Disruptions at U.S. Embassies and Consulates in China – Visa Appointment Cancellations
The U.S. consular posts in China have begun cancelling visa appointments due to a surge in COVID-19 infections across China. The U.S. Mission in China first announced on December 13th that the consulates in Shenyang and Wuhan were now only open for emergency services. The scope of the disruption has since been expanded to cover the entire U.S. Mission in China, and we have received several reports of visa interviews scheduled for the month of December being cancelled. As of this writing, the U.S. Mission in China has announced that:
All routine visa services, with the exception of some previously scheduled for Consulate General Shanghai — are temporarily suspended. All regularly scheduled appointments at Embassy Beijing and the other Consulates General have been canceled.
Emergency appointment availability is extremely limited. The U.S. Mission is only offering emergency appointments for U.S. citizens that require an in-person appearance for passport applications and other services
Information on the disruption is being distributed through the U.S. Mission’s website alert page, visa appointment booking site, Weibo site and Twitter account. Note that all nonimmigrant visa application fee (also known as the MRV fee) payments made on or after October 1, 2022, are valid for 365 days from the date of payment receipt is issued. While applicants must schedule an interview appointment or submit an interview waiver application during this 365-day period, there is no requirement the interview must occur during the 365-day period.
What this means:
Visa applicants are urged to monitor their emails for embassy notifications, and to keep travel plans flexible. While many applicants with cancelled December appointments have been successful in obtaining January appointment bookings, there is no guarantee that January appointments will be held as scheduled. These cancellations are reminiscent of widespread disruptions that occurred in 2020 – 2021 at the U.S. Mission in China, where visa appointments were cancelled with little or no advance notice. Many visa applicants were required to rebook their visa appointments several times.