Hello everybody. In this video, I'm going to provide you with another update about the state
of consulates and embassies this time in August 2021. The State Department remains a major barrier
to reopening consulates and embassies worldwide in August, 62% of embassies and consulates worldwide,
remained closed, or partially open. So this video, I'll give you further updates and more information
that you need to know right now. So what are you waiting for? I'll see you on the other side.
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to our immigration channel. This is a place where we get the most
up-to-date in immigration, news, immigration information, everything that you need to make your
immigration journey less stressful. My name is Jacob Sapochnik, and I'm an immigration attorney
located in San Diego, California. We work with clients all over the world in all 50 states.
And we're here to provide this information to you today. Remember, if you are here for
the first time, don't forget to subscribe to our channel, click the notification bell so
you don't miss any of our videos. And also give us a big like. So YouTube will be able to show
this video to more people just like you. So what's happening with consulates and embassies worldwide?
This is an August update: August 2021. So it seems that the State Department remains a major
barrier to reopening travel back to the United States and also to visa processing. Why are we
saying that according to the Cato Institute, 62% of embassies and consulates remained close
or partially open in August? How can you move the backlog forward? If 62% of these consulates and
embassies remain closed now when we mean closed, closed to anything but emergency appointments,
and some emergency non Immigrant Visas. So remember, and I've talked about it so many times,
all these expedite cases, all these emergency appointments that we're trying to get,
they are still possible right now because so many of these embassies are closed. If you ask
yourself, what can we still expedite cases? Will they still approve it? Yes, they will. Of course,
it's definitely more difficult now than it used to be six months ago. But it's still a possibility,
specifically now that we have 60% of these embassies and consulates,
closed or partially closed, which makes it very difficult to resume normal visa processing.
So you’re asking yourself, what about the other 40%? Well, the other 40% are completely closed,
they don't even take emergency appointments. And that's becoming really, really difficult
specifically now that we try to understand how we can move the needle forward, how we can make this
process easier for applicants who are just stuck. It is very, very difficult for so many families to
bear that stress of waiting and not knowing what's going to happen. It's just very interesting why
it's happening. Remember, we talked about it before virtually all consular officers
received the COVID-19 vaccination. All those and all travelers that are entering the United States
must present a negative COVID test. So why are they still closed? Why are they still not
processing Immigrant Visas? Or any visas at the moment? And why aren't they waiving interviews?
Well, they're saying that it's illegal for them to do so because of security matters.
But in fact, the statute authorizes the State Department to waive in-person interviews,
if there are unusual or emergent circumstances if this is not unusual or emergent. I don't know what
it is. So they could do that. If they wanted to. They could waive interviews. They could
conduct online interviews like USCIS is doing sometimes, like you say yes is waiving
interviews because they choose to try to deal with the backlog here inside the United States.
Yet the State Department is refusing to do so even though the statute authorizes them to waive
in-person interviews. Now the State Department doesn't release any statistics about their visa
processing, and some of their numbers. This is all done based on research. And that research was done
by the Cato institute that I'm able to provide to you in this video. Why are they releasing
those statistics? It's beyond me. So, here are some statistics for you. Out of the 237 posts
that are currently issuing visas. Only 89 of those were issuing non-immigrant visas, student visas,
and other work non-immigrant visas and this data is true as of August 19, 2021. Out of these 237
posts that are currently issuing visas, only 54 of those were partially open and issuing visas. No
appointments were available outside of emergency or special NIE available kind of appointments.
94 of these 237 consulates were completely closed to non-immigrant visa processing. That means that
more consonants were closed in August than open, which is crazy. Once again, I want to mention that
this video is focused on non-immigrant visas. And the chart that we're going to show you right now
is specifically for non-immigrant visas. There was a previous video that I've done a couple of weeks
ago that I explained the different consulates who made a list of different consulates and I'll make
another video like that in a few weeks once we have more data was specifically went through the
different emphases and we said which one is open fully, which one is partially open, which one is
processing, expedite and emergency appointments. In this particular video, we're focused
mostly on non Immigrant Visas because a lot of you are asking about that as well. So as you
can see table one in the charts, is showing slow progress in getting consulates back to normal.
So if you look at April 59% were fully closed. Now 40% are fully closed, a change of less than 5%
per month, which is very, very bad. At this rate, the State Department will at least
partially reopen all of its consulates in May of 2022. And once again, the biggest applicants that
are suffering from these are non Immigrant Visas that are really really at the bottom of the pile.
In April 76% of consulates were partially closed. Now, 62% are partially closed, a rate increase of
at least barely 3% per month. Again, at this rate, the department's consulates will fully reopen in
early 2023, specifically for non-immigrant visas. Now, remember, these numbers are specifically
for non-immigrant visas. The situation with Immigrant Visas is not better. Like I said,
I've done a lot of videos on immigrant visas. And this one is focused on non Immigrant Visas because
there's not that much information out there about non Immigrant Visas at the moment. As of August
1st for immigrant visas, the State Department reported a backlog of more than 547,000 cases
that are sitting at the National Visa Center. The applicants that were documented qualified,
of these applicants that were documented qualified, only 33,000 actually got appointments,
which is a really, really low number. Therefore, people have increased their efforts to try to
expedite immigrant visa cases and are trying to be persistent with that. And also, when that fails,
applicants resort to suing the State Department, because they can't wait anymore,
because there's no solution for that backlog at the moment. Now, once again, I'll continue to do
a summary of specific embassies in future videos. So it will tell you more embassies that we haven't
covered in previous videos for an immigrant visa, specifically, which embassies are processing
partially open, at which embassies are giving priority to expedite cases
just to be able to help you to understand where you stand with your K1 visa case, with your CR1,
with your IR1 and other immigrant visa processing. Immigrant visa cases are now being processed
under the tier system. The four-tier system which we've done videos about it before,
you're welcome to reference, we should put a link in the description of this video
to explain how immigrant visas are being processed as well. So once again, hopefully,
this information was helpful. A lot of you are asking about non-immigrant visas, and I wanted
to make this little video to explain to you what's happening in that respect. Once again. If you're
here for the first time, don't forget to subscribe to our channel, click the notification bell so you
don't miss any of our videos. And also give us a big like so YouTube will be able to share this
video with more people just like you. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next video.