washington external affairs minister s jaishankar has raised the issue of the huge backlog of us visa applications from india with secretary of state antony blinken to which the top american diplomat said he is sensitive to the matter and has a plan to address itblinken blamed the covid19 pandemic for a backlog of visa applications from indian nationalsus visa services are trying to clear a backlog after washington the us halted almost all visa processing worldwide in march 2020 due to the pandemicit is also in our mutual interest to facilitate the development and mobility of talent we agreed that impediments over this should be addressed jaishankar told reporters on tuesday during a joint media availability with blinken at the foggy bottom headquarters of the state department here following their over an hourlong meetingbear with us this will play out over the next few months but were very focused on it blinken said in response to a question when asked about the historic delays in visa appointments that now runs into 800 dayson the question of visas im extremely sensitive to this blinken saidindians make up a large proportion of the recipients of h1b and other work visas granted to skilled foreign workers many in the tech industrythe h1b visa is a nonimmigrant visa that allows us companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertisejayshankar did not specifically mention the h1b visas issue during the joint press conferenceon mobility specifically visas this is particularly crucial given its centrality to education business technology and family reunions he saidthere have been some challenges of late and i flagged it to secretary blinken and his team and i have every confidence that they will look at some of these problems seriously and positively jaishankar saidblinken said the us was trying to address the huge backlogif its any consolation i can tell you that this is a challenge that were facing around the world and its a product largely of the covid pandemic our ability to issue visas dropped dramatically during covid he said as he explained the selffinancing part of the issuing of visaswhen covid hit the demand for visas fell through the floor visa fees went away the system as a whole suffered and then of course in actually issuing visas even with much more limited resources we had constraints from covid about the number of people we could have in our embassies at any one time etc he saidblinken said he had a plan to deal with itwe are now building back very determinedly from that surging resource we have a plan when it comes to india to address the backlog of visas that has built up i think youll see that play out in the coming months he saidbut its something that were very focused on these connections these peopletopeople ties whether its students whether its business people whether its tourists whether its family this is what really links us together blinken saidthe