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GAO

Why Indian Applicants Faced a 346-Day Average Wait for U.S. Visa Interviews in FY2025

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The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that Indian applicants for nonimmigrant visas faced a 346-day weighted average interview wait in fiscal year 2025—not 364 days. That is an annual, country-level measure, not a live estimate for a particular U.S. consulate or applicant. GAO links the long waits to a mismatch between visa demand and consular staffing, while also documenting a broader rise in applications and a drop in the number of officers working on nonimmigrant visas in FY2025.

What does the 346-day figure measure?

GAO’s report, GAO-26-107902, published September 28, 2026, gives India’s FY2025 weighted average wait for a nonimmigrant visa (NIV) interview as 346 days. The figure comes from State Department data. It is an annual average across the country, not a promise that every applicant waited that long, nor the current appointment estimate at any specific post.

The title figure of 364 days is not the statistic GAO reports. A separate basis for 364 days is not established by the sources. The Hindustan Times article linked below also uses 346 days in its deck and text, despite 364 in its headline.

NIVs include visitor visas for tourism and business, as well as student, diplomat, and temporary-worker visas. GAO says most NIV cases require an interview. Interview waits should not be confused with the time needed for any later visa adjudication or processing.

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Why were waits so long in India?

GAO’s explanation centers on workload and staffing: demand for NIVs was high relative to the consular officers available to handle it. In FY2025, India recorded 1,455,255 NIV applications and 68 consular officers working on NIVs—21,401 applications per officer. Those figures describe the workload and staffing during that fiscal year; they do not mean each officer personally handled exactly that many cases, or establish that staffing alone caused every applicant’s delay.

The imbalance is visible in GAO’s comparison of four countries. India and Mexico had the highest applications-per-officer counts in this selected group, and also reported much longer weighted average waits than Brazil and China.

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Country NIV applications (FY2025) Officers working on NIVs Applications per officer Weighted average interview wait
India 1,455,255 68 21,401 346 days
Mexico 2,658,627 124 21,441 283 days
Brazil 1,141,235 87 13,118 32 days
China 1,206,011 119 10,135 34 days

All values in the table are GAO figures based on State Department data for FY2025. The four-country comparison is useful context, but it is not a ranking of every U.S. visa post or an explanation of every difference between countries.

How did U.S. demand and staffing change?

The India figures sit within a wider U.S. pattern. Most nonimmigrant visa adjudications are visitor visas, and those adjudications increased from 9.2 million in FY2019 to 11.7 million in FY2025 after falling to 1.5 million in FY2021. Over the same endpoints, the global average wait for a visitor-visa interview rose from 26 days to 201 days.

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GAO also reports that the number of officers working on NIVs rose from 1,104 in FY2021 to 1,342 in FY2024, then fell to 904 in FY2025. GAO attributes the FY2025 decline to hiring freezes and attrition. The figures show demand remained high as staffing fell; they do not by themselves quantify how much of the global wait increase or India’s wait was caused by any one factor.

What does GAO want the State Department to change?

The State Department uses a Global Repositioning Exercise (GREX) to assess workload and inform how consular staffing is aligned. State officials told GAO that the exercise is designed to happen annually, but policy does not require it. Since FY2019, State conducted and implemented one GREX. Officials said COVID-related issues prevented exercises in FY2021 and FY2022, while changing policy priorities meant none took place in FY2024 or FY2025.

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GAO recommended that State establish a mechanism—such as policy or guidance—requiring the Bureau of Consular Affairs to conduct GREX consistently, so staffing can better match workloads at individual posts. The recommendation was open in the report published September 28, 2026; State neither agreed nor disagreed.

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What the annual average means for an applicant

The 346-day statistic explains the scale of the FY2025 problem, but it cannot tell an applicant when an appointment is currently available. It is a weighted average across India for a past fiscal year, while appointment availability can differ by post, visa category, and date. Applicants should treat any current appointment estimate as separate from GAO’s historical measure.

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