Consular Update : Visa Appointments in India - April 2006
Posted Apr 28, 2006
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The Consulate General in New Delhi, India, issued an update on April 21, 2006, regarding appointments for visa interviews that are made via the VFS Service. Because of particularly heavy Internet traffic, it is no longer possible to change an appointment to an earlier date without canceling the existing appointment and reentering information. This limitation does not apply to members of the Consulate's Business Executive Program (BEP), however. Therefore, any company that is eligible to participate in the BEP program should do so, as it can be beneficial when setting consular appointments. We believe this information will be of particular interest to our MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers.
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BEP Program Membership
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The BEP program is not for companies that are based solely in the U.S. It is available to companies within India, who process a high volume of U.S. visa applicants. These companies would normally be sending their employees either to a branch in the U.S. or seeking B-1 visas (visitor for business) for employees. Participation in the program is by invitation. Companies that have not been invited, however, may request participation by contacting the appropriate consular section. These companies are subject to rigorous pre-screening.
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Heavy Traffic on Consular Website
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The problems with appointment setting have been generated by heavy traffic on the consular and appointment websites. The Consulate General in Delhi indicated that some of this traffic is generated by attempts to program scripts to continuously check appointment availability. There are also problems because of brokers who try to sell appointments. Steps have been taken to address these problems, which have reduced the hits per minute enormously. Investigation is underway to identify individuals responsible for creating the problem.
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Rescheduling Visa Appointment One Time for BEP Members
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As indicated above, rescheduling nonimmigrant visa appointments, without first canceling the current visa appointment, is possible only for BEP members. These individuals may make one rescheduling change, to either an earlier or later date, without canceling and reentering all of the the required information for the new appointment. Therefore, setting appointments should be done with care to minimize the need for changing a date.
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More Business, Student, and Emergency Visa Appointments Available
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There has been a transition to a new appointment system. This has increased the capacity for appointments. The hope is to make significant increases in the numbers of appointments each day at the U.S. consulates throughout India. These will be for priority business, student, and emergency cases. The Consulate General is seeking information from BEP participants regarding anticipated demand for the priority business appointments.
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Constant Improvements to the Website for Visa Appointments
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The update from the Consulate General notes that the changes in the system make the website less user friendly. Improving speed and limiting extraneous traffic has become necessary, but they continue to make improvements to the system.