United States: Starting July 1, Certain Consular Posts May Offer Expedited B Visa Appointments for an Additional Fee

At certain U.S. consular posts, B visa appointment wait times currently exceed one year. In implementing this new pilot program, the State Department says it is testing demand for a fee-based expedited appointment process because, according to the agency, a fee-based process would require fewer consular resources than the current appointment expedite request process, which is granted only for humanitarian and urgent travel after an eligibility review by consular staff and managers. The current humanitarian/urgent travel expedite request process will still be offered at all U.S. consular posts; under the pilot, the agency will also offer the option of the new fee-based appointment expedite for B visa applications at participating posts.

According to the State Department, if the B visa appointment expedite fee is offered at a particular post, the visa applicant will first submit their DS-160 nonimmigrant visa application, pay the standard machine-readable visa (MRV) fee through the State Department online CEAC system, and select a standard (non-expedited) appointment date. The applicant will then be provided the option to select an expedited date within the following 10 business days and pay the additional $750 fee.

Once the pilot program has concluded at the end of the calendar year, the State Department will analyze the program data to determine whether to continue offering the appointment expedite service in some form and if so, whether to adjust the fee.

It is not yet known how many and which U.S. consular posts will participate in the new expedite fee pilot program and for those participating, how many new expedited appointments will be made available at each location. Foreign nationals and employers facing lengthy B visa appointment wait times who may be willing to pay the $750 fee to expedite the appointment should stay apprised of the U.S. consular posts that will soon be identified on the State Department website as participating in the pilot. Limitations on third-country national processing may be a hurdle to accessing the new expedite option for some foreign nationals, however.

According to the State Department, because expedited appointments will be capped at a percentage of the posts’ overall interviewing capacity, the new expedited B visa appointment option is not expected to meaningfully impact wait times for nonimmigrant visa appointment wait times for other nonimmigrant classifications, such as H-1B, L-1, and F-1.

Fragomen closely monitors visa policy and processing and will provide updates as new information becomes available.