On May 11, Don Heflin, Minister Counselor for Consular Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi went live on Instagram and Facebook to provide an update on visa services with a special focus on students. This is a summary of the information shared with the audience.

The Minister started out by saying that the summertime is all about visas and that they had made special arrangements for student visas. He confirmed that they had issued a record 62,000 student visas last year and expected to break that record this year. In fact, they expect to issue more student (F, M and Js including dependents) visas than ever before.

When addressing questions about return to “normal” levels of service the Minister indicated that this year they expect to be a 2/3rd of their pre-COVID capacity and hope to reach 100% of this by the end of 2023. To increase capacity, Mission India is recruiting more officers in addition to training existing staff members etc. They recently added five more visa officers at their Consulate in Mumbai.

A large number of student visa appointments will be rolled out in the ensuing months starting next week.

Students currently in the U.S. will get Dropbox appointments easily as they will open more appointments for them.

Between August 15 – September 1 they will open up 15,000 slots for students with past refusals. Students who receive their I-20s later than expected could also avail of these appointments.

Parents who have visas or are eligible for a Dropbox appointment could travel to the U.S. with their student children.

Appointments for first time B-2 visa applicants or for those who do not qualify for Dropbox (collectively call new applicants here) appointments may avail of appointments that will be added to the system in late August or early September. They will release a large number of appointments from this period through Spring 2023 for new visa applicants.

Pitfalls and Tips
Check for visa appointments multiple times a day but if you “refresh” the portal frequently you may be locked out of the system for 72 hours.

Applicants are advised to be prepared to “tell their story” during the visa interview, which should be similar to an elevator pitch as visa interviews usually last for a couple of minutes or so.

Applicants should be able to convey to the officer why a particular course, or level of education makes sense to the applicant’s career goal. Be ready to explain how the intended education fits in with your life. This becomes more important when an applicant is changing academic tracks or pursuing a second degree at the same level of an existing one.

Applicants should carry all their financial documents to the interview but officers at Mission India generally do not focus on ability to pay for the course as Indian parents almost always find ways to pay for the education and stay.

Neither English language tests nor high levels of proficiency in the language are prerequisites for an interview. However, an applicant who is not proficient in English may find it difficult during the interview to justify bonafide intent to study.

Applicants may use agents to procure visa appointments and help with the application but this could be risky as the agent’s errors or misrepresentations would be attributed to the applicant and could affect visa adjudication.

Applicants who get 221(g) notices must take the action required in the notice without any delay. This helps the officers quickly make decisions.

Third country nationals may apply in India, but it is best to apply in the country where one resides.

A visa can be issued only within 120 days before a student’s course start day. One could apply before that, but the case will be kept pending under 221(g) and the applicant will be asked to send in the passport at a later date.

It helps for the applicant to be confident and articulate at the visa interview. Canned answers do not help but sharing a personal story that influenced the choice of the institute would help.

Dropbox applications are generally processed within seven days after the Dropbox appointment.

Even if the education institute has waived any test, it would be best to take it as a good score would be an advantage in the interview.

In a significant visa policy change, the US has announced that there will be more slots for first-time Indian applicants for student visas.

According to the US Embassy in India, the Indian students who were refused a student visa in the first interview are unlikely to get a second slot this year.

This was announced by Minister Counselor for Consular Affairs at the US Embassy in Delhi, Donald L Heflin. He said this during a Live Facebook interaction on the official page of the US consulate general in Chennai.

“What is really going on with this policy change is that we would rather give all the fresh applicants, who are turning up for the first time for a visa interview to study in a US college, a chance. The best way to do that is to block out the people refused a student visa before,” Heflin said, The Times of India reported.

He said that the embassy had issued 62,000 student visas to Indian in 2021 and hoped that it would be more this year.

“We had a high issuance rate last year and a few got a chance for two interviews. This year, we will open student visa interviews earlier in mid-May and hope to issue even more student visas than the 62,000 issued last year, which was more than ever before,” he said.

The Indian students who were refused the F-1 student visa in Spring this year are not likely to get one more interview slot in Summer of 2022.

Heflin used a cricket term to tell the Indian students that the first interview was their “best chance” to get the visa.

“I am going to use cricket term. A lot of you guys are worried about getting bowled out before you even step on the crease. But a vast majority of students hit a six in the first interview which is your best chance of getting your visa. Don’t worry about whether you get a second chance or not,” Heflin said.

He also said that the US embassy in India is likely to issue 8 lakh visas this year. “8,00,000 visas are projected to be issued in the next 12 months… we opened a lot of slots for processing the visas… we think of eventually meeting the demand of H and L visas.”

In last December, the US had waived in-person interviews till December 31, 2022 for certain non-immigrant visa applicants.

“We are pleased to announce that consular officers are now temporarily authorized, through December 31, 2022, to waive in-person interviews for certain individual petition-based nonimmigrant work visas and their qualifying derivatives in the following categories: Persons in Specialty Occupations (H-1B visas), Trainee or Special Education Visitors (H-3 visas), Intracompany Transferees (L visas), Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement (O visas), Athletes, Artists, and Entertainers (P visas), and Participants in International Cultural Exchange Programs (Q visas).

“Additionally, the Secretary of State has extended consular officers’ current ability to waive the in-person interview, through December 31, 2022, for the following other categories of nonimmigrant visas: Temporary Agricultural and Non-agricultural Workers (H-2 visas), Students (F and M visas), and Student Exchange Visitors (Academic J visas),” it had said.

Contrary to the popular opinion, H-1B visa holders in the United States are among the highest paid workers, new evidence suggests. The median wage of all US workers in 2021 was about $45,000 and the top 10% workers earn a wage of $102,000.

Among the top 10% of US wage earners, the median wage for H‑1B worker in 2021 was about $108,000, well over double the median wage for all US workers, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

This new evidence was brought to light by David J Bier, a research fellow at US think tank Cato Institute.

H1-B program allows US employers, who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the domestic workforce, to employ qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the country. Over the years, Indians, particularly from the IT sector, have been the biggest beneficiaries of this visa. Also, IT companies have been at the forefront of receiving large number of H1-B visas.

“Opponents of the H‑1B visa often claim that H‑1B employers “pay low wages.” This has never been true, but the latest wage data prove how ridiculous this claim is. H‑1B workers are highly paid: their wages are in the 90th percentile of all wages in the United States, meaning that they have wages in the top 10 percent of US wage earners. H‑1B workers are not low wage or “cheap” workers in any honest assessment of the meaning of those words,” he said in a blog post.

H‑1B wages have surged above the 90th percentile for the first time since DHS has reported H‑1B wages in 2003. H‑1B wage growth has also exceeded the growth for all US workers, Bier noted.

From 2003 to 2021, the nominal median H‑1B wage grew 52%, while the nominal median for all US workers grew just 39%. “If H‑1B employers could just pay whatever they want—as opponents claim — these increases would not be happening, Bier said.

“DHS held its annual lottery last week to allocate the 85,000 cap‐​subject H‑1B temporary work visas for high skilled foreign workers. The exact number of entrants is not clear, but once again, demand for H‑1B workers far exceeded the cap.”

As the US House Judiciary Committee approved a bill to remove the discriminatory per country limits on Green Cards and sent it House for the floor vote, activists hailed it as a ‘great day!’

The EAGLE (Equal access to green cards for legal employment) Act seeks to remove the 7% per country cap on employment-based green cards in a phased manner. It also raises the 7% per-country limit on family-sponsored visas to 15%.

However, it does not provide for any increase in the total number of employment-based green cards — the annual limit is 140,000 — nor does it seek to recapture the un-utilized numbers.

“This is a great day!!” tweeted Immigration Voice, a not-for-profit actively working for legal high-skilled immigrants, requesting “the House leadership to bring up EAGLE Act for the floor vote expeditiously to send the bill to the Senate.”

“The passion shown here with the action item has been amazing. As the hearing starts, now is the time to end this action item, and watch the results of all of our collective work. After which we move on to the next action item with even more energy! Kudos,” it wrote.

While the bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Democrat Zoe Lofgren and Republican John Curtis may sail through the Democratic controlled House, its passage through the evenly divided Senate may not be easy.

EAGLE Act holds a ray of hope for Indians stuck in decades-long backlog for employment-based green cards. Their number reached 719,000 in September 2021, with an expected wait time of 90 years according to a recent study by Cato Institute, a Washington think-tank.

Under today’s 7% cap, countries like India and China, which account for over 40% of the world’s population and an even higher percentage of the high-skilled global workforce, receive the same amount of visas as Denmark, a country that accounts for 0.001% of the world’s population.

As a result, immigrants from certain countries, who are as qualified as any other high-skilled worker entering the US, are forced to wait 20 to 30 times longer for lawful permanent residency status (in the form of Green Card), Immigration Voice noted.

“This creates an economically unhealthy reliance on temporary visas and costs the US economy in the form of attrition of experienced high-skilled workers who are compelled to depart the US and migrate to other countries that are more welcoming towards high-skilled workers,” it said.

Per country caps are not only bad for Immigrant workers and American workers, but they are also bad for the American economy, Immigration Voice said citing a study by the CATO institute.

Titled “Higher‐paid Immigrants Forced to Wait Longer Due to Per‐country Limits,” the study estimates that removing national origin discrimination on employment-based Green Cards will result in raising the average wage of an employment-based immigrant by $11,592 – which is a 12% increase.

Additionally, the same CATO study finds that removing the per country caps would result in America welcoming better-educated immigrants.

The EAGLE Act would correct these problems by creating a system where all equally qualified high-skilled workers, no matter their country of birth, will receive employment-based Green Cards in the order in which they apply and based solely on the skills they bring to America, Immigration Voice said.

Also, while the backlog is being cleared, the system will ensure that skilled immigrants from non-backlogged countries

With the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) completing the H-1B initial electronic registration selection for FY 2023, it’s time for high skilled Indian professionals to start filing their petitions from April 1.

USCIS announced Tuesday that it had randomly selected enough applications from among the initial electric registrations to reach the fiscal year 2023 H-1B cap, including the advanced degree exemption (master’s cap).

In recent years, Indian professionals have been getting more than 70% of 85,000 H-1B visas issued annually to high skilled foreign workers, including 20,000 with advanced degrees from US institutions.

USCIS said it had notified all prospective petitioners with selected registrations that they are eligible to file an H-1B cap-subject petition for the beneficiary named in the applicable selected registration.

The Immigration agency said only petitioners with selected registrations may file H-1B cap-subject petitions for FY 2023, including those petitions eligible for the advanced degree exemption, from April 1, 2022. The petitions should be only for the beneficiary named in the applicable selected registration notice.

An H-1B cap-subject petition must be properly filed with the correct service center and within the filing period indicated on the relevant registration selection notice.

The period for filing the H-1B cap-subject petition will be at least 90 days. Online filing is not yet available for H-1B petitions, so petitioners filing H-1B petitions must do so by paper.

Petitioners must include a printed copy of the applicable registration selection notice with the FY 2023 H-1B cap-subject petition.

Petitioners filing H-1B cap-subject petitions, including those petitions eligible for the advanced degree exemption, must still establish eligibility for petition approval at the time the petition is filed and through adjudication, based on existing statutory and regulatory requirements, USCIS said.

Selection in the registration process does not relieve the petitioner of submitting evidence or otherwise establishing eligibility, as registration only pertains to eligibility to file the H-1B cap-subject petition, it said.

USCIS said when it receives a timely and properly filed H-1B cap subject petition, the petitioner (and, if applicable, the petitioner’s legal representative) will be provided a Form I-797, Notice of Action, communicating receipt of the petition.

Due to increased filing volumes typically during H-1B cap filing periods, there are instances where a petition is timely and properly filed, but issuance of the Form I-797 is delayed, USCIS said.

If a petitioner has confirmation from the delivery service that the petition was delivered, but they have not yet received a Form I-797 confirming receipt of the petition, the petitioner should not submit a second petition.

If a petitioner has confirmation from the delivery service that the petition was delivered and they then submit a second petition, the petitioner will be considered to have submitted duplicate petitions. This will result in denial or revocation of both petitions, the agency warned.

If more than 30 days have passed since the confirmation of delivery and the petitioner has still not received a Form I-797, the petitioner may contact the USCIS Contact Center for assistance, it said.

Registrants’ online accounts will now show one of the four statuses — Submitted, Selected, Denied Invalidated or Failed Payment— for each registration.

Submitted: The registration has been submitted and is eligible for selection. If the initial selection process has been completed, this registration remains eligible, unless subsequently invalidated, for selection in any subsequent selections for the fiscal year for which it was submitted.

Selected: Selected to file an H-1B cap petition.

Denied: Multiple registrations were submitted by or on behalf of the same registrant for the same beneficiary. If denied as a duplicate registration, all registrations submitted by or on behalf of the same registrant for this beneficiary for the fiscal year are invalid.

Invalidated-Failed Payment: A registration was submitted but the payment method was declined, rejected, disputed, or cancelled after submission.