The United States Consulate General in Chennai will be the sole blanket L category visa acceptance and processing centre, and companies throughout the country have to send the applicants exclusively to Chennai for visa interviews, said Nicholas Manring, Chief of Consular Services at the US Consulate here, on Tuesday.
Addressing a press conference, Mr. Manring said that the decision was to streamline the blanket L visa issuance process. The Consulate here handled a majority of such applications.
Blanket L visas are issued to managers, executives or specialised knowledge professionals transferred within the company.
The move would not affect spouses and children of L1 visa holders as they and individual L1B and L1A visa applicants could still be processed at any US Consular section in India, he said.
The centralisation would affect the location for processing L1 blanket visas and there was no change in the law or policy for visa processing.
For further information, visa applicants could visit the US Embassy website at www.newdelhi.usembassy.gov, or mail the mission at infousdelhi@vfshelpline.com for free and accurate visa information.
With more than 1.03 lakh Indian students studying in US universities, Mr. Manring said that the student visa applications increased by 18 per cent in 2011 with the US Fiscal Year (FY) ending September 30.
H-1B Visas
In the US fiscal year 2011, the H-1B (specialised skills work) visa issuances in India increased 24 per cent from FY 2010. This was the highest ever H-1B application and issuance rate in the history of the US Mission to India.
In the past four years, applicants from the country have received more than twice as many H-1B visas as the four next highest countries combined, Mr. Manring said.
