State Department Confirms Worldwide Suspension of Visa Appointments on August 7 and 10

United States

U.S. consulates worldwide will suspend visa appointments on August 7 and 10 while the Bureau of Consular Affairs upgrades its servers, a State Department official has confirmed following our announcement last week. 

Visa appointments have been or will be rescheduled to other available dates. Some consulates have already notified foreign nationals affected by the suspension about appointment rescheduling. Foreign nationals who have not been notified should log into the relevant consulate's appointment system to check for their new appointment date. Those unable to attend their new appointment should be able to select another date in the system.   

American citizen services appointments are also affected by the suspension and will be rescheduled.  

Emergency services should remain available on August 7 and 10. 

The State Department’s system maintenance comes in the wake of a lengthy worldwide consular system outage earlier this summer and a similar outage during the summer of 2014.  The outages were attributed to the aging Consular Consolidated Database (CCD), which the State Department is taking steps to replace. 

What This Means for Employers and Visa Applicants

Employers and affected visa applicants should be prepared for travel delays due to the appointment suspension and the possibility that system maintenance could take longer than expected. Once the State Department completes its technical upgrades, applicants could see slowdowns in visa issuance while agency systems come back online. 

If you have any questions about visa processing, please contact your Fragomen immigration professional.

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