changes to visa applications centers overseas?

Any idea what this will mean to people applying from the United States?



30 January 2014

On 1 April new commercial partner contracts will come into effect. Our commercial partners run more than 300 visa application centres on our behalf overseas. We are working closely with existing and new commercial partners to ensure a smooth transition for our customers.

From February, in order to support this move, we will be making a number of changes to the visa services that we offer our customers overseas.

These changes will mean an increase in the number of places you can apply for a visa worldwide. In some locations opening hours will be reduced, while customers at lower volume visa application centres may be charged for their services.

More information about which locations will be affected will be available on the country pages of this website over the coming weeks.

Any idea what this will mean to people applying from the United States?

No idea (this is the first anyone will know of it), although they've only recently changed the settlement visa processing to Sheffield, and US biometrics are already done by US immigration so I'm not sure there's much that will be changed.

I supposed they may set up more places in the US for all other visa applications, as up to a couple of years ago, applications were processed by UKBA in Chicago and LA, as well as NYC.

I would suspect this is more likely to affect countries which have no UKBA consulates or application centres at all yet. At the moment, those people have to send their applications to other countries for processing (i.e. some Central American countries have to send their applications to NYC for processing), so maybe they will bring in application centres for more countries.