US Embassy Temporarily Suspends Visa Applications in India for Technical Updates
The US Embassy in India has announced a temporary suspension of the visa application process for a period of three days. From July 12 to July 14, the visa service will be unavailable as the embassy undertakes technical upgrades. The service is scheduled to resume on July 15 after the completion of the revamp.
According to the embassy, the suspension is due to its visa service partner, VFS Global, migrating to a new platform. As a result, appointment booking and visa fee payments will be temporarily inaccessible during this period. The embassy has provided information regarding a new email address for reaching the VFS Global customer service center.
In a tweet, the US Embassy stated, “Attention visa applicants! Our customer service center VFS is migrating to a new platform and will be temporarily closed for calls, fee payments, and appointment booking from July 12-14. These services will resume on July 15.
For more information, please visit https://ustraveldocs.com.”
Effective July 15, the US Embassy in India will transition to a new system for US visa services. Therefore, the embassy has advised all applicants to ensure that their profile data is complete and accurate. Applicants who have already made visa fee payments but have not associated them with their profile are requested to enter the payment receipt number into their profile.
The embassy further added that if travel coordinators, group coordinators, or families have added dependent visa applicants to primary applicant profiles, each dependent/applicant must have a unique email address. This may require changing the currently listed email address. The embassy encourages individuals to contact their call center for assistance in updating this information.
It is worth noting that the US Department of State recently increased visa fees for non-immigrant applicants. The fee hike, effective June 17, raised the application fee for visitor visas for business or tourism (B1/B2) and other non-petition based NIVs, such as student and exchange visitor visas, from USD 160 to USD 185. Additionally, the application fee for certain petition-based nonimmigrant visas for temporary workers (H, L, O, P, Q, and R categories) was increased from USD 190 to USD 205.
