Indian Samurai इंडियन सामुराई

The tourist visa:

1.     Validity: 6 months or 1 year

2.     Important: you can’t stay more than 90 days with a 1 year tourist visa!

3.     Entries: simple, double or multiple. But be careful, once you leave India, you need to wait 2 months before you are allowed to come back! (you can get a derogation from the local Indian authorities though). Apparently this rule has been lifted in December 2012 (see this site). The best is to check what is written at the bottom of the visa...

4.     Extension: can not be extended nor exchanged in India. But it is possible to extend it in another third country

The business visa:

1.     Validity: 3 months to 1 year

2.     Entries: simple, double or multiple

3.     Extension: can not be extended nor exchanged in India

4.     Important: You can’t stay more than 30 days with this visa in India!

The employment visa:

1.     Validity: 6 months or 1 year

2.     Entries: multiple

3.     Important : Can only be obtained in your country of origin, not in India

4.     Extension: You can extend it 4 times, every year, in India; after that you have to go to your home country and get a new visa (to sum up you can stay maximum 5 years in India with a visa)

5.     Condition to fulfil to be eligible: earning minimum 100 000 rupees (about 1 500 euros) per month except for ethnic cooks and translators

6.     For any change in location (moving to another city), of position (within the same company), of company, you will have to go back to your country of origin and get a new visa

7.     There is a possibility to change visa (from employment to tourist) in a third country

Important: Anyone staying more than 6 months in India has to register to the local Foreign Registration Office.

There are also other visas: journalist, student, spouse, yoga, medical etc. but I am not too aware…

Sources:

In India (Mumbai) : http://www.immigrationindia.nic.in/

In your country: local website of VFS Global

http://goindia.about.com/b/2012/12/03/2-month-gap-on-indian-tourist-visas-removed.htm

On October 12th I happened to watch the news and to see an outraged journalist asking that “how could the UK plan to tighten immigration rules?” Yeah what the hell huh? hat the least they owe the Indians!!

The story here is that till now, “temporary immigration led to an automatic right to settle here”. So if you are a foreigner and you have worked in the UK for 5 years, you can stay without a visa. And now they want to control the immigration of workers.

Before crying wolf, it would be interesting to look at your own immigration rules. Because India is also trying to prevent workers from coming to India and “steal jobs from Indians”! Basically, to prevent Chinese (and some other Asian) laborers to come and take the jobs of Indians, India makes it very difficult for any foreigner to get an employment visa. And then they complain!

So not only do the Indian authorities make it hell to get an employment visa (you need to earn a minimum of US $ 25, 000 per annum,

except if

you are (a) Ethnic cooks,(b) Language teachers (other than English Language Teachers)/Translators, (c) Staff working for the concerned Embassy/High Commission in India and (d) Foreigners coming for honorary work (without Salary) with NGOs registered in the country). And here is what happened when you have renewed your visa 4 times (and thus stayed 5 years working in India)!

Now you go back home and get a new visa my friend!!

But I guess that since we can count around 50,000 foreign workers in India (out of which 1/3^rd is Chinese) against 5 million Indians working abroad, the rules of visa to India do not interest Indians much!  

PS: Foreigners working in India

I found it impossible to find out how many foreigners live in India and how many foreigners work in India!

I found a figure of