U.S. Issued 900,000 Visas to Indians in 2014

The number of Indian students in the U.S. has been rising every year as indicated by rising visa applications processed by the American Embassy in India, a senior U.S. envoy has said. "Last year, the number of visa applications increased by almost 20 percent, but the number of visas applications by students increased by more than 20 percent," Thomas J Vajda, the U.S. consul general in Mumbai, told reporters Thursday.  He said Indians are the second largest student group in the U.S. after the Chinese. "There has been a particular increase in the number of students studying in the U.S.A. There are 100,000 Indians studying in America and it is the second biggest group after the Chinese," Vajda said. As the Indian economy improves, more people would travel to America, he said, adding that the U.S. facilitates travel for business, investment, tourism and education. "For India, we issued almost 900,000 visas and in Mumbai alone it was 300,000 last year. So visa allocation last year was 20 percent more than the previous year. We have spent hundreds of million dollars in India to create new facilities for visa services," he said. The U.S. embassy in India gets 1,500 to 2,000 visa applications a day, he said. "Most of them are issued a ten-year visa, 65 percent of those getting H-1B visa are Indians," Vajda said. http://www.indiawest.com/news/india/u-s-issued-visas-to-indians-in/article_82d49564-cefe-11e4-a603-7b0dcc25ed51.html