Do- It- Yourself US Visa Appointments – a false economy

In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America in 2001, the US government introduced a non-immigrant visa for all landed immigrants not participating in the visa waiver program who were crossing from Canada.  The attempt to strengthen borders required each individual to apply for a pre-screening interview at one of the US Consulates in Canada or the Embassy in Ottawa. Six years on the non-immigrant visa system is still in place, but how efficiently does it work?

It would appear that the physical act of booking a US visa appointment is the biggest deterrent to terrorism or undesirables entering the US through the Northern back door. What would appear to be a simple task is in fact a trial in itself; the telephone and online booking systems purported to give easy access to a large number of appointments at one of seven locations. On first inspection, the process seems easy; you pick up the phone or go online, choose a date, time and convenient location, book yourself in and then gather all of the documentation necessary to prove your credentials as a bone-fide visitor to the USA.

Of course, reality sets a completely different scenario; the reasons behind this lie with the fact that the government diary is outsourced to a private, global conglomerate, skilled in the field of Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO). The government appointments diary is far from an open book, indeed appointments are added extremely sparingly at random times of the day and night. Separate virtual diaries exist according to the type of immigrant visa and according to the consulate location – a landed immigrant searching for a July appointment in Toronto may have a greater degree of success if applying for a B1/B2 visa – H1B and L1 visa appointments are notoriously harder to obtain regardless of location.

In addition to the incredibly low volume of appointments downloaded each day, the online system is made even more frustrating by a series of anti spam security codes; many of the images are illegible and non-sensical. There is an option to listen to the security code if your vision is impaired, however, the code is not simply repeated audibly – on the contrary, the listener is given a riddle, which is supposed to call to mind the security code.  A classic example of one of these riddles is, “what lives on its own substance and dies when it devours itself?” Easy? The answer is “Candle.” Other problems encountered with the online appointments system is the fact that if you stay logged in for too long you will be locked out of the system with no option but to re-enter your details all over again in another vain attempt that this time you might find a visa appointment.

Forward planners will also find that their attempts to be organized regarding a future visit to the United States is indeed a waste of time – the diary only reports appointments within the next six weeks making any forward planning impossible. After endless hours of mindless surfing, applicants may be tempted to call the government hotline to book their appointment, but again, this is not as straightforward as one may initially believe. There are eight phone lines to choose from, with several offering no more than recorded messages at a cost of CDN $0.60 cents a minute or USD $0.90 cents if you are calling from America. Calling these lines will advance you no further in your appointment quest. Calling a live operator costs even more and this service is barred from most office phones and all public pay phones and it is easy to see why; a private contractor who charges CDN $1.89 a minute operates the call centre. Your phone bill or credit card is charged from the minute you are connected to the call centre and not the minute you start speaking to a live operator. This means that it is easy to spend around $20 just waiting around 10 minutes for someone to answer your call. If you call at peak periods the wait time is substantially longer meaning that a bill of $45 dollars is feasible before you even ask for your appointment. Finally, when a live operator picks up your call, they will search for your appointment whilst the minutes are ticking away and racking up a more dollars on your credit card. This is compounded by the fact that each consul has its own diary so searching through several locations means a greater time on the phone and a hefty bill at the end. Often appointments are not available when you call, leaving you with no alternative but to call back again and before you realize you have spent a fortune and dedicated a considerable amount of valuable time in what seemed at first glance to be a simple task.

It will come as no surprise then that many people are turning to private immigration companies like Immigroup (www.immigroup.com), US Visa Appointments (www.usavisaappointments.com) or Canada Immigration Info (www.canada-immigration-info.ca) to secure their US visa appointment. Professional agencies like these employ dedicated teams responsible for searching the Consulate diaries 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If there is an appointment these agencies snap it up before the DIY appointment seeker has gotten out of bed. They also guide their clients through the maze of government paperwork and terminology to ensure that no application is delayed due to incomplete or inaccurate information being filed. Those in need of an expedited appointment can expect to receive one as quickly as the next day and most of these services operate a no charge policy if an appointment is not secured within a given timeframe. George Laczko, CEO of Immigroup explains, “Many of the people who call our US visa appointment hotline have already tried to secure their own appointment using the government systems before they turn to us in desperation and frustration. They have already spent a considerable amount of time and often money trying to secure an appointment on their own, all to no avail.”  Laczko believes that word travels fast around immigrant communities about the nightmare of securing a US visa appointment, he says, “most landed immigrants try to help each other out by sharing information and we’re seeing a dramatic  increase in the number of people who book our US visa appointment service without even trying the government sites.” Moreover, for those who quake at the thought of filling out forms or surfing the net, these services offer a cost effective and time efficient solution to a government system, which in its attempt to strengthen borders by deterring illegals and terrorists, has merely ended up furthering its reputation for time-wasting and bureaucracy.