Once an appointment is scheduled, the MRV will be locked in and will be valid for the related visa application. 30, 2023, but must be booked before that date. 30, 2023, in order for the MRV fee to remain valid. Anyone who paid the MRV fee during the COVID-19 pandemic will need to book an appointment by Sept. The State Department is preparing to make an announcement about the validity of Machine Readable Visa (MRV) fees.Criteria for expedite requests can be found here.Officials may grant expedite requests for particularly large meetings, high-level executive travel or in cases where Indian nationals need to travel to the U.S. For business travel, Mission India generally requires something more than standard business meetings, conferences, workshops or tradeshows for an expedite request to be approved.Officials do not have the capacity to grant every request and have strict criteria for the requests they do grant. The Embassy receives several hundred expedite requests each week.Applicants can change their appointment if an earlier appointment becomes available. There are no longer any placeholder appointments. Appointments in 20 are real. Mission India also made some software changes to make it more difficult for third-party agents to take appointments. From Dropbox to interview: Mission India is updating its software to make it easier for applicants who would qualify for Dropbox appointments to instead seek an in-person interview (and request an expedite, if needed). This change is expected in the coming days.In the next few weeks, India will open 100,000 appointments for 2023 for H and L visas, including for first-time H and L applicants. Wait times for these appointments should begin to drop within the next two or three weeks. Officials are also sending interview waiver/Dropbox cases to posts outside of India. Mission India continues to utilize its expanded Dropbox authorities to reduce the number of cases requiring an in-person interview. Utilizing expanded Dropbox authorities.The State Department is sending temporary officers to assist as Mission India pushes toward its normal staffing level. Now it is at about 70 percent and climbing steadily. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mission India was operating at about 50 percent capacity. Mission India plans to be at 100 percent staffing within the next year. Highlights from the event are as follows. Embassy in New Delhi’s Minister Counselor for Consular Affairs, Don Heflin, provided an update on visa processing in India last week, outlining the steps officials are taking to reduce their processing time and appointment backlog.

Us dropbox visa status