The Trump administration has cancelled all visa appointments at consular offices worldwide, an unprecedented move meant to retrain consular officers to examine applications more stringently.The State Department announced Tuesday that it would suspend and reschedule all immigrant visa appointments so the government can conduct a mandatory intensive training for all department employees responsible for hearing and deciding visa applications, according to Reuters.The move is the Trump administration’s response to a major setback in federal court last week after U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas for the Southern District of New York vacated and struck down Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s 75-country immigrant visa freeze.
Vargas, a nominee of former President Joe Biden, had ruled that the government’s 75-country visa freeze illegally discriminated against applicants based on nationality and barred consular officers from their responsibility of individually deciding cases.Vargas ordered visas to continue being reissued to qualified applicants from the 75 countries for which the State Department had suspended processing.In return, Rubio’s State Department will start new employee trainings that teach officers to carefully examine if an applicant is likely to become a “public charge,” meaning that the person is likely to become dependent on government welfare programs if admitted.Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) applauded Rubio’s response to Vargas.“Visa applicants who rely on our public benefits should not be given visas,” Banks wrote in a post to X on Wednesday morning. “Thank you to the Trump admin for pausing visa applications to ensure adjudicators are properly trained to screen these burdensome applicants out.”TRUMP ADMINISTRATION RACES TO OVERHAUL AMERICA’S AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEM BY 2028The appointment pause comes days after the Trump administration proposed implementing a $103,000 fee for highly skilled foreign workers who seek to enter the United States through the H-1B visa program. A similar effort that imposed a $100,000 visa fee last year was struck down by the courts.The Trump administration is also reportedly looking at conducting the largest-ever crackdown on visa recipients in the U.S. The Associated Press reported on Monday that it plans to arrest 200,000 visa recipients, including those on the B-1 visa and B-2 visas who later sought asylum.
