Brazilian travelers have been facing increasingly long queues when it comes to scheduling an appointment to issue a US tourist visa (B1/B2). Data from the law firm AG Immigration – headquartered in Washington DC and specialized in green cards for the US – reveal that, from March 20 to 24, the time to get an appointment at the consulates in Porto Alegre and São Paulo reached the highest level in history.
In Porto Alegre, the waiting list reached 406 days. In São Paulo, for example, the queue is currently 556 days, that is, more than 18 months. This means that, if a tourist decides today to apply for an American visa, he will only be able to do the consular interview – the last stage of the issuing process for those applying for the document for the first time – in September 2024.
In Brasília, the Embassy is taking 438 days and, in Recife, the waiting time is 395 days. In Rio de Janeiro, the queue reached 442 days – long, but still far from the record of 500 days.
The data is obtained from the american state department and monitored weekly by AG Immigration, which manages to create a waiting index for each of the US diplomatic posts in Brazil. The survey began to be carried out in December 2022, due to the increasing delay in issuing a tourist visa for Brazilians.
“We have seen a great effort on the part of the Embassy to act on this problem, mainly through the hiring of more consular officers to work here in Brazil. With this, they will open more appointment times and will be able to serve more people per day. But it is something that takes time. It may be that we have new records until the measures start to have an effect”, explains immigration lawyer Felipe Alexandre, founding partner of AG Immigration.
According to the US Embassy in Brazil, there are more than 6 million valid visas among Brazilians. In addition, about 40% of the requests made to the agency are for renewals, which exempt the candidate from having to undergo the consular interview.
According to a survey by AG Immigration, the Consulate of São Paulo was the third US diplomatic post worldwide that issued the most visas in 2022.
Sobre a AG Immigration
AG Immigration is one of the leading immigration law firms in the United States, having already helped citizens of 32 countries to obtain the American green card. It is founded by businessman Rodrigo Costa and lawyer Felipe Alexandre, who has been on the list of the 10 best immigration lawyers by the American Institute of Legal Counsel for six years. Alexandre was also considered, in 2022, for the second time, as one of the top 10 immigration lawyers by the magazine “Attorney & Practice Magazine”, in addition to being recognized by Super Lawyers, a Thomson Reuters platform, as a reference in the field of immigration laws of the USA. The company is headquartered in Washington DC and has offices in Miami, Orlando, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and New York.
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