I Can’t Get a Visa Interview!
A German E-2 client with a US citizen son waited 4 months for a visa interview. A Ukrainian client fleeing the war couldn’t get an interview for 8 months. A Vietnamese businessman client with frequent US travel must wait until March 2023 for his interview – 9 months! If you are in in visa limbo, whether you are waiting for an immigrant visa or a simple tourist visa, you are not alone. What’s going on?
In 2012, President Obama issued Executive Order 13597 - Establishing Visa and Foreign Visitor Processing Goals and the Task Force on Travel and Competitiveness.
The Executive Order was serious business for the Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs. After all, the big boss threw down a challenge that 80% of all nonimmigrant visa applicants should be interviewed within 3 weeks of their application! Part of the justification for the Executive Order was that nonimmigrant travel to the US creates jobs in tourism and other industries. Visa are good for the US economy. In fact, as reported by the Christian Science Monitor:
“Every 35 international visitors we welcome to the US generate one American job that can’t be outsourced,” says Roger Dow, president of the US Travel Association.
See https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2012/0119/Obama-at-Disney-World-foreign-tourists-could-create-1-million-jobs
It appears that Consular Affairs (and me) did a pretty good job meeting President Obama’s goal. According to the State Department’s statistics, in Fiscal Year 2013, the Department issued a whopping 9,164,349 nonimmigrant visas.
The Department got even busier and more efficient. For example, in FY 2017, prior to the pandemic, the Department issued 9,681,913 nonimmigrant visas.
See, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-15-773.pdf
Then, Trump, calamity and Covid! In FY 2021, during the height of the pandemic, the Department issued only 2,792,083 nonimmigrant visas – one third the pre-pandemic numbers.
But demand also dropped during the pandemic:
Fiscal Year B1/B2 Applications Total Visa Applications
2020 3,167,451 5,361,338
2021 979,573 3,148,323
But it looks like things are slowly getting back to normal. In May 2022, the State Department issued 668,835 nonimmigrant visas in all classes. Annualized, that’s a rate of about 8,200,000 nonimmigrant visas per year.
As the numbers begin to creep up, the question for nonimmigrant applicants in the queue is, what is current demand, and how long will it take at these rates to work through the backlog? While it would be great to have a Visa Bulletin, or statistics like USCIS has for processing times, those kinds of numbers are a little harder to come by, as the State Department does not publish easy to parse data on how many people sit in the queue unadjudicated, and the data available to the public is always a little older than one would like.
In a fairly informative February 2021 article, the New York Times suggested reasons for this backlog, discussed solutions, and estimated the backlog of visas at about 380,000 at that time. The article is still relevant. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/us/immigrant-visas-consulates-backlog.html
The easy explanation for every management problem for the government and the private sector is the Covid pandemic. Sometimes this sounds like the go-to excuse given in grade school comedy sketches – “The dog ate my homework.” But a lot of it is just politics. Former President Trump and Secretary of States Tillerson and Pompeo caused an exodus of Foreign Service Officers with their xenophobic “Muslim bans” and anti-immigrant posturing. But President Biden’s own posturing probably intruded on the State Department’s resolve to work during the pandemic as well. Consular Officers are not a risk averse lot, as government employees go, and they probably would have done the visa work, if they were directed to do so. The Biden administration likely erred on the side of caution in order to send its preferred message about Covid prevention and masking.
An active Foreign Service Officer told me that the stated internal reason for the Biden administration not addressing this problem is money. While I am sure nobody in the other State Department bureaus wants to give Consular Affairs more money and personnel when there are so many more career enhancing activities to enjoy, the fact is, every Foreign Service Officer is trained in basic consular work and could be repurposed temporarily if the will to do the work was there. Furthermore, if consular functions are really supported by fees for consular services, as we are told, then demand should drive capacity. What are they doing with all those application fees they are collecting? In addition, demand for visas fell by 50% during the pandemic. The available workforce at the Department of State fell less than that. What were all those people doing during the pandemic? Maybe they should have gotten all the backed up back office work out of the way.
There are a lot of things the Biden Administration could do to fix this, but, as far as I can see, they aren’t doing anything boldly, or quickly. For example, nobody has called me to ask me to “un-retire” and return to consular adjudication! I could adjudicate 300 Ukrainians a month, starting next week. They could waive interviews for certain people. They could simply extend visa durations for certain classes.
That said, I suspect that demand lags behind capacity now, and the backlog will shrink faster than expected. Look for consulates and embassies to open new appointments even at times that were once listed as unavailable. To answer a frequent question, there isn’t much that can be done in the typical non-emergency case to jump the queue. The average tourist has little leverage.
My opinion: The Biden team is pretty busy, right now, and they lack the political will or ability to fix the visa situation fast.
My advice to applicants: Get in the queue, and check often to see if you can advance your interview.