Imagine that a woman finds out she is pregnant. She needs her own Colombian mom to go to the United States to see her grandson and help him in his new motherhood. It deserves to be simple, however, this Colombian grandmother lately has to wait 874 days just for an interview for a U. S. visa. Your grandchild can be in kindergarten until such time as grandma gets her visa.
Tourist visas, called B1 or B2 visas, are for non-U. S. citizens who wish to travel to the United States to do business, attend a business conference, make a stopover at the family home, or take a vacation. Residents of 39 express countries are eligible for a visa waiver, which allows a 90-day stay in the United States for business or tourism without having to apply for a visa.
People from the other 155 countries will need to speak with a U. S. embassy or consulate. U. S. to download a visa. The average wait time for an appointment is 344 days, or nearly a year. And that’s just the average. If a Nigerian woman needs to stop by her boyfriend’s house in Atlanta, for example, she will have to wait 850 days just for an appointment at the embassy. A circle of relatives from Guyana who hope to stop at Disney World will wait 900 days to obtain a visa. appointment. A doctor in Mexico who wants to attend a U. S. medical conventionThe U. S. administration next year will not get an appointment for an average of 624 days, long after the assembly ends.
COVID-19 has stifled tourism around the world, however, as the pandemic comes to an end, tourism is expected to return to normal. However, this is not the case. The State Department attributes staff shortages and the pandemic to visa backlogs, but other Western European countries facing similar COVID-19 restrictions and hard work markets still need to process guest and tourist visas in a matter of weeks.
An explanation of why it is that the U. S. it still requires in-person interviews for all visas, while an Australian visa, for example, can be received online.
The U. S. U. S. consumers can also conduct interviews practically on Zoom or some other similar platform. Researchers can simply work practically from the U. S. In the U. S. , avoiding any concerns about COVID-19, reserving interviews for the few applicants with red flags or other concerns.
This challenge affects me personally. My son’s friend in Lagos, Nigeria, has a medical condition that requires an assessment and remedy imaginable at a point of care not offered in her home country. Despite an appointment and letter of need from a surgeon at a U. S. elementary school physician. An expedited visa appointment at the U. S. consulate was denied. In the U. S. , which means a wait of more than two years. What if the medical challenge doesn’t wait?
It doesn’t help that, for several weeks, the U. S. Consulate is not helping to. . . The U. S. department of state in Lagos has not had visa appointments for any reason, adding emergencies. To request an expedited emergency appointment, applicants will first need to get a normal appointment, but without appointments, the initial application cannot become an emergency. This means that a Nigerian with a dying relative in the United States would not even be able to apply for an emergency visa.
When wait times increased a few years ago, then-President Barack Obama issued an executive order requiring 80% of transit visas to be issued in less than 21 days. That order was rescinded by former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden has not reinstated him or otherwise corrected this situation. It is completely within Biden’s strength to solve this challenge, yet this challenge has gained so little media attention that the Biden administration is possibly unaware of it.
People from foreign countries looking to make a stopover in the United States legally, following regulations and spending their own money during their stay in the United States, are asked to wait several years. It is entirely within Biden’s strength to deal with this through further rebuilding the country. visa processing
Dr. Brian C. Joondeph is a physician and writer.