Originally Posted by
Keyser
so i hate to be the bearer of bad news but here is some more information i got yesterday....at a function last night i had a half hour conversation with the ias officer in the home ministry responsible for global entry applications for indian citizens....here are a few points from the conversation:
- they were not informed in june 2017 that an announcement was going to be made to open up global entry for indian citizens....
- when the announcement was made they were given a weeks time to comply with the requirements....
- when the requirements were put into place it was initially just a police verification for indian residents....the rest of the background checks were to be done by the us authorities....
- about a week after applications started coming in the pmo added a few requirements like full background verification to be done in india & every indian citizen, regardless of where they were living would be required to go through the police verification process....
Sorry, but I find this hard to believe (not that I doubt you or that this is perhaps what the officer thought actually happened), but the idea of Indians being given access to Global Entry was first mooted in September 2013, nearly four years before it finally came to fruition. Similar statements to the following, reaffirming India's future inclusion in Global Entry, were a part of every joint India US statement since that date, however very little was officially said regarding what both countries were doing in that time frame to make it a reality.
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov...oint-statement
A Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries was signed in June 2016, nearly a year before it launched.
MoU signed to facilitate hassle-free entry of Indians into US | The Indian Express
However, we on this board are all well aware of how India seemingly unilaterally introduced new verification requirements immediately after the applications opened to Indians in July 2017, as evidenced by emails members here received from CBP indicating they had no foreknowledge of this requirement and offering refunds to affected applicants. It would be far from practicality to believe that the Home Ministry didn't know anything about Global Entry or its requirements prior to June 2017 when it had been widely shared in media for years.