The US Congress has allocated $50 million to the US State Department in a bid to decrease the visitor visa interview times.
The announcement was made by the US Travel Association Executive Vice President of Public Affairs and Policy, Tori Emerson Barnes, on Wednesday, VisaGuide.World reports.
Regarding this decision, Barnes praised Congress for providing funding to reduce long wait times for visitor visa interviews, which currently average 400 days in key source markets.
US Travel applauds Congress for directing funding to address excessive visitor visa interview wait times, which currently average 400 days in top source markets. The State Department must now deploy these resources as quickly as possible to lower wait times and facilitate growth in inbound visitation.
Among other things, US travel pushed Congress to consider the Visa Processing Act in order to upgrade the whole visa process.
Further, US Travel urges Congress to consider other critical measures like the Visa Processing Improvement Act (S.2632) to modernize the entire visa process, particularly as the U.S. prepares for a decade of major international events.
US Urged to Reduce Visa Processing Time for 2026 FIFA World Cup
Prior to this decision, the US Travel Association urged authorities to work on reducing visa wait time since that impacts the FIFA World Cup, an important sports event scheduled for 2026.
Travel industry experts noted that this issue could affect millions of soccer enthusiasts intending to attend the FIFA World Cup, which is co-hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada.
The World Cup is maybe 800 days away. With Colombia, that’s a real concern because right now, the average wait time for that particular market is around 725 days.
Earlier this year, the US Bureau of Consular Affairs stated that they are focused on reducing wait times for visitor visa applicants needing in-person interviews, especially in countries where demand is high.
Our goal is for more than 90 percent of our overseas posts to have visitor visa interview wait times under 90 days in 2024.
Last year, 230 US Embassies and consulates around the world issued a record of over 10.4 million visas. Of those, 5,939,797 million were visitor visas.
More specifically, 5.9 million accounted for B1/B2 visas, 29,286 were B1 visas and 8,085 were B2 visas.