28%riseinvisas for Indians, 40% fall for Pakistanis

ISLAMABAD: The number of American visas granted to Pakistanis under the administration of US President Donald Trump has fallen 40% despite Pakistan not being a target country of his travel ban order.

Interestingly, the number of non-immigrant US visas to Indians has increased 28% in March and April this year as compared to the monthly average for the previous year, monthly official data from the US State Department showed.

Non-immigrant visas granted to Pakistanis are down by 40% in March and April compared to the 2016 monthly average, a Pakistani media report said quoting the data.

Pakistanis were issued 3,925 non-immigrant visas in April and 3,973 visas in March 2017. The Obama administration last year issued a total of 78,637 non-immigrant visas to Pakistanis, with a monthly average of 6,553, which was 40% higher than the current average. Before March this year, the State Department did not release monthly breakdowns of visas and only annual figures were available. The report compared the March and April 2017 figures with monthly averages for 2016. Even in 2015, monthly average remained 6,179 as a total of 74,150 Pakistanis had been granted visas.

A spokesperson of the State Department told the The News International: “Visa demand is cyclical, not uniform throughout the year and affected by various factors at the local and international level. Visa issuance numbers tend to increase during peak travel seasons, such as during the summer and the winter holidays, though there may be different trends at the country, nationality, or visa-category level”.

The data showed that Indians received 87,049 visas in April and 97,925 in March this year. Last year, people from India received 72,082 non-immigrant visas each month on average with an annual total of 864,987 visas.

Iran, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen, the target countries of Trump’s travel ban, saw a 55% fall in non-immigrant visas compared with last year’s monthly average.