US to issue 1 million visas to Indians

Chennai, Aug 12: The United States would soon issue one million visas to Indians in a single year, Acting Consul General and Public Affairs Officers, US Consulate, Frederick J Kaplan said on Tuesday, Aug 12.

Launching the Second Semester Abroad Programme of the SRM University on its campus in suburban Kattankulathur here, he said, ''we get about 1,400 visa applicants at our Consulate in Chennai every single day''. ''We also issue visas at Consulates in Mumbai and Kolkatta and at our Embassy in New Delhi for a total of about 3,800 persons a day in India or 7.6 lakh visas a year.

''We will be opening a new Consulate in Hyderabad later this year. We are processing 20 to 25 per cent more visas this year than last year. It won't be long before we issue a million visas to Indians in a single year,'' he added.

Tracing the relations between India and the US, Mr Kaplan said about 83,000 students from India were studying in the US, the highest compared to any other country in the world.

''Besides, the US and Indian varsities are signing MoUs for various types of cooperation and exchange programmes at a rapid rate,'' he said, adding several US engineering schools at the graduate level would not survive without Indian students.

''Indians perform brillianty in engineering, medicine, business and increasingly in the humanities,'' he said and added according to a Duke University study more than one in seven start-ups in Silicon Valley was founded by an immigrant from India.

University Chancellor T R Pachamuthu and Vice-Chancellor P Sathyanarayanan said as many as 41 students of the SRM University would be sent to various universities across the world, including the MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, SUNY Buffalo University, North Eastern University and in varsities in UK, France, Germany Japan and Australia.

''We are in talks with more universities to achieve the target of sending 100 students a year -- 50 in two batches,'' he added.

UNI