Click here to view original web page at www.cato.org
President Biden ended President Trump’s immigrant visa ban and allowed his nonimmigrant visa ban to expire on April 1. While this is progress, the president is inexplicably keeping 76 percent of consulates fully or partially closed to routine visa processing, affecting about 71 percent of all visa applicants. The consulate closures are acting as a de facto ban on legal immigration and travel, even though all travelers to the country must receive negative COVID-19 tests and more than 551 million doses of the vaccine have already been administered outside the United States.
In March 2020, the State Department closed consulates supposedly to create procedures to safely process visa applications in light of the pandemic. It has said since July 22, 2020, that it is phasing back in routine visa services, yet so far, it has moved exceptionally slowly. Moreover, the department fails to publish aggregate statistics on its progress and only makes available information on nonimmigrant (i.e. temporary) visa availability in an online search tool that only returns results for individual consulates. The statistics in this post came from repeated searches of that tool.
As of April 8, 2021, just 57 of 237 visa processing sites around the world (24 percent) were fully operational for nonimmigrant visa applicants, and just 97 (41 percent) allowed anything other than emergency applications (Table 1). Even many open sites have massive wait times for visas. The average wait was 95 days for a visitor or business traveler visa, but 31 percent of sites open for those visas had waits longer than 4 months, and 22 percent had waits longer than 6 months.
Of the 231 visa processing sites, only 136 ever process immigrant (i.e. permanent) visas (before the pandemic closures). Immigrant visas are mainly for immediate family of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents and their spouses and minor children as well as diversity lottery winners and a few other smaller categories. The State Department does not publish any easily accessible public information on immigrant visa appointment availability by consulate. It did disclose in a sealed legal filing that as of January 8, 2021, barely 10 percent, or 14 sites, were processing immigrant visas. But about a quarter may be operational now based on the share of sites fully open for nonimmigrant visas that have immigrant visa processing.
Using figures for the month of April 2019, more than half a million (574,704) nonimmigrant visas are likely affected by the closures in April 2021, including 471,348 visitor and business traveler visas, 39,875 student and exchange visitor visas, and 63,481 visas for diplomats, workers, and others. The closures are affecting some of the largest U.S. consulates and embassies in the world, including Mexico City, Shanghai, Beijing, Sao Paulo, Guangzhou, Mumbai, and Buenos Aires. In addition, posts that were fully closed to non‐emergency nonimmigrant visa applicants processed 21,886 immigrant visas in April 2019, implying that perhaps a majority of all immigrant visas are also affected.
Click here to view original web page at www.cato.org
We Often Feel Like David Taking on Giants
Today’s Goliath is the Mainstream Media Industrial Complex that brainwashes the masses.
Our mission is very straightforward: To counter the false narratives and nefarious agendas destroying America today. It isn’t easy for obvious reasons; despite incredible growth over the last year we are still a very tiny fish in a huge media pond. But we’re fighting and we will continue to do so, Lord willing, for as long as we possibly can. The battle for America’s present and future is too important for us to back down to the giants that stand in our way.
We need help. I don’t want to say “desperately,” but the need is definitely great. If you have the means, please donate through our GivingFuel page, PayPal, or our Substack page. Your generosity is what keeps these sites running and allows us to get the truth to the masses. We’ve had great success in growing but we know we can do more with your assistance.
Thank you, and God Bless!
JD Rucker