Update on Consular and Visa Matters in Toronto

March 5, 2008

From:  Jeffrey S. Tunis, Consular Chief, U.S. Consulate Toronto

To:  Immigration attorneys and others interested in consular and visa processing in Toronto

Subj:  Update on consular and visa matters in Toronto

We last communicated with you in November 2007 and are pleased to update you again.

Staffing: We expect a severe staffing shortage this coming summer, which will cause us to reduce our already overbooked visa workload. By early July we will be short five consular officers, leaving us with four to cover all citizenship, passport and visa work. We hope to be fully staffed sometime in mid-Fall 2008, but dates are still unclear.

NIV appointments: We continue to schedule at www.nvars.com over 60 NIV appointments for each visa officer, but we see more applicants since dependents, expedited business or emergency cases, and any follow-ups on Monday-Thursday mornings, are added to the mix. Our facility remains solidly booked, precluding us from accepting many worthy applicants. We will soon insist on applicants being here within 20 minutes before or after the appointed time, or risk losing their appointment. Given our severe staffing shortage we will likely suspend our business expedite appointments and further reduce appointments for applicants without a connection to Canada. Applicants who have no permanent residence in, or long term connection to, Canada should seek U.S. visas in their home country.

NIV processing: Electronic confirmation of all NIV petitions is much smoother now but we still caution applicants that the days of quick visa turnaround are over. Any petition based, otherwise qualified, NIV applicants should be prepared to wait up to 4 workdays to receive his or her visaed passport. Applicants who require additional administrative processing should be prepared to wait 4 weeks or more.

In order to reduce congestion, reinforce the integrity of consular processing and relieve pressure faced by staff members, we plan to limit physical access to the visa waiting area only to:

• Visa applicants with appointments and
• One helper or translator for any visa applicant who is disabled or illiterate in English;

In addition, we must limit telephone access to calls that we initiate or solicit. We will no longer accept unsolicited telephone calls from attorneys, visa applicants or other interested parties to any of our staff. The Consulate telephone operator has no information on visa or consular matters.

Attorneys and others may email inquiries to TRTNIV@state.gov, or call Canada 900-451-2778, the U.S. 900-443-3131 or by credit card 888-840-0032 from either country. We will individually reply in about 2-4 business days to only those email inquiries that we deem to be valid and need a specific reply from us. Otherwise inquirers will be informed by automatic reply to reapply for a visa in the normal manner or look at our websites.

Effective dates for these limits will be March 25, 2008. Our goal with these changes is to remove distractions and free up more of our limited resources to allow us to adjudicate and process visas in an efficient and polite manner.

We continue to notice that some agencies continue to book and sell appointments. We are taking steps to identify such parties and to prevent that practice.

Our appointment provider NUCOMM, at www.nvars.com, asks for email addresses of all applicants in order to send an appointment confirmation and a reminder. We ask that all visa applicants provide a valid email address, check it regularly and modify any spam blocker to allow emails from NUCOMM and us at state.gov. NUCOMM also has reduced its online information appointment booking fee to CDN 8.75.

Website: http://toronto.usconsulate.gov is continually updated. Please check it regularly, especially our FAQs, before contacting us.