Students who were planning to begin their studies at US universities and were all prepared and had received their I-20 documents from the respective universities and were anxiously waiting for the visa interview slots to be available. Here is the good news!
The US Embassy in India has announced that visa interview slots have been opened for June, July & August 2022, and their first tranche of interview dates are open for June & first half of July and has also told the students not to panic if they don’t get the slots in this first tranche and there will be open slots for the rest of July and the first half of August later.
And added, if resources permit, additional appointments in June and July may be made available. But for students who have previously been denied a visa must hunt for open appointments in the second half of August 2022.
They have opened slots for student visa interviews earlier this year than they did last year, when they opened slots in the second half of June 2021, because of the pandemic situation. They hope to issue more student visas this year than the previous record of 62,000 issued last year for Fall 2021 students, so they have opened 1,00,000 appointment slots for student visas.
They also stated that tourist visa appointments would resume in September 2022. Previously scheduled placeholder appointments will be cancelled, and they can now re-enter the scheduling system and book appointments that have been opened through 2023. The United States welcomed approximately 2.2 crore overseas visitors the previous year and India was the 3rd largest source country with 4.3 lakh visitors and expecting even more this year.
[Data Source: US department of commerce data]
