Explained | Why are visas from some countries facing delays in processing?

There has been some improvement in some cases but not as much as one would have liked. “A standard tourist visa for the UK now takes six weeks to get processed compared to eight weeks just a few months ago. But this is still higher than the two to three weeks it used to take before the pandemic,” Pranav Sinha, head of VFS Global in India and South Asia had told Moneycontrol in May.

VFS Global is a technology company that governments and missions worldwide have outsourced visa facilitation and other services.

What are the biggest reasons why visa processing time has risen significantly in 2022?

Market participants and experts have attributed the rise in visa processing time to four main factors, namely, shortage of staff at embassies, a sudden rise in tourist visa applications, pent-up applications from students and working professionals, and stricter protocol around granting visas by countries.

A surge in tourist visa applications

VFS Global said that it is experiencing high volumes of visa applications coupled with limited appointment availability and stretched visa processing timelines from India.

“On an average, VFS Global is receiving approximately 20,000 applications from India in a day, which is close to the volumes recorded during the pre-pandemic peak season,” the company said.

Shikhar Aggarwal, joint managing director of BLS International, the second-largest visa processing firm in India, also said that visa applications have grown by an average of 60 percent from the pandemic years, especially for Spain and Morocco.

While the sudden rise in visa applications has not been a cause for concern for visa processing firms like VFS Global and BLS International, embassies of different countries are struggling to keep up with the rising numbers.

Short-staffed embassies

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, most embassies in India had temporarily shut down their visa processing centres and professionals working at the missions were flown back to their home countries.

Once they reopened, the embassies found it hard to bring back the professionals who were earlier working with them as a number of them were sceptical about the COVID-19 situation in India and others had found new jobs, multiple officials from missions located in Delhi told Moneycontrol.

“The growing popularity of work-from-home jobs coupled with the uncertainty around new waves of the pandemic has left many former embassy professionals looking to different jobs,” an official from a European embassy told Moneycontrol.

He added that in most embassies only the ambassador or high commissioner assigned to the diplomatic mission along with their personal staff had returned to India in 2021. Even now most embassies in India are working with around 50 percent of the staff compared to pre-COVID levels.

The minister counselor for consular affairs at the US Embassy in New Delhi last month had also said that their embassy was short-staffed and that this year they expect to be at two-thirds of their pre-COVID capacity, and hoped to reach 100 percent by the end of 2023.

Pent-up applications from students and working professionals

Students and working professionals who had returned to India due to the outbreak of COVID-19 have been trying to return to the countries they had been studying or working in after the pandemic started to subside.

However, a number of them are struggling with visa renewal issues with their applications stuck with embassies.

Many students studying in Australia, the US, UK and China have also reached out to the Indian government to help process their visas.

“Let us request again to the authorities. We can’t be just waiting anymore. We must have an update on our return. While other countries are given (such updates), why are we deprived of it,” said a representative group called Indian Students in China on Twitter.

Deepak Chahal, an Indian PhD student at Macquarie University in Australia, said that he applied for the student Subclass 500 visa on January 14, 2021 and has been waiting for it for 17 months.

Travel agents also told Moneycontrol that students they work with are facing delays that are particularly impacting those that had May start dates.

Amar Bahada, director at Meridean Overseas, a foreign education consultancy, is still awaiting visa decisions for 37 students from the UK who were due to start their university courses in May.

Similarly, Hemant Agrawal, CEO at BitTrack, another foreign education consultancy, said approximately 50 students he works with have been waiting for almost 45 days for their visas to the UK. Bahada said he previously advised students to use the government’s “priority” or “super-priority” routes, through which applicants can pay extra to receive a decision after five or two working days, respectively. However, the UK government had suspended these options in March without warning.

Stricter protocol around granting visas

“As an aftermath of COVID-19 pandemic, visa processing now involves a few more verifications and backend processing as the vaccination certificates of customers need to be verified,” another official from a European embassy told Moneycontrol.

He added that visa processing also faces delays due to changing regulations around vaccination and the acceptance of different vaccines by countries.

“Some countries had made it mandatory for travellers to have taken a booster shot before granting a visa, but due to a backlash from the industry had to reconsider. Such uncertainties are adding to the already existing delays in visa processing,” the first official said.

Furthermore, many countries have also increased additional security and background clearances, industry experts said.

“Additional clearance like countries visited in the past 15 days, genuinity of vaccine certificate, and timeline of older visa may take several weeks to several months to process,” a senior official from one visa processing firm said on condition of anonymity.

Market experts and industry professionals also said that countries that are looking to push tourism activities are facing fewer issues in processing visas.

“Thailand and Spain are granting visas in less than five days in India,” Aggarwal of BLS International said, adding that many customers seeking a Schengen visa are now looking to apply for visas from Spain for faster processing.