More Indian Americans returning to India

The number of Americans of Indian-origin coming back to India, especially South India, has increased in the last few years as the opportunities available for them here had increased, an American official said on Tuesday.

Even the number of Americans, especially students coming to India for studies had increased, Bryan W Dalton, consul and chief of Consular Services, US Consulate at Chennai, told reporters in Madurai.

Another reason for Americans coming to India was Bollywood.

Some people who did not find jobs in America were also returning, he said. Stating that the number of H-1B visa seekers had come down, he said that this could be due to global economic meltdown and hoped the situation would improve once the United Staes economy picked up.

On complaints regarding rejection of visas for students, he said that Indian students were contributing a lot in the field of research and 103,000 students were studying in America.

He said the visa was rejected only if the certificates and other credentials were found to be fake or the student was not qualified enough or did not submit enough documents for issue of visa.

"No qualified student with good academic background is denied a visa. Even the dependents of Green cardholders visa is denied only if we suspect their ability to take care of the dependents in America", he said.

The number of visa applications processed at Chennai had come down from 240,000 to 190,000 from October 2008 to September 2009. One reason could be that a separate consulate had been opened at Hyderabad, Dalton said.

Though visa could be sought at any of the consulate offices, it would be easy for the consul officials to process the applications faster if the respective state residents sought the visa from the nearest Consul.

To a question, he said there were only few cases of fake Indian passports being submitted at Chennai for visa.

He denied that Indian Muslims were treated differently at US airports and said the same security check procedure was followed for all by the immigrant and security officials at various airports in America.