Ballooning Backlogs at Consulates Worldwide: The Impact of COVID-19 Closures and Restrictions on the Current State of Visa Processing

While an end to the COVID-19 pandemic appears within reach, the effects of the pandemic on consular processing are more palpable than ever: the backlog of pending visa cases under the umbrella of the US State Department has reached half a million. Compounding this, the pace of consular processing is still significantly hampered by the events of last year.

US embassies and consulates were shuttered for months starting in March 2020. Around that time, President Donald Trump signed a series of Executive orders that blocked the issuance of numerous types of immigrant and nonimmigrant visas. Some of these orders — which aligned closely with Trump’s anti-immigration stance — were redundant or symbolic given the closures that already made the issuance of visas impossible for many applicants in 2020. However, the combination of closures, restrictions, and ongoing reductions in staffing has led to an overwhelming backlog of visa cases worldwide. The US State Department has gradually resumed in-country operations since the later part of 2020, but as of April 2021, 75% of embassies and consulates around the world were still at least partially closed, leaving small staffs to face the enormous backlog of more than half a million visa applicants who are awaiting the interview step. Only 22,000 interviews were scheduled in April — about a third of the average 60,000 monthly appointments pre-pandemic. Although President Biden has taken concrete steps to restore and improve visa processing as part of his larger goal of streamlining legal immigration, the reality for applicants around the world is that it may take months or even years to catch up.

However, the State Department is well aware of this massive problem. If the Biden administration is serious about expanding access to legal immigration, then it should be creative, determined, and persistent in resolving this problem for the hundreds of thousands of individuals, families, and businesses waiting in limbo.