The Department of State (DOS) continues to experience technical difficulties with its overseas visa and passport systems but the most recent DOS alert indicates that the database responsible for handling biometric clearances has been rebuilt and that as of June 23, 2015, 39 posts are now online and issuing visas.
DOS will continue to bring additional posts online and expects the system will be fully reconnected and operational this week.
During the outage, applicants faced significant delays in visa issuance and appointment scheduling, though DOS issued approximately 1,250 visa to temporary and seasonal workers and more than 3,000 visas for urgent and humanitarian travel during this period.
While the residual delays persist, individuals have received their passports with visa stamps from several consulates, noting that most of these individuals appear to have submitted their DS-160, Online Nonimmigrant Visa Applications, before June 8, 2015. DOS indicates that interviews will now become available for those applicants who applied after June 8, 2015, and that many consular posts will begin rescheduling appointments as early as today, June 24, 2015.
Once fully operational, the DOS confirms it will continue to work as quickly as possible to clear the pending visa application backlogs, giving priority to assisting individuals with urgent humanitarian travel needs and confirms that adoption cases are still being processed.
D&S will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as they become available.