Wednesday, April 27, 2005

And I thought my visa delays were bad...

Ok. I've been waiting for my work visa here in Mexico since August, in part due to a mistake by the Secretary for Foreign Relations here. They sent my paperwork to El Paso, rather than Austin. And since then, I've had to give them my passport and photos, etc. several times. For instance, my photos were accepted one month, then rejected a month later because my hair was down even though you could clearly see my ears.

Anyway, the U.S. Embassy here in Mexico city usually processes 2,000 appointments for a visa to go to the U.S. for work or vacation per day. In the entire country, they process 5,000 per day.

Due to staffing cuts, the waiting period for an appointment will be almost 2 months. After than, the time to receive your visa will be another 5 weeks. People who call the 1-900 number (yes, Mexicans pay by the minute) today, will not get an appointment until the 11th of July. Renewals will not get an appointment until June 13. And student or work visas will be seen after May 9th.

Some of the delays are surely due to heightened security checks, but others are caused by the staff cuts (probably because of budget constraints). Overall, however, the delays are likely to hurt commerce as families can't take that trip to Disney World and business reps can't attend meetings to expand cross-border trade.

posted by Michelle @ 10:12 AM,

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