AMERICA needs time to resolve visa wait time, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for visa services with the Bureau of Consular Affairs with the State Department, Julie Stufft, has said.
The Deputy Assistant Secretary spoke at a briefing in Washington DC on America’s efforts to process more visas for applicants worldwide.
Stufft said the State Department has made significant progress toward improving visa processing worldwide.
“The bottom line is that we’re recovering faster than we projected after a near-complete shutdown and freezing of our consular operations overseas during the pandemic. But this progress is still uneven across many of our posts overseas, and we’ll need some additional time and tools to resolve wait times everywhere worldwide, which is our goal.
“Let me tell you where we are right now. First, we’ve met demand and even exceeded pre-pandemic visa levels for some key categories of travelers. A few examples of that are that we’ve processed more temporary worker visas this summer, including for agricultural workers, than any prior year on record at the State Department. Also this summer we exceeded student visa adjudications for – before any other year other than six years ago, I think, was the last record that had gotten as high as we are now. So we’ve adjudicated more visas this year than in the past six years,” she said.
Stufft added that America was returning to pre-pandemic visa levels for all categories faster than projected.
She said: “Let me give you some examples of numbers on that. Our posts overseas this year have adjudicated about 70 percent more nonimmigrant visas than last year. Each month we do about 800,000 nonimmigrant visa applications at posts overseas. That’s about 80 percent or a little bit more of pre-pandemic levels, and that is growing steadily. At the same time, immigrant visa processing is almost back to normal levels, with the pre-pandemic backlogs down 25 percent and adjudications for immigrant visas at about 95 percent overseas.”
Stufft said the consular section has worked with the Department of Homeland Security to authorize consular officers overseas to grant waive in-person interviews for a number of key visa categories.
“The types of visas where interviews can be waived include temporary agricultural workers and many applicants who have previously traveled to the United States in any capacity, not just the category for which they are currently applying. By applying these authorities to waive interviews, we’ve reduced wait times at many embassies and consulates considerably. Right now the wait time for routine visa appointment at half of our overseas posts is less than four months and at some posts is actually far, far shorter than that.”
