Borost
Active Member
Even if there is 430 contract employees working now that's unfair number to work for thousands of people's case, document review, sending email, answering calls and email etc. And we have now COVID situation and closed embassies making things very difficult.I thought this bore repeating and emphasis, especially for those who seem convinced there is a separate call center and that the endless phone calls don’t impact.
I just wanted add some info on this. I'm from Mongolia. And here we don't have any local confirmed covid case. We locked down our entire country for twice. Now everything is fine. Except people have to wear mask. But back in 2020.03.13 US embassy in my country declared that they temporarily stopped any immigration and non-immigration visa interviews due to staff shortage. Some sources says government will open border on 1th of June. But it's not confirmed. Even if it does as a 2020 selectee who got "documents received" email with lower case number /2020AS000054*/ i'm losing hope to make it before September. All we can do is wait and see. But need to prepared for "not making it before Sept".Don't forget, in mid March, DOS gave their American staff at the embassies the option to go somewhere (like returning to the USA) if they were in a country that made them feel less safe. Some embassy staff might have done that particularly in countries like UK, Spain and Italy where the pandemic has been very impactful. That means they would need to return to those countries. Now that in itself could be challenging - in Spain for instance entry is either not allowed, or a person has to go into a strict two week self quarantine. That could be problematic for some returning staff.
My point is, just because a country sees partial reopening, the mechanics for US embassies reopening might be more complicated.
Again, I know everyone wants black and white answers - but there are none.