Lunch time talk II - Visa Worries

Last few months there has been one question in every Indian’s mouth “Did you hear anything about your H1B extension?”. We are a bunch of people who had their H1B extension due at the same time and are currently waiting for approval. There hasnt been one lunch break in the last 3 months where this has not been a topic of discussion. There has been excel sheets maintained to collect the list of people waiting for their approval.Its been a tension filled few months for all of us. It was expected that the US immigration would come hard of foriegn workers at some point and its unfortunate that its happening to us.

The decisions are taking ages and the updates have been few and far between. People are holding of their plans to visit their homes and it has already made it to the Indian media. The Indian media has jumped on this delay and have started to talk about the same in papers.I can understand the fact that the US immigration wants to make their Visa norms strict but the processing time for the same is the worrying factor. There are people who are waiting for more than 5 months to hear something about their case. No matter how short staffed they are it shouldnt take that long without the applicant getting any information on his/her case.

Even though this has been a frustrating few months for all of us, we have no other choice but to wait little longer. Hopefully some one incharge will realise the same and will speed things up.