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You should be fine. The difficulty happens only if you get "out of status" for some reason. That could happen if you're between jobs, for instance. During that period, it is very inadvisable to leave the US and then try to come back in. You would be entering on a visa from an employer who is no...

I'm Canadian, and my son was in the same situation as you a couple of years ago. It's not a problem to come back to Canada on an OPT or H1, even if your change in status is pending. The difficulty arises only if you're changing jobs, and your change in sponsorship is pending, or some such thing...

Exactly. This whole OCI scheme was based on a demand by ex-Indian-citizens living abroad for dual citizenship with India, not for a visa without an expiry date, which is what they've ended up getting after 10 years of waffling. If such a visa had been the issue, it wouldn't have taken 10 years...

The warnings you're quoting are just standard butt-covering by these governments. Their lawyers have told them to put these things up just so they can say "we told you so" in case there are any problems. They mean nothing beyond that. US and Canadian government web-sites routinely put out all...

Oh please! I live in Canada, where a substantial part of the population have dual citizenship with the countries where they immigrated from. I know one person of Pakistani origin, who has four passports, including British, Canadian, and American. None of these people, or their countries of...

Which, of course, will mean that very few people will become Indian citizens again. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Indian government is so dead set against people actually holding real dual citizenship. What do they think could possibly happen?

No, you're right. The same applies to Canadian citizenship, which you actually have to go to court to lose, if you really, really, want to do that. It's an interesting problem, and one which I don't believe our babus have considered, or are even aware of. Perhaps the situation has never arisen...

So with a PIO card, you don't need a separate visa sticker on your passport, but with a OIC visa you do, thereby making it necessary to carry around your old expired passport with you forever. Since there isn't much substantively different between the two types of visas, I really have to wonder...

Would you have a link for this? Voting is one the most fundamental rights of citizenship, and is totally incompatible with a "U" visa, which is all that this OIC scheme is. Either they're thinking of changing Article 9 of the Consitution, or (more likely) they're just blowing smoke again.

qwert97, I'm afraid that speaking for myself, I'm not going to contact any of these people until I'm sure that the process is moving smoothly. I've had too many bad experiences with them, and the less contact I have with them, the better for my state of mental health. In my experience, it's more...

They're not confused. This a deliberately created illusion, that they know most people wouldn't question. Think about it - constant use of the word "citizenship", a blue booklet that looks like a passport but isn't, and ceremonies to hand those things out. If they called it what it really was...

I'm pretty sure that these delays are deliberate on their part. Imagine if everyone got their booklets and stickers in a couple of months. What are they going to do for revenue then? This way, it keeps a lot of people hanging for months, maybe years, and forces them to keep going back to the...

One more thought about those stickers and booklets. I know something about the printing business. Those booklets can't be produced at all, unless they're produced in quantity. The only way they're economical to print, is if they're printed in runs of 10 or 20 THOUSAND at a time, at the very...

Well, congratulations. I live in Toronto as well, and I saw that ceremony on the Asian news last night. Looks like the consulate just received about 10 stickers, and they made the most of it by handing them out on television. What they're not showing is the frustrating wait everyone else is...

What are the chances that the Indian government will cancel this program in a couple of weeks or so, and then announce that it's looking into changing the Constitution, so everyone come back in 5 years? Against my better judgement, I'm considering applying for one of these U visas myself, but...

All 374 of them, with a batch of 1000 more to follow sometime in the future. That's against a worldwide PIO population of what - 20 million? I wonder if they're drawing them with crayons and coloured pens? That's about the only explanation I can think of for such exteme inefficiency.

I hate beating this subject to death, but they're not dual citizens. In any case, there seems to be a serious disconnect between the PM's office, and what's actually going on. Manmohan Singh may be big on concepts, but if we measure him against results, then he is proving to be very inept...

I was discussing PM Manmohan Singh with someone the other day. This person was praising the PM for being a nice, decent, knowledgeable guy. Now I'm not sure that "nice" and "decent" are qualities that one needs if one must control the Indian bureaucracy. They may be a severe hindrance, in fact...

What he's saying is that not only are they going to discriminate against Canadian citizens on the OCI fee, they're already discriminating against us on all other consular fees, which those ridiculous exchange-rates are also being applied to. Otherwise, he's just passing the buck. He figures he's...

I have a simpler one. They're hoping they can rob us blind, and that we're too stupid to notice.