The U.S. Department of State is experiencing ongoing technical issues with its passport and visa issuance system. If you are expecting the arrival to campus of a new international student, researcher, faculty member or staff member, any delay may be caused by this DOS outage.
This was the official DOS message on its website Thursday, July 31, 2014:
The CCD is still performing below its normal operational capacity. However, to give you an idea of the progress we have made, from the start of the operational issues on July 20 through July 28, we issued more than 220,000 nonimmigrant visas globally. Based on our average production figures, we would have anticipated issuing closer to 425,000 nonimmigrant visas in that time period, indicating we have been able to print nonimmigrant visas for about half of all approved travelers. It will take some weeks before we are back to normal turnaround times on issued visas. We continue to prioritize immigrant visas, adoption cases, and emergency nonimmigrant visa cases. We are printing visas for these cases with very few delays. Please see our FAQs for further information.
You may monitor these DOS messages here:
https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/news/ccd-performance-issues.html