Business Immigration Insights

On December 21, the Department of State announced changes to the power consular officers have to waive personal visa interviews for nonimmigrant visa (NIV) applicants. Under the new guidelines, will remain in place indefinitely, consular officers are now authorized to waive personal visa interviews for

• First-time applications: H-2 temporary agricultural and non-agricultural workers;
• Other applications – applicants with a previously approved visa: NIV applicants applying in any other NIV category who were previously issued a nonimmigrant visa in any classification if the applicant is applying within 48 months of their most recent nonimmigrant visa’s expiration date may have their interview waived at the discretion of the consular officer, unless the only prior visa was a B visitor/business visa. 

This is a follow up to our prior post on Domestic Visa Processing.

The Department of State has officially released the details of the long-anticipated domestic visa processing pilot program. The pilot program will be open starting on January 29, 2024, and will accept up to 20,000 applications, with applications accepted on a rolling basis. The system is set up to release approximately 4,000 application slots each week for the first 6 weeks of the program starting Monday, January 29, 2024. Once the weekly limit is reached, the system will be locked until the next set of slots are released following next week. The system will be open until April 1, 2024, or until all application slots are used, whichever comes first.

The Visa Bulletin is released monthly by the Department of State and is used to determine when a sponsored foreign national can submit the final step of the green card process, or if already pending, when the final step can be adjudicated.

After a 20+ year hiatus in domestic visa processing, the Department of State is launching a pilot program to resume limited state-side processing of visa renewals in early 2024. According to a recent State Department announcement, the new pilot program will allow some individuals in the U.S. with visas to renew those visas without leaving the country or attending an interview at a U.S. Embassy or consulate outside the United States.