The US Department of State began a pilot on 18 August allowing eligible B-visa applicants to pay $750, about £560, on top of the $185 MRV fee for an interview inside ten business days, subject to availability1. It runs at Mission Canada, Embassy Bogota, Embassy Guatemala City, Embassy San Jose and Embassy Tegucigalpa. Mission Mexico went first, on 21 July.
Every applicant for a B visa, the American tourist and business visitor category, already pays $185 for the MRV, or machine-readable visa. The $750 buys down the queue for an interview slot and nothing beyond it. Consular officers keep the same discretion over the decision, and the eligibility rules are untouched.
The payment therefore buys a date in a diary and nothing else. An applicant who cannot find $750 waits behind one who can, for the same visa, on the same evidence, at the same post. Price sorts them without any official exercising judgement, which is precisely what separates this from the discretion the four August instruments handed out. It also turns queue length into a revenue line, and a department earning from the wait has thinner reasons to shorten it.
Appointment capacity has been the binding constraint across consular systems for two years. Italy launched fully digital Type C and Type D Visa applications from 1 June, and biometric backlogs stretched the timelines anyway. Thailand repriced the terms of entry itself on 16 July, restructuring its visa exemption into three tiers. Washington has left the terms alone and sold a place near the front of the queue instead.
