US fasttracks domestic visa process, 20,000 H1B applications issued in Jan 2024, ‘India will gain quite a bit’

The State Department says that in January, only a certain number of H-1B speciality trade workers in the US will be able to renew their cards. At first, only 20,000 people will be able to join the H-1B local visa extension test programme. These people will only be able to return their cards to the State Department; they will not be able to leave the US.

The process for choosing the first 20,000 applicants has not been made public yet. More information will likely be released by the department next month.

Officials told reporters Monday that the State Department wants to add or keep up a number of programmes, including the home visa extension test programme, in order to cut down on the time people have to wait to come to the US.

"We really need proof of concept that it works before we can do it with a bigger group," Julie Stufft, the deputy assistant secretary for consular affairs, told reporters on Monday. People who live here before would have had to leave the United States because of this big change.

Will the move be good for Indians?

The White House told everyone about the plan when Narendra Modi came to the US in June on a state visit. A huge number of Indian tech workers are also likely to gain from the move.

Reports say that the State Department has been working on starting this plan as a test for a while now. That being said, it was only officially revealed during Modi's visit.

"The first group will do 20,000." Most of those people will be Indians living in the US, and we'll add more as time goes on, Stufft said.