Worldwide Visa Processing Grinds to a Halt, U.S. Government Calls It Training

The State Department has put immigrant visas on hold worldwide and calls it training. Just days earlier, a court had barred the administration from using exactly this kind of screening. A door no one officially closes can still stay locked. The U.S. State Department has temporarily halted the processing of immigrant visas worldwide, citing "in-depth training" for its consular officers. Going forward, applicants are supposed to be screened even more closely for whether they might later rely on government assistance. The line has stopped moving, and no one knows where it ends.

People with confirmed interview appointments at U.S. embassies and consulates received emails telling them their appointments were being rescheduled. A new one would follow at a later date. From one sentence to the next, a fixed date turned into open-ended waiting, with no one able to say how long it might last.

A State Department spokesperson said a more prosperous America means screening applicants to make sure they are unlikely to become a "public charge," as defined under U.S. law, and unlikely to depend on benefits reserved for qualified Americans in need. The department launched a global training initiative this month so every officer can evaluate every application "comprehensively and consistently."

By that logic, a country becomes more prosperous by screening out the needy before they even cross the threshold. The mere suspicion of future poverty is enough to turn an applicant into a burden before that person has even set foot on U.S. soil. Prosperity, read this way, begins with a rejection. The pause is the latest step by an administration that has tightened access to the United States again and again. Donald Trump has made the crackdown on people without legal status a central part of his presidency. At the same time, visas and Green Cards have been cut back and refugee admissions have been almost completely shut down.

The halt comes in a politically and legally charged week. Last Friday, U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas struck down Trump's ban on applications from 75 mostly poorer countries. The administration had justified that policy by arguing that people from those countries might later need government assistance - exactly the same argument now being used to support the worldwide pause. Vargas found that the policy announced in January had overridden the discretion and decision-making authority Congress gave to consular offices. She struck down the rule and all denials based on it. Both sides have until September 11 to explain how the remaining issues in the case should move forward. What a court rejected as an overreach came back within days in a broader form, this time without a list of countries and under the calm-sounding word training.

Trump's immigration policy knows the courtroom well. At the start of his first term, federal courts blocked his attempt to bar nationals from 7 majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States, before the Supreme Court later allowed a watered-down version to take effect. The sequence keeps repeating itself: first the order, then the court, and what remains is a softer version that no one stops anymore. Every setback before a judge becomes a set of instructions for the next order, written a little more quietly.

Since last year, the administration has also required applicants to go through the process in their country of citizenship. That affects people who legally live and work in the United States as well. Some are married to U.S. citizens or have American children. The trip back to the country of origin can swallow up months and leave an entire life hanging in limbo. A married couple can be separated by an ocean because an appointment back home falls apart.

Brian Simmons, a senior consular specialist at the immigration law firm Fragomen in Washington, described the consequences. Many affected applicants had already spent thousands of dollars and rearranged their lives to make it to their interviews, only to see their appointments canceled at the last minute. Often, all that was left was an email and a booked flight going nowhere. The department has not said when processing will resume, only that appointments are being "adjusted" for the training.

From Mumbai to Naples, affected applicants vented their anger in online forums. One person wrote that it bothered them that people travel for an appointment only to have it canceled. Another recalled that roughly 8 months ago the same thing happened with a number of H-1B interviews in India, and that some people were still stuck abroad and had lost their jobs. The frustration travels halfway around the world, while an answer never comes. Training with no end date starts to look a lot like a ban that simply does not want to call itself one.