Demand recovered; staffing then reversed
Visitor-visa adjudications rose from 9.2 million in fiscal 2019 to 11.7 million in 2025, after collapsing to 1.5 million in 2021. Yet the average interview wait increased from 26 days to 201 days—7.73 times the pre-pandemic figure.
Officers working on nonimmigrant visas reached 1,342 in fiscal 2024, then fell to 904 in 2025 because of hiring freezes and attrition, GAO reported. That is a one-year reduction of 438 officers, or 32.6%.
| Country | Applications per officer | Weighted interview wait |
|---|---|---|
| Brazil | 13,118 | 32 days |
| China | 10,135 | 34 days |
| India | 21,401 | 346 days |
| Mexico | 21,441 | 283 days |
Workload and waits moved together across four countries
India and Mexico each had more than 21,000 nonimmigrant-visa applications per officer and waits of 346 and 283 days. Brazil and China had about half that workload per officer and waits near one month.
That four-country comparison supports a staffing relationship but is not a controlled causal test. Appointment policy, security screening, local demand and case complexity also affect waits.
An annual balancing exercise happened once
State’s Global Repositioning Exercise is designed to align consular staff with workload and, officials said, to run annually. State conducted and implemented it only once since fiscal 2019, skipping 2021–22 because of COVID and 2024–25 because priorities changed.
GAO recommended a policy requiring consistent use. State neither agreed nor disagreed, and the recommendation was open September 28. A staffing exercise would not guarantee shorter waits; it would create a recurring basis for allocation decisions.
Method and limitation
The newsroom calculated the wait-time multiple and one-year staffing decline, and compared workload and waits without implying that every post matches the four-country pattern. GAO analyzed State data and interviewed officials and consular staff in the four highest-demand countries.
The published averages mask large post-level and visa-category differences. Faster processing must also be balanced against statutory screening and national-security requirements.