The corona has ended, but the endless queues for a visa to the United States have actually remained - and so have the services of the "makers," who take vacant queues and then demand hundreds and thousands of shekels.
Reminder: In the two years of the plague, thousands of citizens had to wait months for the long-awaited turn.
The embassy then explained that the reason for the wait was the corona, which caused limited activity at the embassy and led to an accumulation of inquiries, many of them from American citizens.
But the plague has passed, and Israelis trying to reach the United States are still facing serious problems.
At the embassy, new appointments are published from time to time, and some people cancel appointments for various reasons, but it is difficult to catch these appointments because of the "machinists" who reserve them immediately upon evacuation and offer them for sale.
Prices range from a few hundred to thousands of shekels, depending on how close the queue is.
Price according to urgency
"I charge NIS 1,500 for the service alone," Avner, an Israeli who used to shorten queues for the US embassy, told "Israel Today," "I promise you that you will get a queue this month. Doing so, he replied, "I can not talk about it, I have my ways."
In another company that deals in the field, we received a price list according to the shortening of queues.
"If you want a queue for the next 14 business days, you will pay NIS 1,000," it was stated, "for a queue for the next 30 business days you will pay NIS 700, and for a queue for the next 60 business days you will pay NIS 500."
"My daughter is a US citizen and I want to renew her expired passport," says an Israeli citizen (his name is stored in the system).
It is not that there is a distant date, but that their system works only two months ahead and there are never any queues.
I sent them emails, and they reply that they do not reply by email, and when they call they ask us to contact them by email.
The only thing they write there is that 'if it's an emergency, there is a department that deals with the issue', and that is only dealt with if you fly in the next two weeks.
"We want to fly as a family to the US, we have visas and we are not American citizens. My daughter was born there and she is a citizen, but can not get in there. It is just absurd. We have been in the same story for half a year."
Visa to the United States, Photo: GettyImages
Unprecedented demand
Another citizen shared: "I was sure that when the corona is over there will be more queues, but the situation there is just awful. When you try to get a queue you only get an option for next year. It really does not make sense. I want to fly to my family there on holidays and I can not "This has been going on for months. We are now considering a change of destination. We will probably not fly to the US anytime soon until this whole story is over and it sucks."
The U.S. Embassy responded: "All U.S. embassies around the world continue to face the challenges of the Corona. After two years of restrictions, we face an unprecedented demand for visas. The difficulty will be maintained for some time to come."
By the way, the United States is not the only country to which Israelis find it difficult to obtain visas. Some applicants said that the visa was not ready on time despite the promise, in some cases even a day before the flight, and they had to wait a whole day outside the embassy until their applications were processed. Unlike tourists from dozens of countries, Israelis can not get a visa online and therefore are required to purchase the entire trip through licensed agents. Some Israeli agents do this, and some issue it through agents in Vietnam. , And so in fact the trip to the sought-after Vietnam also becomes cumbersome.
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