The US embassy in Zimbabwe is pausing all routine visa operations beginning Thursday, according to a memo sent by the State Department and viewed by Semafor.<\/p>\n
The pause, described as \u201ctemporary,\u201d will affect applications for a host of visas, including immigrant visas as well as nonimmigrant tourist, business traveler, student, and exchange visitor visas.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Administration is always working to prevent visa overstay and misuse,\u201d a senior State Department official said.<\/p>\n
The official pointed to Zimbabwe\u2019s B1 and B2 visa overstay rate of 10.57%, which is equivalent to 709 Zimbabweans. Overstay rates for those on student visas is also a concern \u2014 as is Zimbabwe not agreeing to a so-called safe third country or third country national agreement that would permit asylum seekers to pursue their claim from a nation they previously traveled to, according to the official.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has reportedly pressured African countries to accept deported non-national migrants. So far only Eswatini, Rwanda, and South Sudan have publicly agreed to such an arrangement.<\/p>\n
The pause will not impact already existing valid visas, according to the memo, and some applications \u2014 including official and C-3 diplomatic visas \u2014 will continue to be processed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US embassy in Zimbabwe is pausing all routine visa operations beginning Thursday, according to a memo sent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[106],"class_list":{"0":"post-4789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-zimbabwe","8":"tag-zimbabwe"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}