State processed record student visas this year: US Consul General Mike Hankey

The US diplomat is in Goa exploring potential to expand business and cultural ties between businessmen in Goa and US companies. He also held a series of meetings with business leaders, government officials, politicians and NGOs

The United States consulates have processed 1.22 lakh student visa applications so far this year– an all-time record– whilst also making India the top receiver of student visas, US Consul General Mike Hankey said on Wednesday.

The United States consulates have processed 1.22 lakh student visa applications so far this year (Representative Photo)

“This year we have processed 1.22 lakh student visa applications making India the number one recipient of student visas. We have prioritised three categories of visas– students, humanitarian medical visas and business visas,” Hankey said, adding that the quality of Indian students in US universities was “incredibly high” and the overall number of students in the US currently stands at close to 2 lakh.

The consul general, who is in India for an official trip, said the embassy has sped up processing of visa applications for the Indian students by dedicating extra resources and committing more people to staff the centres to ensure that the staff strength now reaches numbers higher than those prior to the pandemic.

Hankey said that the processing was being distributed through back-office handling across multiple offices.

“We are working as a global team. We have used innovative technological solutions to electronically redistribute non-immigrant visa workloads from overseas posts with high visa appointment wait times to other posts with additional capacity,” he said.

The US diplomat is in Goa exploring potential to expand business and cultural ties between businessmen in Goa and US companies. He also held a series of meetings with business leaders, government officials, politicians and NGOs.

He said that the US consulate has also consciously worked to eliminate the backlog granting travel documents and crew visas for those working on either merchant ships or cruise vessels, through a special push in that regard.

Earlier in November, the US State Department said it was expecting visa processing to reach pre-pandemic levels in the first half of 2023.

“The Department of State is successfully lowering visa interview wait times worldwide. We have doubled our hiring of US foreign service personnel to do this important work, visa processing is rebounding faster than projected, and in fiscal year (FY) 2023, we expect to reach pre-pandemic visa processing levels,” the US State Department said in November.