Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the processing times, the processing timelines associated with, well we are not discussing, actually Department of State is discussing it which is kind of a rarity and when they do it, my ears perk up because I kind of want to hear what is going on.

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from travel.state.gov, the article is titled: Update on Worldwide Visa Operations under the subheading: Backlogs and Wait Times - How We Got Here. Quoting directly: "As for many service providers, the COVID-19 pandemic forced profound reductions in the Department's Visa processing capacity in two main ways. First, restrictions on travel to the United States and local restrictions on public places like our overseas Consular waiting rooms, curbed our ability to see visa applicants. As most applicants are required by U.S. law to appear in person, these restrictions forced a reduction in the number of Visa applications the Department could process." Yeah, I've been quick to point out in the past that hey a lot of this came from Government insofar as Governments decided to impose lockdowns and all this other kind of stuff. And yeah on the U.S. side of the process I think you can make that argument and say like look Department of Homeland Security chose to drastically reduce their capacity to be able process cases due to office closures etc. With regarded Department of State abroad, especially in terms of Embassies and Consulates, they had to kind of deal with whatever the local prevailing conditions were on the ground and so I am a little less inclined to point the dirty end of the stick at them in the context of “well you could have chosen to do it another way”. You know these Embassies, they are guests of the host nation so it is a little tricky dealing with that. At the end of the day you want to give deference to the local rules basically and that is in my experience what the U.S. did under the circumstances here. Quoting further: "Second is revenue from the application fees that fund Visa processing operations was cut nearly in half. The Department was forced to leave more than 300 overseas Consular Officer positions unfilled in 2020 and 2021. This further reduced the number of Visa applications we can process." Yeah, again good point. You get in this kind of negative feedback loop. You have got less cases, therefore you have got less money, therefore you have got less resources to process cases and it kind of goes into a spiral and that is not particularly good.

Now there does seem to be some hope on the horizon. Quoting further: Where We Are Now. "Since COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted, we are back in business worldwide. 96% of our Embassies and Consulates are again interviewing Visa applicants, and we are processing Non-Immigrant Visa applications at 94% of pre-pandemic monthly averages and Immigrant Visa applications at 130%." Now okay, maybe but boy National Visa Center, this is me talking, National Visa Center still remains a quagmire. It’s still in my opinion very unwieldy, not a very good site for uploading things. Frankly I think the entire mechanism of the National Visa Center's online portal should be totally scrapped and quite frankly rebuilt from scratch and quite frankly should be rebuilt so that it reflects current American Immigration Law. American Immigration law never, because it was written in like the Eisenhower Administration, never presumed this thing called the National Visa Center that would operate the way that it currently does. If you can't tell I have my issues with NVC. The point of this is yeah I do believe probably the Embassies are moving faster but the issue especially with Immigrant Visas is when is your case going to get the Embassy, that is more the issue. Quoting further: "In the past 12 months (through September 30, 2022), we processed 8 million Non-Immigrant visas, well above our best-case projections. We are well on the way to meeting and exceeding pre-pandemic Visa processing capacity" That's good news. I am glad to hear that. I am glad to hear Department of State, as soon as this came to an end, "the going got tough the tough got going", they got moving and they got things up and going. So definitely on one level good news and it will be interesting to see how this goes.

As a practical matter, yeah we are seeing cases kind of thaw out but I'm not seeing it move faster than prior to the COVID situation, than the pandemic and when I say that, they are saying it is moving at 130%, that would mean presumably I would be seeing 30% more cases coming through on this end than I currently am or than I was. Hard to say, the metrics on that where do you begin to count? Do you count from the lowest doldrums when they weren't doing anything whatever 14 months ago, or do you count from prior to this thing starting and compare it to now? I don't know the metrics on that. Long story short it is good to hear the Department of State is moving forward on these and they are getting cases processed out as quick as they can.