Group items tagged

THE U.S. STATE Department has indefinitely extended a program allowing consular offices to waive in-person interviews for low-risk non-immigrant visa applicants who apply within 48 months of their most recent visa's expiration. Initially scheduled to conclude on Dec. 31, the program will now persist without a specified end date, undergoing regular reviews. This policy applies to consular offices globally. Under the updated program rules, the State Department anticipates the pool of applicants eligible for an interview waiver will at least double, the U.S. Department of State said in a statement. From October 2022 to September 2023, the State Department issued a near-record 10.4 million non-immigrant visas worldwide, partly attributed to interview waiver authority. "Interview waiver authorities have significantly reduced visa appointment wait times at embassies and consulates," the State Department said. "In Fiscal Year 2022, almost half of the nearly seven million non-immigrant visas issued by the Department were processed without an in-person interview. This success in reducing global visa wait times, particularly post-pandemic closures, is ongoing, with continued efforts to swiftly minimize wait times, including for first-time tourist visa applicants."

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT may have expanded an immigrant visa program that can bring more workers to the U.S. to ease the labor shortage but processing those visas may still be delayed due to a pandemic-related backlog. A group of lawmakers recently wrote a letter to the Department of State urging the agency to bring that processing back to pre-COVID levels. The letter, sent by Reps. Darren Soto, a Florida Democrat, and Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican, along with 86 other Congress members says visa processing has been slowed by procedures put in place at the beginning of the pandemic but which are no longer needed because testing and vaccines are so readily available. "[Pandemic restrictions] disrupt the reopening of American businesses. According to the U.S. Travel Association, international visitor spending in the U.S. dropped by 76 percent in 2020, leading to the loss of $141 billion and 1.1 million American jobs," the letter said. the letter said. "As international and domestic travel begin to recover, many travel businesses rely on H-2B and J1 visas to meet short-term and seasonal workforce demands that cannot otherwise be filled. With such a significant portion of U.S. visa processing sites fully or partially closed, travel businesses will not have the international visitors or the temporary workers they need to generate a speedy and robust recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic."