China USA Travel
China USA Travel was incorporated in 2008 to capitalize on the growing number of Chinese interested in travel to the United States. The company soon discovered that increasing Chinese visitors to the U.S. would require two major problems to be solved.
Problem Number 1:
First, the demand for travel to the U.S. exceeded the availability of U.S. consular officers who conducted the mandatory visa interviews required of all non-immigrant visa applicants. As a consequence Chinese applicants seeking a visitor visa had to wait over 3 months for an interview appointment.
Problem Number 2:
Second, China has over 160 cities with over one million people but only 5 have a U.S. consulate office where the visa interviews are conducted. Not surprisingly vacationers, unwilling to travel from their home city to Beijing or another consulate city for a three-minute interview, choose to travel elsewhere.
China USA Travel has worked closely with the US Travel Association (USTA) to solve these two problems. Regarding the first problem, the wait time to get a visa interview appointment has been reduced to less than 7 days. As a result of our joint efforts to highlight this problem the Bureau of Consular Affairs now hires Limited Non-career Appointment (LNA) consular officers to solve the problem of staffing to meet interview demand.
Unfortunately problem number two continues.
There are too few U.S. consulate locations in a country the size of China. Visa applicants still have to travel up to 1000 miles for a three-minute interview before they can visit the U.S. The solution is the approval of videoconferencing visa interviews. Videoconferencing visa interview centers in the top 100 cities in China that lack a US Consulate would localize the visa interview process. Each center would provide USA destinations planning services as well as fingerprint capture and videoconferencing services that would connect a visa applicant with a consular officer in the embassy or a consulate location in order to conduct the mandatory “in person” interview.
