Visa applications are already cumbersome — long forms, thick document stacks, and anxious waiting. But in one outsourced visa processing operation, high demand appears to have evolved into something more: a profit engine.
Applicants are routinely pushed toward “express” services promising faster processing and priority handling — for a premium fee. Speed is the product being sold.
In a recent case brought to THEPHILBIZNEWS, an applicant paid for an express service guaranteeing five-day processing. Approval was never the issue, as visas are discretionary. The promise was speed.
Day five came and went. No passport.
With flights booked and hotels prepaid, the applicant returned to the center — only to be offered a “solution”: the passport could allegedly be pulled out, for another fee.
Consular insiders say that once an application is properly lodged and transmitted, pulling it out is not a casual favor. Even accredited processing centers are not supposed to exercise that kind of discretion.
This raises troubling questions.
Are express applications being pooled and transmitted in batches to cut costs, stretching timelines while maintaining the illusion of priority? Or are premium slots oversold, leaving applications sitting until complaints escalate?
Either way, the pattern is concerning: Applicants pay for speed, receive delays, then face another invoice.
Outsourced visa centers are meant to facilitate, not monetize urgency. When volume turns into leverage and leverage into profit, embassies should take a closer look.
If the system is being gamed, it is not just an inconvenience. It is an integrity issue.
And that is something embassies can no longer afford to ignore.