THE UNITED STATES Embassy in Manila on Thursday said it aims to reduce the waiting period for visa appointment bookings by the end of the year to 2-3 months from the current 4-5 months.  

“We have worked very hard to improve our efficiency to make the process as smooth and easy as possible, to allow for as much capacity as we can handle, for the Philippine public to apply for visas to travel to the United States,” Consul General Mark McGovern told a news briefing at the US Embassy in Manila.  

He said a total of 188,038 nonimmigrant visas have been processed from October 2021 to September 2022.   

At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, visa applicants had to wait at least two years to book an appointment, the official said.  

The US Embassy earlier raised the visa processing fees for nonimmigrant visas globally to $185 from $160.  

Mr. McGovern said the hike was based on a cost-of-service study that considered the increases in salaries of the embassy’s staff and other maintenance costs.  

In a press release on Thursday, the embassy said it issued 21,654 immigrant visas and 77,502 visas for Filipino ship and airline crew members, which was more than any US embassy in the world.  

The consul general also gave assurance that the embassy was well-equipped to deter cases of fraud and human trafficking through its anti-fraud unit within the consular section.  

James Fellows, deputy consular general, told reporters during a tour of the consular section that 1,200 to 1,500 nonimmigrant visas are being processed daily.  

“We have a Philippine-American diaspora in the United States of about four million people,” Mr. McGovern said.   

“Put these things together, and it is very much a symbol of the strong people-to-people ties and family ties between the Philippines and the United States.” — John Victor D. Ordoñez 

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