With the lifting of restrictions imposed to curb Covid-19 in much of the United States, the demand for visas to visit the country has skyrocketed the waiting time to schedule an interview. Of the five locations available in Brazil, the American consulate in São Paulo takes the longest to schedule an interview to request a tourist or business visa: 294 calendar days, or almost ten months. In other capitals, the wait is also long: it takes 248 days to schedule an interview in Brasília, 232 days in Recife, 227 days in Porto Alegre and 183 days in Rio de Janeiro, according to US government data.
Among the factors that explain the delay are the concentrated demand for visas. Between March 2020 and November 2021 the Americans did not open appointments to the general public—and the reduction in the number of employees forced by the pandemic.
Therefore, the US government's guidance is that even people who were only able to schedule their interviews for months from now continue to access the embassy system to try to reschedule at a later date, without extra charge.
Translated by Kiratiana Freelon