Six-month US visa backlog for SA travellers, Australia remains firmly shut

South Africans hoping to travel to the US will have to wait as long as six-months before they can get an appointment for a visa interview.

While US consulates in SA have been conducting visa interviews and accepting visa waiver applications from SA travellers who are exempt from the US travel ban, ordinary travellers will have to stand in line for a visa interview, Travel News reported.

The US government changed its travel advisory to level four — meaning do not travel — on November 26 for eight southern African countries including SA, Eswatini, Lesotho and Zimbabwe, in the hope of preventing the spread of the newly identified Omicron variant of the Sars-C0V-2 virus.

The change was accompanied by further air travel restrictions.

The consulates were conducting interviews and accepting visa waiver applications only for people who are not subject to the automation, according to the US consulate website.

“This includes some immediate relatives of US citizens and legal permanent residents, individuals travelling at the invitation of the US government for a purpose related to containment or mitigation of the Covid-19 virus, and those travelling as air or sea crew, among very limited others,” it said.

The number of US visas issued worldwide in 2020 plummeted more than 50% to 2,164,000, from 5,297,000 in 2019, according to official US figures.

Meanwhile, Australia remains firmly shut to SA travellers as the ban on visitors from SA, Namibia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini and the Seychelles is still in place.

The ban, originally due to be lifted on December 1, has been extended due to concerns about the Omicron variant. 

Australian citizens, residents and their family members who have been in any of the countries on the list in the previous two weeks were still obliged to undergo a 14-day quarantine on arrival.

TimesLIVE