The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : US visa: official clears the air on Chennai Consulate

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 29, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

US visa: official clears the air on Chennai Consulate

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, SEPT.28. Among all the southern States, Andhra Pradesh with 52,000 applications accounted for the highest number of visa applications to the US Consulate from September, 2003, to August this year and about 70 per cent of them were sanctioned. Tamil Nadu and Karnataka followed it up with 45,000 and 44,000 applications respectively.

And Indians continue to account for the highest percentage of H1 Quota of 65,000 visas with 42 per cent for the past year, said the US Consul for Public Affairs, American Consulate-General, Chennai, Ravi Canadai, in the first-ever US Consulate web chat organised here on Tuesday under the aegis of TeluguPeople.com, a portal for Telugus around the world looking for information and opportunities on a variety of fields.

The questions

The questions mainly were about visas, educational opportunities, reasons for rejection of visa, and also about Indo-US relations and bilateral trade. Mr.Ravi said that the web chat would enable people clarify their doubts and put things in perspective for them and remove misconceptions. The US Consulate officials were offering web-chat service once a month on a pre-determined topic through Sify.com in Chennai with a US Consulate official taking the on-line queries and answering them.

His advice to students seeking visa to go to the US was to prove that they had the financial resources to support them during their study and that they had strong ties back home that would rule out their prospect of turning an immigrant. Replying to a remark that the Chennai Consulate was notorious for rejecting visas, he pointed out that the highest number of visas was sanctioned by the US Consulate, Chennai.

Corrective mechanism

In fact, to cope with the demand for visas, the office now had 20 service windows, double that of the year before, he said. The open opportunity to reapply was corrective mechanism for visa refusal, he added.

To a question about opportunities for young students from India to participate in work-study programmes, summer internships etc., he answered in the positive. There were internships that could be initiated by any US entity that could issue a J1 documentation.

Asked why the US Government could not make it mandatory for students to return to their home country after their study rather than rejecting visas altogether, he said it was more to do with American values of freedom and liberty. It was a land of immigrants and the US Government would not prevent any one from becoming an immigrant but it had a right to govern itself based on security concerns.

L1 visa

On L1 visa, he said that L1 process was initiated by the employer and approved by the INS. Once approved they would be rarely rejected at the Consulate or Embassy barring exceptions that were referred back to the INS.

About a visa scrutiny centre in Hyderabad, he said right now there was TTS company which assisted applicants, mainly entrepreneurs, going to the US on business purpose get a web appointment.

Websites to visit: www.Fulbright-india.org for scholarship information.

www.Chennai.usconsulate. gov

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