The ongoing increase in visa wait times for foreign nationals is not a lack of progress, but a surge in demand for travel to the United States, a State Department spokesperson has said.
According to a report from Travel Weekly, the spokesperson said that wait times do not mean that people are not being issued visas, but they simply reflect the extremely high level of demand for a US visa, VisaGuide.World reports.
“In fact, some of our busiest visa-issuing posts, including in Mexico, issued more visitor visas in fiscal year 2022 than in prepandemic fiscal year 2019,” the spokesperson said.
Officials from the the State Department previously said that extreme visa wait times for foreign visitors were resolved as of August 11; still, countries like Mexico and India continue to be subject to the same difficulties.
Authorities in the United States issued 19.4 percent more nonimmigrant visas in the first nine months of this year compared to the same period in 2019.
“In March 2023, for the first time in nearly a decade, we issued more than 1 million nonimmigrant visas in a single month. We expect to continue to exceed prepandemic visa-processing levels this year,” the spokesperson pointed out.
The report also notes that, according to the State Department, wait times for first-time visitor visa interviews in India marked a total of 70 percent decline since the beginning of this year and that the US has issued 46 percent more nonimmigrant visas in comparison to the same period last year. At the same time, in Mexico, 21 percent more visas have been issued.
But the travel industry would like to see action taken to meet the demand.
“Without immediate State Department focus, the U.S. will fall further behind in the competition for global travelers, delaying our ability to fully rebuild America’s inbound travel sector,” Freeman said.
According to Travel Weekly, in Mexico, wait times were at 726 days, up from 701 registered in early July. At the same time, in India, waits were at 484 days, up from 410 last month. In contrast, in Brazil, visa wait times decreased to an average of 147 days, down from more than 500 registered in June.
The President of the National Tour Association, Catherine Prather, said the organization is discouraged by the surge in wait times in India and Mexico that they remain significantly high in other countries.
In order to reach the US, persons can apply for different US Visa types, depending on the purpose of their travel. In principle, there are two primary categories for US visas: Nonimmigrant and Immigrant visas.