According to Julie Stufft, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Visa Services at the Bureau of Consular Affairs, the US Embassy and Consulates in India have issued 50% more visas this year than they did during the same time prior to the epidemic. She said there was no other nation in the world where it was taking place when speaking at a town hall with Indian communities in the United States.
The Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, Bureau of Consular Affairs, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) of the State Department arranged the town hall to discuss interagency efforts to increase productivity and decrease wait times in immigrant and nonimmigrant visa processing.
The occasion featured remarks from Stufft, Nancy Izzo Jackson, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for India in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs (SCA), Douglas Rand, the Senior Advisor to the Director of USCIS, and Richa Bhala, the SCA’s Chief of Staff.
Assistant Secretary Jackson appraised US-India relations, saying, “President Biden and Secretary Blinken call our relationship with India one of our most consequential global relationships. Our bilateral partnership cuts across our most crucial global strategic priorities in defense, economics, and trade to security, health, and space, critical emerging technology, and our ever-growing people-to-people ties, reflecting the importance of this relationship.”
