Thousands of people living in Canada are facing U.S. visa wait times that could run as long as two years. That’s generated many schemes online that claim to help people jump the queue — but in some cases has scammed people out of their money entirely.Nathan Chen is an international student from China living in Halifax. He wants to visit the U.S. for tourism, but having a visa would also let him fly more cheaply and easily between North America and his home near Beijing.
As Chen tried to set-up an in-person interview, he discovered the interview booking website never had any slots available."Two a.m., 3 a.m., 6 a.m.," he said. "I checked it many times. And at last I found the available date in 2025." "I think it's an unfair thing," he told CBC about the ads that claimed to skirt the official system, which he believes is "fair to everyone."
Chen, right, wanted to find out what would happen if he paid a service claiming to get him faster access to a consular appointment. He allowed CBC reporter Shaina Luck to observe the transaction. "That's when we typically hear about it, when the applicant realizes that they no longer have access to their account, that the scammer has changed the password, and so then they're stuck."
Rustamdjan Hakimov is an associate professor of economics at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and part of a research team studying the black market visa appointment industry. People line up outside the U.S. Consulate in Vancouver in February 2024. The U.S. State Department estimates nearly 2.5-year wait times for booking U.S. visitor visa interviews in the city.
"We're working to do what we can on the back end to prevent people from being scammed in this way, but we also need the applicants to protect themselves as well," she said."These problems only grow the more we digitalize things," he said.