The system for approving visas to the United States went down about June 9th. It’s a worldwide system, and was also affecting the issuing of US Passports for the first few days (now fixed). Current news is that the system won’t be back up until sometime next week, and then the backlog processing will begin.
I’m kind of bummed out. I was planning to visit the USA with a coworker friend whose visa was approved on June 11th, and told would arrive by Tuesday the 16th. The plan was to fly out this weekend.
On the upside, at least the change fees for Delta were reasonable by airline standards, about $250 per ticket (including both ways) rather than the $450 per ticket each way that I was worried about, and not bad for a 14 hour flight (PVG to DTW). I can’t read Chinese, and since it’s a round trip originating in China maybe there are different change fee rules; because of my China address the new minimum spending requirements also don’t apply to me for status.
Worse, after today it’s a three day weekend, I haven’t made other plans for things to do, and it’s going to rain all day Sunday and Monday.
Anyone else have plans affected by the current government IT system failure?
It’s been a complete clusterfuck for all our clients who need to come to the U.S. on work visas for urgent projects. They are citizens of Visa Waiver-eligible countries, but that doesn’t help them - they still need visas to come to the U.S. in an employment-authorized classification. Some of these things have been in the works for months and are very time-sensitive.
This was very far in advance. It took nearly three weeks for the interview. I suppose “in advance” is relative, but I’ve never needed more than a week to get a visa to anywhere, including China which is bureaucratically even worse than the USA with the documentation required (to live here, though, not to visit).
Back up for some of us! I’ll be landing on the fourth of July. Too bad we arrive during daylight hours; I’ve arrived at DTW in the past near Independence Day in the dark, and it’s amazing to see how many fireworks shows there are from overhead.
**Yesterday (Friday) made 10 days since the wife’s visa interview at the US Embassy and still no passport back in the mail. We know these things can take time, but a friend of hers got her passport back in just three days last month. They gave her an EMS tracking number, but the website said there was no information. She logged onto the website where she had scheduled her interview, and it said her passport was still at the embassy. Huh.
So we called the Visa Section at the embassy, and there was a recording saying that due to a technical difficulty, all visas issued after June 8 had been delayed. Said this was not a local problem but worldwide. Also, all visa interviews to be held this week would have to be rescheduled. Huh.
Fortunately, she’s not needing her passport anytime soon. We’ll be traveling in northern Thailand next month, but that’s a domestic trip. (Even if she did need to travel somewhere internationally, being a civil servant she also has a separate government passport she could use.) A friend of mine told me yesterday when I mentioned this that she’d seen it in the news last week, that there was some sort of problem like this and that it was global. This is just a guess, but I’m thinking this may be related to that Chinese hacking.
Shakes fist at China**
The guy interviewing the wife didn’t say anything to her about a delay, but she remembered overhearing another interviewer telling an interviewee that there was some sort of problem that might cause a delay.
So my guess about the China hacking was probably off?
The consulates’ IT systems are still kind of screwed up. EMS (you have the Chinese government postal system in Thailand, too?) delivered my coworker’s passport at work while the passport tracking system still indicated the passport was in the consulate! :smack:
As of late last week, some consulates, representing about half of visas issued worldwide, were supposedly up and running again. I don’t know which ones or how accurate that information is, though. And I imagine they are going to have quite a backlog to get through once the computer issues are fixed.
Things seem to be moving now. Checking the passport website the wife used for registering her appointment, and now it says: “Passport has been received from the consular section, and is currently being processed for delivery.” So, fingers crossed!
The wife received her passport in the mail on Tuesday, so I guess we’re back up over here. That was only two weeks after her visa interview, and we hadn’t made any travel plans for the US anytime soon, so it really wasn’t that much of a bother for us. Our main concern was having her passport arrive and sit in our condo building’s office while we’re up in the North soon.