President Biden is now entering the 2^nd year of his term, but a major campaign promise—restoring America’s immigration system—has still not been kept. A major component of that system is the network of consulates around the world that process visas that authorize travel to the United States, but many consulates remain closed, and the open ones are reporting record wait times—in dozens of locations more than 1 year.

As more consulates have reopened, nonimmigrant wait times for visa appointments have reached unprecedented levels. In January, consulates reported a record average of 202 days for a visa appointment for business travelers and tourists (up from 95 days in April 2021); 38 days for students and exchange visitors (up from 25 days in April 2021), and a record 62 days for everyone else, mainly skilled temporary workers (up from 40 days in April 2021). The April 2021 wait times were already unusually lengthy.

As of January 19, 2022, 26 percent of U.S. consular posts were either fully or partially closed to new nonemergency nonimmigrant visa appointments. About 22 percent of consulates were fully closed for these appointments. While this is a major improvement over October when 61 percent of consulates were fully or partially closed, and 40 percent were fully closed, it is still a substantial number of posts where new applicants cannot apply.

As I’ve explained before, the State Department does not publish any accessible public information on immigrant (i.e. permanent) visa appointment availability by consulate. The department fails to publish aggregate statistics on its reopening progress and only makes available information on nonimmigrant (i.e. temporary) visa appointment availability in an online search tool that only returns results for individual consulates. The statistics cited in this post come from querying that search tool on January 19 and other earlier dates.

Of the 236 issuing posts, 61 (26 percent) were not scheduling nonemergency appointments for at least one category of nonimmigrant visa. 53 (22 percent) were not scheduling any nonemergency appointments for nonimmigrant visa applicants. Figure 1 shows how the rate of reopening has accelerated in recent months. The opening status and processing times for all consulates are available in Table A below.

Even as more consulates open, however, the wait times for appointments remain extremely high. Figure 2 shows the number of days that nonimmigrant visa applicants must wait for an appointment by category since April 2021. 70 reported wait times for business and tourist travelers longer than 6 months. 38 had wait times longer than 1 year. These 38 include most of the largest posts in the Americas including Mexico City, Tijuana, Guatemala City, Tegucigalpa, Guayaquil, Ciudad Juarez, Quito, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Toronto, and Vancouver.

The Biden administration has attempted to waive interviews, but even those supposedly exempt from needing a formal visa appointment still need what’s called a “dropbox” appointment where they can drop off their documents and get a passport stamp. But these appointments are still very difficult to obtain. There are more than 80,000 travelers, students, temporary workers, and others waiting for a dropbox appointment in India alone. In the Americas, these appointments are just as backlogged as the interview appointments. This dire situation compares unfavorably to Europe where travelers can obtain visas in less than 2 weeks. As a result of the State Department’s failure to process applications, a tremendous amount of travel and business will shift to Europe.

While these statistics only pertain to nonimmigrant visas, the situation for immigrant visas for future legal permanent residents is actually worse. There were 465,978 immigrant visa applicants waiting for an appointment in January 2022 (compared to about 60,000 before COVID-19). The State Department only scheduled 26,605 interviews in January, which implies that new applicants will have to wait at least a year and a half for processing. Since many types of immigrant visas are subject to annual caps by Congress, the waits could again cause tens of thousands more cap slots to go wasted like the past two years.

The State Department’s failure to fully reopen and fix its processing times is jeopardizing America’s competitiveness internationally and its place as the top destination for business investment, travel and tourism. The Biden administration needs to immediately correct these problems before they become a permanent feature of America’s broken immigration system.