them being EB-2 cases. She would have to review how to handle the increased workload and address the whole strategy of backlogs that could become overwhelming if not addressed properly. 

One of her suggestions was that all applicants for Consular Processing in employment-based cases should submit local addresses in India. That way Packet 4 could actually be mailed out to the Indian address since the Consulate does not mail to addresses in the U.S. 

With respect to successors-in-interest, such as when a company acquires the original employer, the financial viability of the successor entity would be looked at closely to ensure that the successor can afford the salary and other benefits as stated in the Labor Certification and the I-140 immigrant petition for the beneficiary.

The Chennai Consulate will not accept provisional degree certificates both for IV and NIV cases, since they are easier to duplicate and susceptible to fraud. Provisional degree certificates have no security features and they expect H1B or other visa applicants to obtain the actual degree certificate. Chennai is aware that the Mumbai Consulate accepts Provisional degree certificates and they are advising Mumbai to make sure that Provisional degree certificates are not misused. 

On the whole, it was a very eventful meeting because we were also able to discuss various ongoing cases that are being processed at the Law Office of Sheela Murthy. In addition, clients who had contacted our law firm prior to Attorney Murthy’s scheduled meeting were able to obtain individual case updates on many of their cases. In summary, it appears that the Chennai Consulate is willing to review most cases as long as they are satisfied with the documents and are able to verify their authenticity.