A large number of U.S. visas go to Indians
Bangalore: Indians have a big share of the 6.6 million visas that the U.S. government issued last year worldwide. About 630,000 went to Indians in their home country and abroad with 'Mission India' benefiting 560,000.
The U.S. Consulate in Chennai, which covers South Indian states, issued 95,000 visas in 1999. Last year, it issued around 230,000 visas, 2.5 times more. "People think that we had issued only 55,000 visas last year, but this is not correct," said Chennai-based U.S. Consulate Officer Ravi Srivastava. Of the 230,000 visas issued, about half of them were for travel purposes, 36 percent were work visas and for their dependents and nine percent were for students.
A majority of Indians were travelling to the U.S. on B-1 and B-2 visas, Srivastava said, while Political-Military and Nuclear Affairs Second Secretary David Holmes added that 90,000 Indian students were studying in the U.S., the largest number. "We have the largest non-resident Indian community living in the U.S. There are as many as 2.5 million Indians there, about four times that of Mysore's population," Srivastava added.
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