> This effectively ends “visa shopping” - the practice of applying at embassies with shorter wait times or perceived easier approval rates. It also prevents circumventing countries where the US has suspended visa operations. Exceptions remain for diplomatic visas, UN-related travel, and emergency/humanitarian cases.

Let’s give this a computer analogy. Suppose I run a multi-datacenter service, and I have an endpoint in Europe and an endpoint in Asia. I accept requests for any account at any endpoint, and I discover that I have faster response latency and fewer 500 errors at the European endpoint than the Asia endpoint. Some of my Asian users have started using the European endpoint. Do I:

(a) Decide that this is just fine — the users are load balancing for me?

(b) Fix my system so that I treat requests fairly regardless of which endpoint they hit and maybe add front ends so that the front end isn’t a bottleneck?

(c) Start unconditionally rejecting requests if the account isn’t in the endpoint’s region? Or maybe even require the account and the originating IP to be in the endpoint’s region.

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(a) is a bit lazy but could work fine in the context of the Internet if I can encourage clients to load balance in an intelligent manner. It’s pretty obnoxious if the clients need to get on an actual airplane (and make visa-related API calls to do so!) to switch endpoints.

(b) seems ideal. If my system is weak I should fix it.

(c) seems unbelievably inappropriate to me.

Now let’s consider real life. There’s some actual human being, not a phone app. They’ve just finished a PhD in the US, and they have actual friends. They want to get a job in the US where they will benefit the US economy. And their desire is even compatible with US immigration rules. Except that they’re from Asia. Should the US:

1. Let them apply from within the US and let them stay here while applying (which should be fast — why is there a queue anyway? Either they should be accepted or rejected, but we benefit no one by making it slow). Then they are still around their US friends and they’re more likely to stay.

2. Require them to go visit Canada or something similar to apply? Seems pretty silly, but at least they’ll likely either end up benefitting the US or Canadian economy.

3. Require them to go back to Asia, where they have no apartment and will possibly need a job before their visa application can finish processing, and let the rather growth-oriented Chinese system try to give them an offer that gets them to stay, fairly happily, in China?

Even putting aside that choosing (c) and (3) is kind of inhumane to make someone leave all home for a few months if they are indeed eligible for a visa to stay, this seems UTTERLY STUPID as a matter of US policy. Why on Earth do we think it’s reasonable for the embassy’s local waiting time and acceptance rate to be a relevant part of our policy for who ends up getting a visa?

And yes, I know people who came to the US, got PhDs (and even brought the money to pay for them here with them), and then started companies abroad because of US visa rules.

If you want a real answer, a big part of it has to do with consular non-reviewability. Basically, there is far less ability for an applicant to make legal challenges to visa decisions made by a US visa officer outside the US.

Another reason is, what happens if you apply for a renewal or different visa type while you're in the US, and your visa is denied? Now we're relying on you to leave the country, whereas if you already had to leave the country to apply and you're denied, you're not still in the US.

There actually was a pilot program for domestic revalidation of H-1Bs. Applicants liked it (no need for a trip outside the US), and those of us working in India liked it (less workload for us). However I doubt this administration will support expansion.

In my experience most renewing H-1Bs planned their visa interviews (or often "dropbox" cases where they didn't even need to come in person) to coincide during a few weeks trip home. They were not generally coming to India, then applying and waiting several months.

The cases that take months are those with some problem - missing some documentation, evidence of petitioner fraud, national security concerns with the applicant, etc. And yes, in those cases people (and sometimes their families) end up getting "stuck" outside the US, kids miss the start of the school year, people can't get back to their apartments and houses and pets. It sucks, but we have vetting for good reasons.

Now do the comparison if one endpoint is realtime user facing traffic and the other is batch processing which can easily eat up all available capacity and drive up latency.

If visa shoppers are overwhelming the normal processing of applicants who actually live in a particular country, it seems entirely appropriate to say "no, sorry, this location isn't for you" to the people who don't live there.