H1B, H4 Visa

Hi everyone,

I would like to thank Immihelp for providing extremely helpful information on H1-B / H-4 renewal in the wake of the prevailing situation.

Let me narrate my H1-B / wife's H-4 visa renewal experience via drop box. This is my way of contributing my experiences to this very informative forum.

Background:
Ph.D in Computer Science, working for a US company (direct)
I-140 approved around two years ago
Changed jobs a year ago.
H1-B visa from previous company / wife's H-4 visa are still valid.
Consulate: Mumbai, India

I was planning on visa renewal with the new company name on it.

I thought I would have to go through the visa interview. The thinking was that dropbox was applicable only if the company name did not change.

Much to my surprise, my friend informed me that it was possible to do this via Dropbox. They removed the restriction sometime during 2015. I searched through Immihelp postings and discovered that this was indeed the case! If I had known this earlier, I would've renewed during my previous India trip two months ago!

So, now, we decided to go ahead with the renewal as quickly as we can, before any changes in H-visa policies go into effect. It is Feb 2017, and we chose to travel around President's Day. I used the NEFT transfer to pay the visa fees a few days ago (in the US), and the receipts were smoothly activated about three hours later into my UStraveldocs account. I took a print-out of the dropbox checklist and gathered all my supporting documents asked of me in the checklist. My company had a three-day weekend, and we landed in Mumbai, India a day prior to President's Day.

My wife and I decided to take a calculated risk and show up at the Document Collection Center on President's Day. It was on the way to my destination, and if this were closed, we had nothing to lose and would get back the following morning.

Much to our delight, the security informed that the dropbox facility was open!

The place was empty, there was no queue, and I was ushered into the facility. All other services (fingerprinting, etc) were closed EXCEPT for the dropbox counters having two people collecting and inspecting documents. The whole atmosphere was stress-free and security guards and staff were, as usual, very courteous and polite albeit with the obvious alertness.

Around seven people were ahead of me. Finally my turn came. All my documents checked out correctly EXCEPT for the photograph I took at Costco a week ago! This was not acceptable because my face was supposed to cover 80% of the picture, and Costco did not do the due diligence on this one!! Ditto for my wife.

Fortunately there was a photo-capturing service available in the adjacent building and they did a good job of taking our pictures and processing these. Granted, it was expensive but, hell, they knew what they were doing and how the pictures should turn out, and I had no issues. I got back to the dropbox facility with the pictures and now that these were accepted, was informed to check a week later on the status.

One week elapsed.

I consulted the UStraveldocs website and upon login, was informed that our passports left the consulate and were on their way to the Document Collection Center.

Then I quickly visited CEAC and checked my visa status which informed "Issued".

In a day or two my wife and I will pick up our passports.

I hope this information is of use to others.

Here's wishing everyone All The Best with the visa application process!

Regards,

Venky