Technical glitch fixed after a week.
Hajra Ajlan
BENGALURU: A technical glitch that paralyzed US embassies around the world from issuing non-emigrant visas and US passports has now been fully resolved after a week’s delay and the operations are back to normal.
The Department of State experienced technical problems with their visa systems due to which all non-immigrant visa interviews scheduled at the US Embassy in New Delhi and the US Consulates General in Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, and Hyderabad during the period June 22 to June 26, 2015 were cancelled.
The problems resulted from a hardware failure in a State Department facility in the United States on June 9. The failure prevented the Department from processing and transmitting data which included documentation such as fingerprints which are used for security screening of applicants, at visa-issuing embassies and consulates.
Hundreds of computer experts, both from private and public sectors, after having worked 24/7, have brought the system fully back online on Monday. The State Department has cleared most of the visa request backlog.
Arwind Singh and his wife were one of the many people who were stuck in India because of the delay in the visa interview. Singh, who has a job as an assistant professor at a management college in Texas, had recently finished his PhD in the United States and hence needed to change his status from the earlier student visa to the H1B work visa. Unfortunately, the appointment was cancelled and rescheduled to another day after July 6th, disappointing them.
In another case, MO Garg, the head of India’s top scientific body CSIR, could not attend a meeting of the world’s top research organizations in the United States last week as he did not get visa in time. The American Embassy expressed regret over it.
It is the second consecutive year in which a computer problem has affected the visa processing. They are still experiencing problems with some online immigrant visa application forms and have declared to have it fixed by early next week.
1 Comment
Glad things are back to their normal, however quite slow, pace at the State Department. Go to GoUSAVisaCenter for more details.