juliajane

With all the problems that are posted..is there any way to pay a fee and have an agency handle the headaches? My son will need a student visa as he is going to India in December for 5 months. We plan to visit him in March. If the fee is not too high I would rather pay someone to avoid hassle...is this possible?

jacketwatch

How much is too high? As you perhaps read my lawyer charged $500.00. Then ther was the 10 yr. visa fee of about $167.00 or so. Perhaps an agency can do better but for me given all the hassle dealing with BLS it was money very, very well spent.

juliajane

too high for us as we will need 5 visas...Maybe if I start now it wont be so bad!!

Kathie

Yes, you can have an agency get the visa for you. BUT - they have to go through BLS. There is no way to avoid BLS in this process. Will you be better off with the (additional) agency tracking this for you? No one knows. The agency fee would likely be about $100 on top of the visa fee.

A more expensive option would be what jacketwatch did. For most people, I don;t know that this would be money well spent, but he has special circumstances that made his visas more complex. Obviously, he felt it was money well spent.

I'd wait a month before starting the visa process to see if BLS gets it together. If they seem to be operating smoothly, I'd just apply through them. If not, I'd get a visa service, like Travisa to secure the visas. Only if that went seriously awry would I engage an attorney.

Just my opinion.

jacketwatch

My lawyer has contacts in the Indian consulate her in Chicago which helped a great deal in the past ironically when travisa was the agent. My wife was given a very hard time by them and when we went to their office we were told to leave as we did not have proper documents even though someone else there said we would be fine. The lady tried to slam the door in our faces but in the end we prevailed. Our lawyer called his contact in the consulate, explained our situation and was told we would be fine so I had something to stand on.

When it was time to renew our visa there was no way I was going to risk it w/o his help and all went well. Getting my visa last time thru travisa was fairly easy so I decided to wait and get it on my own. Then I heard of all the hassles with BLS as they had taken over the process. No way for me. We now have 10 yr. visas and in all likelyhood given our ages this will be all we will ever need so basically that comes to about $133.00 per yr. for 10 yrs. For me it was worth it but thats me. Avoiding a hassle like this due to gross incompetence is nearly priceless.
JM2C.

foggybridges

Travisa!!

$60 for them to process your visa. Yes, you have to go thru BLS but I had my passport back to me in less than 10 days- and I didn't pay for rush! Passport and application were dropped off at BLS on August 29th at the Houston Office, and my passport was on my doorstep Sept 5th!

Please don't pay some lawyer $500, that is ridiculous.

uhoh_busted

I just downloaded the forms from BLS as we will travel to India in February. I noticed the website suggests waiting to buy airfare until you have your visa. Obviously not set up for how most people travel internationally. Who does that?

The form itself appears to try to cover ÀLL types of travel and travelers. I assume as a tourist my Indian "sponsor" will be my Indian TA.

I figured our situation is simple enough we can apply in October and be sure to have all the i's dotted and t's crossed so as to avoid stress.