I had to renew the H1B and H4 visas for myself and my dependents this year in India. Our renewals qualified for the dropbox process and this post captures notes from the entire process.
We created DS-160 Non-immigrant Visa Applications for each applicant. We chose the Chennai (India) consulate since it is the closest one to our city Bengaluru. This onerous process was somewhat easier only because we were able to import our old DS-160 applications and use that to create the new DS-160. At the end of this process, we get DS-160 confirmation page and the DS-160 number for each application that are required for getting a consulate appointment.
We used the USTravelDocs website to make the appointment fee payments from an Indian bank and schedule an appointment. During this process, the series of questions by the wizard determined that we qualified for dropbox appointment and did not need a consulate interview appointment. The dropbox process allows submission of documents in 6 other cities in addition to the 5 cities with US Consulates. Though I planned to submit in Bengaluru (which does not have a consulate) the website still requires getting an appointment at a US Consulate. So I scheduled a dropbox appointment at Chennai and the process ends with an appointment confirmation page that lists the appointment location and time and the DS-160 numbers of the applicants.
The USTravelDocs website allows rescheduling the appointment to a different city and date up to 4 times. Since we wanted a better appointment date that would be during our kid’s summer break, we checked the website regularly. We were able to reschedule to a date that worked better for us using this process.
We booked our flight tickets to India and prepared the original and copies of documents needed for the application.
The dropbox seems to be outsourced to the VFS company in India. Their office in Bengaluru was in a mall. We arrived at the location at our designated appointment time with all the documents. We were informed that just the principal applicant (me) is enough and my dependents were asked to go home.
After going through security check, I was assigned a ticket number and sat in a room of applicants waiting for my ticket to be called. For my afternoon appointment, the waiting time turned out to be about 2 hours.
Though I had brought in a lot of extra documents, the VFS official only collected the following:
After submitting at VFS, the status of the application can be tracked at 2 different websites:
Here is my timeline of progress for my application:
The documents required to pick up the passports from VFS are described here.
I went to VFS center the day after I received the notification emails and endured more than an hour of waiting time in the morning to pick up our passports.
The VFS representative took these documents to give our passports:
Overall, I felt that the dropbox process in my home city instead of traveling to a US consulate city is an order of magnitude easier. Needless to say it is less stressful since there is no interview by a consulate officer.