Per-Capita Visa Access: South Asia Compared

We at Gallup Pakistan Digital Analytics looked at non-immigrant U.S. visa issuance (2017–2026) for India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh — and the raw totals tell an obvious story: India was issued 8.27M visas vs. Pakistan’s 506K and Bangladesh’s 259K.

But raw totals mostly just reflect population size. So we corrected for it.
Per 1,000 people:

India — 5.65
Pakistan — 1.98
Bangladesh — 1.50

Even after adjusting for population, India’s rate is 2.85x Pakistan’s and 3.77x Bangladesh’s.

An individual Indian is still several times more likely to receive one of these visas than an individual Pakistani or Bangladeshi.

What’s driving that gap? Application volume and demand patterns? Refusal rates? Consular capacity and post density? Economic/travel-purpose mix? Probably some combination — but the size of the gap is bigger than population alone can explain.

Explore more here from Gallup Pakistan Digital Analytics dashboard designed to track visa issuance by US to more than 100 countries including Pakistan

https://lnkd.in/d3ZCPHV2

Data: GDAP / U.S. Department of State visa issuance dashboards.