Department of State Provides Update on Worldwide Visa Operations

The Department of State (DOS) announced that worldwide visa operations are recovering faster than expected from the COVID-19 pandemic. DOS is successfully lowering visa interview wait times worldwide and has doubled its hiring of U.S. Foreign Service personnel. DOS expects to reach pre-pandemic processing times by the end of this year. Ninety-six percent of U.S. embassies and consulates are interviewing visa applicants, and nonimmigrant and immigrant visa applications are being processed at 94 percent and 130 percent of pre-pandemic monthly averages, respectively.  In the past 12 months, DOS processed 8 million nonimmigrant visas, and is expected to meet and exceed pre-pandemic visa processing capacity. DOS credits part of its success to its expanded visa interview waiver program. DOS estimates that 30 percent of nonimmigrant visa applicants worldwide may be eligible for an interview waiver, which will make in-person interview appointments more accessible. Other DOS milestones include: 1) reducing the overall immigrant visa interview scheduling backlog by 25 percent; 2) adjudicating more student visas in July 2022 than in any other month since 2016, with nearly 180,000 F, M, and academic J visas processed; 3) exceeding pre-pandemic levels of visa processing for seasonal agricultural and nonagricultural workers; 4) issuing all available E-3 visas in FY 2022; and 5) issuing the highest number of Diversity Visas (DV) in the past 25 years, with all available DV numbers exhausted when that total was combined with the domestic applications in the U.S.

If you are planning international travel, please visit the website of the U.S. Embassy or Consulate where you are applying for important information about your visa interview. You can also look up visa appointment wait times on the Department of State website.