By Humeyra Pamuk, Kristina Cooke and Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON, Sept 8 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's administration resumed processing immigrant visa applications from Hungary and Poland last week while maintaining a temporary pause on immigrant visa appointments elsewhere, four people familiar with the matter said.
The directive to prioritize immigrant visas at the U.S. missions in Poland and Hungary came from the White House, two of the sources said. While it was not immediately clear why
the U.S. singled out the two countries for special attention, Trump and his senior aides have cultivated far-right allies in both places.
He publicly endorsed former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who was defeated at the polls in April, and Poland's nationalist President Karol Nawrocki, whose election has put him at odds with the centrist government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
In May, Reuters reported that U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau instructed senior State Department officials to facilitate a U.S. visa for a fugitive former Polish cabinet minister who had taken refuge from corruption charges in Hungary.
The White House referred a request for comment to the State Department. A State Department spokesperson did not comment on why it resumed immigrant visa processing for Hungary and Poland.
The Hungarian Foreign Ministry and Prime Minister's Office, as well as the Polish Foreign Ministry, and prime minister’s and president’s offices did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
TRUMP TARGETS BOTH ILLEGAL AND LEGAL MIGRATION
Trump has long campaigned on stopping illegal immigration, but his second term has been defined in equal measure by his expansive efforts to curb legal migration. The U.S. has imposed travel bans on dozens of countries, introduced expensive new fees for certain work visas and mandated that all applicants undergo a vetting of their social media history.
In January, the State Department said it was temporarily suspending the processing of immigrant visas — which allow people to move permanently to the United States — in 75 countries where applicants were "at a high risk for becoming a public charge."
After a federal judge ruled against the visa ban, the State Department paused immigrant visa interviews at all of its global missions while rolling out a new training program.
The State Department spokesperson, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said appointments were being adjusted to accommodate the new training. "Whenever there are updated instructions for visa applicants or changes to visa interview appointments, embassies and consulates communicate this information directly to visa applicants," they wrote.
GLOBAL IMPACT
U.S. consulates and embassies traditionally conduct hundreds of thousands of immigrant visa interviews every year, most of them with relatives of U.S. citizens or permanent residents. In 2024, the last year of Joe Biden's Democratic presidency, the U.S. issued some 600,000 immigrant visas.
The State Department’s January edict was its most far-reaching attempt to rein in legal migration. The visa suspension affected applicants from Latin American countries including Brazil, Colombia, and Uruguay; Balkan nations such as Bosnia and Albania; and South Asian countries Pakistan and Bangladesh.
On August 21, however, U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas struck down the policy as "patently unlawful."
In the days that followed, the State Department called missions around the world and told them to cancel immigrant visa appointments, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
The State Department acknowledged the global pause in a public statement on August 25, saying it would remain in place until staffers received new training in how to assess whether visa applicants could support themselves in the United States without relying on public benefits.
The U.S. government said in a court filing that interviews were temporarily rescheduled through August 31.
But the suspension could remain in place for months due to the structure of the new training program. Missions need to self-train based on materials sent from Washington; a consular officer then needs to visit each post to certify that the training has been completed, a person familiar with the matter said.
On a Reddit thread, people from around the world, including Peru, the United Kingdom and India, posted about canceled visa appointments through September.
"We were at the finish line and now this," one person wrote.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Jonathan Landay in Washington and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Gergely Szakacs in Budapest and Alan Charlish in Warsaw; Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage and Rod Nickel )
